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It is here ! The New Flame Boss 400 Fan Controller unbiased review from me, a humble member and user.

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    It is here ! The New Flame Boss 400 Fan Controller unbiased review from me, a humble member and user.

    Let me start by saying that I have a lot of years of offset cooker usage but no previous fan controller usage so this is my first stab at trying to "cheat" the firebox tending work load.

    The Flame Boss 400 was $219.00 U.S. and was shipped quickly. Below are the components for a universal mount excluding the stainless steel dog dish apparently used to attach the fan to a kettle style cooker. I am putting this on to a medium large 6 foot reverse flow offset cooker I built a few months back so will not need the dish.

    My choice for purchasing this controller was that it has a variable speed fan and no digital read out to be left in the great outdoors to get rained on. A plus for someone who can not always be around the smoker while on a long 12 hour cook.

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    Getting setup before installation:

    Comes with virtually no instructions so I downloaded the Flame Boss App onto my android phone, works on Apple as well according to the manufacture. After many, and I mean many, attempts to get the unit online I almost gave up when I realized that when I go into WiFI settings I was not looking for my home WiFI network, I was supposed to choose the one that says Controller 31XXX. This needs to be done with the fan installed and plugged in. Not intuitive by any means and I build my own desktop computers so I have a general idea how computers respond. Once up it automatically hooks on to your WiFI system and you are ready to go. Every time you plug in the fan a new cook, or session, comes on with the date and time started and you can then edit the name easily for you cook such as....7 lb. Boston Butt and 2 rack of St. Louis Ribs. This was very convenient to see this part function without difficulty.

    Installation:

    With almost nothing to go on as far as fan duct port installation I defaulted back to engineering by closely examining how my firebox works with fire grate and under long smoke conditions where a substantial amount of lump charcoal and firewood sit in a pile on top of the fire grate. First, I had read on this great forum about questions members had about how to avoid having a fan blow on powdery ash and stir it up into the air and smoke and light on the meat. I am not sure of how the kettle style intakes work but I did not want my fan port blowing under my fire grate so I looked up higher. After reviewing how fresh wood and lump sits on the grate when freshly stoked I chose a side location. Since the port will be blowing during long cooks I looked at burned down glowing charcoal and chose 3 inches above the grate.

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    An inadvertent plus was that when I go to refuel I push the hot coals to the side under the fan port and with the unit open the fan begins to blow very hard so my coals are now being fired up with high speed oxygen and it resembles a blacksmith's bellows so you get some blue/ orange flames that ignite your new lump charcoal or wood very quickly reducing the dreaded white smoke!

    After searching through my hole saws I found a cutter that would cut the correct size hole and choose 1-1/8 inch as the magic number. Does not fit tight but worked. The round threads attached to the square quick connect are made of Zamac which is a mostly zinc and 5% aluminum cast metal alloy unit and hopefully will last some time. What shocked me was the zinc plated electrical conduit lock nut that secures the unit on. With 1200 degree F. temperatures this ought to rust out in 6 weeks and require a new one. Poor choice of material construction in my view! Otherwise, without any instructions I was very lucky at my placement of the quick connect adapter to the firebox and it seems to be working well and was straight forward.

    Hooking up the unit to the smoker adapter:

    Could not be easier to attach the fan on each cook, you simply place a little lock-in tab at the top of the fan units square duct and set in place with gravity holding the unit on. Really smart on their part but it can be knocked off as it has on one of my cooks.

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    Plug in the 12 volt typical China made power supply underneath and the red colored jack meat probe and black colored special grate clip probe, insert into pit and you are up and running. By plugging in the fan it starts up and connects automatically to the WiFI and starts a new cook labeled Date, controller31XXX. You then easily edit this from your phone and type "7 lb. Pork Butt, and 2 St. Louis Ribs or what ever you like.

