Weber Searwood temp control issues

[LegoMySearwood]

I need some advice on whether or not to loop in Weber with my temp control issues. I’ve owned a Weber Searwood since the end of August. Some of my first cooks were 25 degrees off on temperature between the Searwood’s temp and my ThermoWorks Smoke. My pork ribs were like leather when they were done and I didn’t realize that until I bought my Smoke that they were cooking 25 degrees cooler. Since then, The temp gap is worsening. I had to raise the temp on the Searwood to 375 to actually get 325 to cook some chicken breasts last week.
So today I tried an experiment where I set the Searwood’s temp to be 225. I REALLY cleaned the grill before I began. It took 12 minutes to heat up. I also had my ThermoWorks Smoke hooked up to compare temps. Here are the results:

Searwood temp vs Smoke temp
12 min: 225 vs 297
20 min: 225 vs 309.5
30 min: 225 vs 320.9
35 min: 225 vs 261.5
40 min: 225 vs 188
45 min: 225 vs 255
50 min: 225 vs 200

It takes about 50 minutes before I’m close to 225 but the temp jumps around a lot. I mean a lot. I had to do something and so I ended the experiment after 55 minutes.
I have pictures of my RFX ThermoWorks graph of my chicken cook last week where I was pretty consistently 50 degrees off when I did chicken and then 2 hours into the cook the temp jumped to be within 35 degrees randomly.
I would really like some advice. Is this normal for pellet grills? I feel like I can’t set it and forget it because I’m so off.

[bbqLuv]

It only takes about 15 minutes to come up to temp on my Timberline 850.
I will get a temp spike if I start with too many pellets in the fire pot.

[Jfrosty27]

Absolutely get Weber involved. Something is not right there.

[Ace]

@LegoMySearwood
+1 Give them a call. I'll be interested in what you find out as I'm considering getting one of these.

[fzxdoc]

Keep us posted. Weber should be able to help. Hope it works out well for you.

Kathryn

[WI Bubba]

It looks like the tuning parameters for the controller are too aggressive, and having a hard time settling in. There are a ton of variables involved, and I would let Weber sort them out.

I had a similar issue with my Camp Chef, and the solution ended up being getting the right brand of pellets that my smoker liked. Oddly enough they were not the Camp Chef branded pellets. You might want to try a different brand of pellets that are longer/shorter or skinnier/fatter than what you are using now.

Whatever the problem is, I hope it gets resolved quickly. It sucks when a new toy doesn't work right.

[LegoMySearwood]

I've tried a few different brands, most with similar results.

[synodog]

I’m with Ace as I am close to pulling the MCS trigger on one of these. It would be my first pellet smoker/grill, but hesitant hearing about this.

[STEbbq]

Other than the pellets, it sounds like the controller pellet drop rate could be adjusted to be more consistent. This is usually done with a tweak via the settings menu.

[LegoMySearwood]

This is not available on the Searwood

[bbqLuv]

I run Traeger pellets in my Traeger. I have tried others, but Traeger pellets seems to work best.
I'm half temped to try Royal Oak Charcoal pellets. Heath Riles uses them on his Traeger in a couple of his YouTube videos.

The solution will be interesting,

[LegoMySearwood]

I will probably have to purchase Weber pellets just to confirm, but nobody sells them here so I'll have to pay for shipping.

[bbqLuv]

Try Amazon if order is high enough you get free shipping.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=webber+wood+pellets&ref=nb_sb_noss

[LegoMySearwood]

I have contacted Weber support and provided them with pictures. The first guy took all the info and they will get back to me.

[LegoMySearwood]

Weber contacted me and stated that the thermocouple should be 9 mm away from the back of the cookbox for more accurate temps. I used the cotter pin that kept on the lid for an accurate 9 mm per their instructions.

I then placed my ThermoWorks Smoke thermometer next to the thermocouple for another test.

Within 10 minutes I was already overshooting the temperature by a signficant amount.

Within another minute I was 100 degrees over.

At 7:22 pm the Searwood randomly spiked without me touching it going up to 340 ish per the Searwood but 380 according to my Smoke.


10 minutes later and 40 minutes into the test I was already going below the temp.

I remained low the rest of the time after about 40 minutes.


So I can't keep from vastly overshooting and it takes 40-50 minutes to settle into a rhythm. This is after really cleaning the smoker and the thermocouple. Needless to say, I'm pretty frustrated. I emailed the representative these pictures to explain and this is the response I received:

Hello Brody,

Thanks for your reply. I would be glad to assist you. I seem to be having some technical issues with audio, I can call you as soon as this is fixed. I apologize for the inconvenience.

All grills, regardless of fuel type, can have variability across the cooking grate, especially at high searing temperatures. In order to reduce this variability, it is important to keep the grill lid closed as much as possible to prevent any change within the cook box.

