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Yesterday was Christmas Lunch here at the pellet plant. Took the FECs out of storage and ran pipe out the wall of the warehouse. There is a cap vent on the outside end, but the pipe does not extend over the roof. Winds on Wednesday and Thursday were really, really bad here.

Biggest piece of beef (53#) went on the cooker about 1 on Wednesday, with 2 more 20+ lb. chunks on at 5 pm. Loaded the hopper up and I went home. Fire was burning good. The 2nd shift super checked it before he went home at 11 and added some more pellets to the hopper. When I got to work yesterday morning at 6, the warehouse was full of smoke, smoke was billowing out of the cooker's door and hopper! Opened the door and the fire pot was overflowing with pellets at the glowing ember stage. Hopper looked like moisture was dripping out from under the lid and down the control panel. Opened the lid of the hopper up and the pellets were swelled up from moisture all the way up to the lid of the hopper. The pellets down at the auger were smoldering. Meat was cooked (thank goodness!).

Near as I can figure, wind had blown in the exhaust pipe, blowing moisture up the ramp into the hopper. I had a drip pan to catch drippings for gravy, so very little juice ran into the drip pan. It was a mess! But the lunch was Great! The beef was tender and very flavorful. Gravy was superb!

Merry Christmas!

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Wow... that's crazy. I was at a contest once where it was pouring rain and a bit windy. I took the FEC-100 into my cargo trailer, opened the vending window and piped the smokestack out of the vending window on my trailer. It worked fine for a while but then smoke began to billow out of the hopper door. The smoke was not really coming out of the smokestack at all, just the hopper door inside the trailer.

Anyone have this happen to them? I know there are a few teams that strictly cook inside their trailers with FEC-100s (Butcher BBQ). Has anyone else experienced this and know how to keep it from happening?

Stu
www.stusqbbq.com
I noticed on my cook last saturday i had a lot of smoke coming from my hopper and moisture beading in the lid. Today I went to put a brisket on and some of the pellets left over from last week were swelled up mess.. vacuumed it out and reloaded. Has to be in the smoldering stage when more pellets are dropped in producing more smoke than the fec can get out, or wind blowing just right to push the smoke back in the hopper. But with Candys setup I would think that much pipe would create enough draw to overcome
Last edited by Former Member
There were vent fans, but none were turned on. There's even dryer-type vent covers on the outside of the warehouse, which should have deflected some of the wind. General concensus around here is that the smoke stacks should have been higher than the roof to get a good draw. It was really, really windy.
Candy when I added a stack to my Fec instead of using an "EL" where the stack joins the cooker I used a "T" with a cap on the bottom. The "T" was attached to the cooker so it angled slightly down. I then placed a 1/2 hole in the cap so any accumulated moisture could drain into a small drip bucket. Robbie
Tom, I think it's unlikely that I'll make it to Lakeland this year. Hate that!!! I haven't talked to John in a good while. You can buy pellets at Grills Plus More in Lakeland for not a bad price. I think if you buy 5 10# bags you get a decent discount. They have all the flavors.

Merry Christmas!

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