    Unit software and indicators:

    As you are aware there is no digital controller on your pit so display and info is all on your color screen of you phone. I liked this feature because I get called out on jobs during long cooks for an hour or so and do not want to babysit a digital readout unit if it rains or a sprinkler comes on. Also, the cheap thermometers I have used such as a Maverick has very short 3 foot probes that keep the digital readout to close to the pit so I always worried about the plastic housing melting. The probes that come with the Flame Boss 400 look much more robust and are much longer.

    Here is a cook I did yesterday. It represents the graph on your phone that is always moving forward with time.

    Check out my cook with @FlameBossSmokes.
    Live stats and graph of my smoker cooking some delicious BBQ with a Flame Boss®


    You set pit temp, degree swing alarm at 15 or more degrees, and meat temp you desire say 205 for a butt. And the cook is up and running. Could not be easier even without instructions.

    Unit performance:

    Brings your pit up to temperature very quickly as it senses your grate clips temperature and variable speeds of fan are run as unit corrects inside pit temperature to the exact temperature you set. This is displayed on the graph and tells you what percentage of fan output is currently being used. Example: Fan Output 38%

    Does a great job at keeping temperature consistent even as the fire and fuel levels diminish. As your fuel runs low the pit temperature variance you set initially sounds a text to you to tell you that the pit temps is out of range. When it gets back up to range you get another alert. Nice feature and really keeps you notified well of whats happening currently at grate temp inside the pit. As an example I went to my grand daughter's softball game and while away for an hour after I had just refueled. The temp alarm sounded on a text and my pit temperature began a huge spike from 225 , my set temp, to 303 and was going rogue on me because I had opened my pinwheel draft to ignite new fuel quickly and forgot to close after a few minutes. To avoid disaster of burning the bottom of my butt, "pun intended", I called my trusty neighbor up and had him close off the pinwheel vent and everything dropped back to normal in a few minutes. Unit texted me that pit was now normal.

    Any setting is easily changed during the cook. After 7 hours 38 minutes I raised my pit temp to 250 than a little later to 275 until the cook was done in 11 hours or so. Very easy and works as designed.

    What makes these little puppies a luxury is you do not have to watch the firebox continually to bring temps up or down so usually, if you get the approximate size of fire / wood fuel correct, there is nothing to do on my smoker until around 2.5 hours into it and the temp alarm goes off to refuel. Did this 2 times during an 11 hour cook.

    What it will not do is bring the temperature down if you get a run away temperature spike after refueling and adjusting you pinwheel draft. Units fan powers down to 0% but it can not control bringing dow a fire if it is too hot and you have too much air intake. That's why they recommend closing off your vents entirely but I like using the vents to ignite a refuel then close off the air after 10 minutes or so once the white smoke steam has gone away!

    The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about this unit:

    The Good, works well once installed, easy app to use once up and running, great alerts and feedback. Keeps consistent temperatures in pit so cooks go quicker. Easy to adjust temperatures and alarms if need be, I do. Robust probes long leads and color coded, unit easily installed on a offset cooker, do not have a Webber so do not know about an install on that one. Simple to plug into and easily attaches to cooker. Comes online with no effort and begins new cook without any menu stuff. Great to take your phone with you and check where ever you are in town, even while at a ball game! Reasonably priced in my humble opinion. Variable speed fan, and no digital read out unit to mess with while at the pit even though this may be a negative for some of you. Best of all when you have the firebox open for refueling the fan kicks into overdrive so you get a quick lite up of your new wood or charcoal. It also knows and senses and notifies by text you when you open or close the pit to spray or turn your meat. Always let's you know if the pit temp is in or out of range with text alerts

    The Bad:

    Unit will sometimes drop offline during a cook and there is no instructions to get it back online. After working the screens over and over at 3 in the morning and being aggravated to no end, I finally did what any good computer guy would do......I unplugged the unit and rebooted the connection and was up and running again once I stumbled out to the pit in the dark in my my underwear!! At 60 years old and 3:00 a.m. I really do not care what the possums think of my clothing! Unfortunately, this made for a new untitled cook even though it was only offline for 30 minutes.

    Only one meat probe so if you have multiple cooks going in the pit you will need a digital thermometer such as a Maverick to monitor second and third meat portions.