The Weber Pellet grills are designed to adjust the amount of heat based on your set temperature. When heating up the grill, the fan works harder to get the temp up faster. When the lid is open, the air flow may blow the flame towards the right side of the grill. When the lid is closed, the flame will settle over the burn pot. When the grill gets to set temp, heat will even out across the cooking surface.

What is being displayed on the screen is an average of the temps across the cooking grates so most likely a single spot on your grill (even right by the thermocouple in the back) may not correlate back to what is being displayed. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Max K
Weber Pellet/CT Team
Weber LLC

I kept the lid closed the entire test. I would think the more I use my pellet grill, the more accurate things would become not worse as I use it more. Ugh. I'm having buyer's remorse right now.

[Ace]

Following this thread. Hope Weber solves this issue soon.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

LegoMySearwood after my discussion below I checked some other complaints and a couple people had similar issues to you and it ended up being the thermocouple. While that doesn't sound right to me based on previous thermocouple failure experience with other brands, according to 3 posts I found on reddit, Weber sent them replacements and the 50+ degree overshoots went away.

[randy.56]

I've been using pellet grill for almost 10 years. Not weber brand. It's not the pellets, must be a controller issue. Hope webber solves your problem.

[bbqLuv]

Agreed. Software not the hardware
perhaps missing a bit from the byte when it took a nibble.

[Donw]

I’d recommend doing a toast test across the entire grill to find any hot spots, and then recording the grill level temperature at a spot that is not a hot spot. (I don’t think I have ever before used the word spot so many times in one sentence)

Not saying there is not something wrong with your controller or the thermocouple. In fact I recently changed out the thermocouple on my Yoder because of something similar happening. However it would be good to map out your grill level so you can identify hot and cold areas which can help when rotating foods while cooking.
Good luck with customer support.

[Purc]

+1 and take pics of the toast test and send them to Weber customer support.

[Panhead John]

Don, your comments are “spot” on…..🥸

[Mosca]

My electric oven doesn’t swing that much. It pops over/under by about 25° either way. I would make the argument that you understand how it works, but this is extreme.

[jfmorris]

I agree with everyone else. I can understand a brief overshoot at startup, but it should not take 45 minutes to settle down, and it should not settle down 25 degrees below the set temperature. And the overshoot, with lid closed, should not be THAT extreme - 100+ degrees over the set point? Really?

I know from a lot of years of window shopping pellet grills (my choice was gonna be a Grilla OG, before winning the Great Giveaway and choosing a SNS Kamado), that some swing is normal. However, for grills with a good PID it should be within 5-10 degrees. Grilla's old controllers and their Alpha mode controllers in pro-smoke mode swing as much as 25 degrees. But not 100 degrees! And the average should be your set point. As someone else pointed out, my indoor oven varies about 25 degrees around the set point if at 350F.

Could some of this be due to the design? Does this use the flavorizer bar setup like their gas grills, versus a full or solid heat defllector over the fire pot?

Good luck with Weber!

[tstalafuse]

Not saying you don't have an issue going on, but I recall having read this type of issue numerous times in this forum and others regarding pellet grills of various manufacturers. Weber's response is basically the same answer that all of them have given that the displayed temp is a calculated temperature of the whole grill based on their algorithm and not just any singular spot. Right or wrong that seems to be the story and they are sticking with it.

I would do the toast test to figure out exactly where your hot spots are located (just like any grill pellet or otherwise) and adjust where you place things in the grill. My pellet grill has a hot spot that runs the length across the back of the grill, so I avoid that area when doing long low and slow cooks by keeping everything as close to the front as I can and put things there when I want a higher heat.

[tstalafuse]

I hate limitations.

Except for the FAQ specifically states, OVERALL ambient temperature of the grill, so I don't believe I am misinterpreting anything. Yes, you can move the thermocouple around in the Mak, but the thermocouple is still reading and thus calculating the overall temp of the grill. Moving it simply changes where the grill is reading from to make a calculation. They all use some algorithm to make an overall calculation of the grill temp.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

I guess we just have a completely different interpretation of the meaning that won't be resolved here, maybe over a beer one day There are manufacturers that specify their controller does what I read you to be saying. As to Weber which this thread is about I've seen them clarify (at least with the smokefire, this is the first searwood CS response I've read) with a response in line with what I'm trying to describe.

[tstalafuse]

Probably not. As I said, I don't know that he isn't having a problem, so hopefully, LegoMySearwood can hound Weber into sending him a replacement thermocouple or even a new control board. If they do and the parts are defective then he will get different readings. If the new ones give the same +- a few degrees reading, it is because of the algorithm Weber uses to determine the overall temp of the grill. Not a bug, but a feature.