She Blew Her Top - Literally

[AmosMoses01]

Holy cow!! Glad that y'all are ok and no permanent loss of functionality in the cooker or living beings. This definitely reinforces my already near manic desire to vacuum out mine after each cook.

[bardsleyque]

Glad your'e OK!! but...no pics?

[Sweaty Paul]

Glad you’re ok and your hounds too. Glad you shared and give a great example for everyone to learn from safely.

[radshop]

Blowing stuff up. Cool.

[NapMaster]

That comment was obviously stolen from Beavis and Butthead. 👍

[Nuke em]

Just a thought. Wonder if you could rig some sorta blow off valve or vent. Hmmm. One mans experience is another mans knowledge.

[Nuke em]

Or ya could blame it on the dog and tell everyone he was trying to get inside and that was just your door alarm that went off. Your smoker alarm was set

[WVsmoke]

Thank you for taking the time to share your story. Your cautionary tale and those shared by others of a like or similar nature are very beneficial to those of us who are not as knowledgeable in the science of combustion. Too often we focus on brining, seasoning, temperature, and cook times and overlook safety. We appreciate the safety reminder.

[Oak Smoke]

Things near Houston are prone to blowing up. I hate to hear the latest was at your house. Please take this in the spirit it is given in, DO NOT GET YOURSELF BLOWN UP!!! There's still a lot I have to learn from you.

[Troutman]

Trust I know first hand. Worked years ago in a fertilizer plant, a corn refining operation as well as the Houston oil and chem refineries. I've seen and heard of lots of things "blowing up". Doing it to yourself is a whole different ball game

[grantgallagher]

Ive never heard of this before. I dont own a pellet pooper but im curious what it is about the design of these cookers that makes this a unique thing to them? Or is it not unique to pellets?

[Troutman]

If you have ever worked around dust, like in a place that grinds corn or rice or makes fertilizer, the stuff is extremely volatile. The little pellets are made of compressed sawdust, so there's a certain amount of dust that gets into the system plus the byproduct that's produced from the burning of the pellets creates a fine dust like ash. Soo, if you don't clean out of your burn pot and the bottom of the cooking chamber, that dust is blown into that chamber by the fan that controls the fire burning below it. If that dust cloud gets large enough it can and will ignite. That's what happened to me.

Bottom line, you have to vacuum out the dust religiously or it could continue to happen. Can be dangerous or could mess up the whole pellet mechanism.

[MBMorgan]

It's not common but it is a real thing ... and here's a video that does a fair job of explaining the likely cause.

[Troutman]

No that's one cause MBMorgan but in my case it was the ash build up that ignited. I did not have a flame out, in fact the cooker kept chugging along after the event like nothing was wrong. Other than a deformed lid, I checked everything out visually and it was fine and I proceeded with my cook as normal.

Power outages and flame outs are a real issue, but I have never encountered one in my cooker. What's also interesting is it appears the Grilla fires up with no pellets in the burn pot. Not so with the Pellet Pro system (and others that I've seen). At the shut down the last thing the auger does is dump a handful of fresh pellets into the burn pot to start the fire on the next cook. Not sure if that's been done away with by Grilla as a safety measure, but again I've never had issues with that myself.

It's all about the ash and my lazy ass for not cleaning it out !!!

[MBMorgan]

Ah ... so now we've got two possible causes for pellet poopers in general. I've seen recommendations that the lid be left open (much like a gasser) during the entire ignition sequence ... I guess you get more of a "poof" than a "boom" that way if things go south.

FWIW, in the Grilla, there is a delay during startup so that the igniter doesn't heat up until there are sufficient pellets in the burn pot. After a proper shutdown, there are no pellets in the pot ... just ash.

[Sweaty Paul]

Yoder has no pellets in the pot at the end of a cook. They recommend vacuuming the pot after each cook. No pellets are in the pot at startup. I tend to vacuum whatever I can reach with through the diffuser plate door after every cook and about every fifth to tenth cook I take out the diffuser plate and vacuum whole thing. Will be doing every 5 now for sure.

[CandySueQ]

Okay, I'm being a contrarian, but the test has been underway since November 2017. I won an original Grilla at the World Food Championships that year and it was delivered right before my double oven failed right after Thanksgiving. I cooked everything in the Grilla that would have gone in the oven until oven was replaced. I posted a photo in 2018 of ash build-up under the grease deflector. I have not cleaned ash out yet! I'll take a photo tonight of the bottom before I fire it up (pork belly burnt ends!)

[Troutman]

Yea there's no way I'd get away with that in my Pellet Pro. I'm really not sure what the differences are, your burn pot is nearly identical to mine, perhaps its the controller logic causing issues in mine that Grilla has solved. At any rate shame on you for not cleaning your baby !!!!

[swartzster]

Are you still offering the black walnut pellets?