    Fan can be knocked off the pit adapter on to the ground without you knowing it since it uses gravity to sit on adapter. This happened to me and there is no alert to this fact. Must have tripped over the cord and not known it.

    And finally the Ugly:

    The small size of the air duct adapter attached to unit itself is way to short to "stand the unit off" from the heat of the firebox and has now caused the unit plastic housing to melt and distort after 2 twelve hour cooks. Unit still works, but again, another bad choice for manufacturing materials, cheap plastic and 1200 degree fireboxes are not two items that mix well. The fire will win this one. A heat shield or longer duct would have solved this easily and For a Few Dollars More, to quote a Clint Eastwood film title.

    Conduit lock nut with zinc plating is going to rust away in no time based on my experience of electrical connectors, and I have a lot of experience on this issue.

    Here is a look at damage after 3 long cooks.....

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    Conclusion:

    I would purchase this again if the unit was made from better quality materials and would come with instructions and technical support on line so frequently asked questions could be answered. The phone support is never on duty when I have problems such as at 3:00a.m. Like the size and the Flame Boss's ability to keep a medium large smoker up to consistent temp. Love the phone screen and continual texts alerts since I am usually unable to tend to the fire all the time during a long cook.

    All in all a good product that needs tweaking to fix real world issues. Will be curious what manufacture supports does when I inform them of the melted housing issue... we will soon see !





















    #2
    Great review. Thanks for all the detail!

    Comment


      #3
      Many thanks fer th exhaustive an complete Real World Review of this device....

      Comment


        #4
        Nicely done. And that's a great looking cooker you made!

        Comment


          #5
          Follow up on Flame Boss 400 warped plastic housing after contacting manufacture. Emailed back and forth with Flame Boss personnel regarding any solutions to the heat from the fire box causing plastic housing warpage and sent them pictures. I queried them on any ideas or solutions to solving the problem and got no suggestions so I made my own suggestion.

          Since outlet is a 3/4 inch male pipe thread I suggested a 6 inch nipple, basically a 6 inch piece of 3/4 inch pipe with male threads on both ends and a union to mate the fan to the pipe to set the unit back away from the intense heat generated by the 1/4 inch steel plate that the firebox is made of.

          They did fix the unit I sent them and sent it back very quickly with a new plastic housing.

          Looks like it is up the the owner to solve the problem!

          They might want to re-think some of the design. Like the product and it has delivered what I needed but could use a upgrade on durability.

          Comment


            #6
            Probably going to have to make your own extension. I use a fan controller on my my ceramic cooker but it really doesn’t get super hot where the bottom vent is. The external temperature of the cooker remains below 200 where the fan sits according to my IR thermometer. You have a metal box with burning logs, so completely different situation.

            Another thing to try (and the route I would take) is a pie pan. They make decent heat shields. At least I think they would. The aluminum would block the intense heat and having a lower specific heat than other metals and being thin and having a large surface area would dissipate the heat it did absorb rapidly.

            Comment


              #7
              great write-up, thanks!

              Comment


                #8
                You might try wrapping in insulation and then cover in heavy duty foil. I know they make fire rated insulation but I’m not sure you would need it. If you really want to have some fun buy some fire rated caulk and smear it over the foil. Heck the amount you need is so small go to your attic and cut a piece. Most of the time they stack a left over piece somewhere.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Problem was solved when I cut a thanksgiving pie pan to fit over square air duct.... worked perfectly well. no heat transfer to fan!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Do you have any issues with flames going out and getting dirty smoke when the fan turns off to bring the temp down?

                    Comment


                    • Lock Stock and Barrel
                      Lock Stock and Barrel commented
                      Editing a comment
                      If temp is too high you do not have dirty smoke ....you have clear heat with no smoke so getting the temp down is a function of never letting air into the system with your vents so the unit does all of the make up air. So, if you use a fan controller shut everything else off so the temp sensors add or reduce air as required to maintain the system temp. I am not a scientist but rather a pyro-maniac so I love to watch fire get hot enough to melt soda bottles. Does'nt work on low heat cooks.

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