Congrats! I think I have put mine through enough cooks to give advice. If you need any, don't hesitate to ask.
- I think the water pan helps if you just fill it once at the beginning of the cook when the fat hasn't started to render yet to provide its own moisture. Not worth opening the door and loosing heat (which like any cabinet style cooker it does) to fill it again.
- There is a lot of rack space. Getting drip collectors between the meat and the water pan and/or the floor is a must. The little drip collector under the cooker is really small for a reason. It is for accidents and nothing else.
- If yours is anything like mine, the display becomes pretty useless once the pit is hot and the sun is out. You can normally just make out the internal pit temp since the numbers are big, but the small ones for the two probes sometimes disappear completely. They actually sent me a new controller in case it was just me, but it is a PITA to replace it, so it sits waiting in case I ever really need it. I have ran 4 probe wires (including remotes) down the door gasket with no issues. Getting an extra set of hands to hold them in place and close the door quickly is the only issue. Hang an oven thermometer on the top rack so you can see it easily if the display is not cooperating and also to be able to get a feel for the bottom rack to top rack temp variable. The internal pit thermometer is all the way down under the water pan. At the beginning of the cook the temp swing is huge since the internal one is so close to the firebox. Once the pit has built up some residual heat and the auger is't sending new pellets to light nearly as often, the temps actually match pretty closely.
- Getting an extra probe and a cover are well worth it, and there are both available on Amazon for far less money than the branded ones. Here are the two that are identical to the branded ones. Looks like the cover went up from the $18 I paid for it, but still worth it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JLS6ZCZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H85ZZGG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1- Don't forget to move the pellets in the hopper towards the center or it will crater out and run you out of pellets. I have never ran out, but I have intentionally watched to see what happens towards the end of a load, and there are a lot of pellets still on the walls while it keeps emptying the center. I have kept mine outside with no cover except for the fabric one which speaks to the quality of the cover but also to my never having unloaded pellets between cooks. I normally keep it about half full and not all the way in case I really need to empty them in an emergency, but that emptying method really sucks to do with any regularity. We had one of our wettest springs ever hear, and I had no issues with wet pellets. Even a tiny bit of moisture would hardly stop that auger. It is a beast and can push even the longest unbroken pellets with ease. The fire box is large too and even though I always shop van it out between cooks, it doesn't even get close to snuffing out the igniter.
- Part of the reason it doesn't fill the fire box is because unfortunately the cooker does blow ash into the chamber and a LOT ends up on the floor. I have never had any get on the food, but I suspect you might if you don't at least keep the water pan in as a deflector of ash (and heat on low racks).
- Last thing, the warm up/shut down cycles... They are important, but can be modified a little IMO. My method (with pellets still in the augur since I don't unload or burn them off and an empty fire box) is to turn on the unit in smoke position and after the auger stops hold down the prime for a couple of rotations more and once you start seeing smoke coming out of the fire box put the "flame tamer" and water pan back in place, turn to 350 but load the meat long before 350. I normally load at about 200 and turn down to desired temp once at hits 300 (unless you really are cooking at 350 or higher which I have with no issues). For shut down, I do turn back up to 350 as instructed, but like to load something that needs heated up quickly or just finish my cook with the last 10-20 minutes at 350. It's not that important to burn off grease on the walls and floor if you are racked and panned, but the important part is that 5 minutes at 200 to burn off pellets and then waiting through that LONG cool-down before the blue light turns off completely (10 minutes or so).
- Once the blue light turns off give the grates a scraping while still hot, and leave the door open. It will cool down to where you can put the cover back on within ~30 minutes.
It is a helluva a cooker for price vs. cooking space. The only thing I have really noticed is that it doesn't produce a traditional bark or smokiness (on brisket wrapped or not in BP or foil) regardless of cook temp even compared to other pellet cookers. I think it is more related to air flow than anything else. It is not bad, just different and my wife actually likes both the smoke profile and bark even better than my stick burner. It does produce a pretty smoke ring at low temps, slow cooks and pretty much none at hot & fast of course.
I hope my morning rant was at least a little helpful.
P.S. The inside of the door actually wipes OK with a good amount of Windex, but I did that twice and never have done it again. :-)
