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I;ve seen mention of it here before, but i just got my 009 tonight, plugged it in to season, and after about 10 mins it tripped the gfi. Switched to another outlet, same thing. Is this common, and what do i do? I'm not an electrictian and i didnt stay at a holiday inn express last night, so i need some help! thanks.
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I'm a builder, not an electrician, but the 009 only pulls 10 amps max and there are only two things that will cause a GFI breaker to trip: overload, i.e. too much current draw, and a short circuit, i.e. a wire somewhere in the 009 is touching something it should not touch.

Unless you have other things running on same circuit that are pushing current over breaker limit, it is likey reason #2. Do call CS. This is potentially serious.

Do you have a frigge or freezer on the same circuit? A lot of times electricians will wire an unfinished basement to an outside electrical outlet, since both require a GFI circuit. The fact your breaker didn't trip immediately makes me think it might be the compressor on a freezer cutting in that is actually tripping the breaker.

Good luck.
thanks for the welcome - no, i have nothing else running on it. in fact, i have 2 seperate breaker boxes, one in the basement and one in my detached garage, and i tried the 009 on both, same results. i'm not running anything else out of the ordinary in the house (no freezers or anything) and nothing in the garage.
Hi Chris,

Sorry that your 009 is tripping your GFI breaker. This is not a common problem, however it does happen from time to time. It is caused by the heating element leaking a little voltage to ground. We will need to send you a replacement element. Give Tony a call on Monday morning and he can get you taken care of.

Thanks and once again sorry for the problem.
It's pretty easy to replace and if it doesn't come with instructions, and you're mechanically inclined, it's still easy.

You'll need to take the back of the smoker off to get access to the Heating element bolts (if I remember right, I haven't worked one of those in about 5 year)

Russ
I had a similar problem with my model 50. It would trip one GFI after about a minute. It has been working fine however on another GFI which is the same model. Neither circuit has other appliances. Even my electrician said it was weird. He replaced the first GFI but I actually like the current location better for now so have not hauled the model 50 back to the original yet.
I just got my new smokette last night and had the same problem - I think it was about 10 minutes before it tripped. There may be a grounding issue with the heating element but in my opinion those GFI's are junk. We just moved into a new building where I work about a year ago and we've had nothing but problems with the GFI's. We're fighting them all the time.

I moved it to another outlet and everything's fine. I would never trust a GFI on anything I couldn't sit and watch which is precisely why I bought the Smokette.
I too had a GFCI problem. I used 2 different GFCI outlets and my Smokette tripped both of them. Being curious, I took the back off my unit. The wires were stranded. One single strand had not been crimped into the butt splice. I suppose that the one single strand had been touching the back of the unit. I taped the wire and replaced the back and all is fine now.

My SM045 was tripping my patio GFCI outlet since day one. It trips after about 5-6 minutes of use. So I just plugged into another internal receptacle with extension and it has worked fine since. Today I tried again and same thing, after 6 minutes the GFCI trips. So I tried running an extension to another GFCI circuit in one bathroom and it worked just fine, no tripping. So I am pretty sure I have bad GFCI on my patio circuit. I'll replace it. It is rather new too so seems odd, but these things do happen.

So I did a bit of trouble shooting. The SM045 has a 750w heating element. In my outdoor patio outlet the GFCI trips after exactly 6 minutes, so it is a timing issue, long term. I plugged it into a different GFCI via an extension cord and it worked just fine, no tripping. The same GFCI that is tripping is where my wife also plugs in her 2,000w hair dryer and she can run that beast for over an hour, no tripping. I suspect I have a bad wiring out to my patio as this makes no sense to me. I have an electrician coming over and will ask he investigate. A neighbor of mine said he had exactly the same problem, same wiring scheme with out door patio outlet connected to the master bath GFCI, same tripping on his Traeger. Electrician fixed it. Said all the house in my area were built by same builder and most likely all have similar issue.

I contacted CS and they at first suggested my element was leaking and may be bad, but after it worked just fine in another GFCI we concluded it was something to do with that circuit/outlet.  Need an electrician to fix.

I had a similar experience in my old house. I did the same thing as the original writer, bypassing the outdoor receptacle with an extension cord into the kitchen. That worked.  Electrician replaced the GFCI but the problem recurred after about a year. He then said he had heard that humidity built up inside the smoker might be the cause. I tried airing out the smoker for about an hour before using. That seemed to solve the problem.

However, I moved to a new house 4-5 years ago and have never encountered the same problem. I’m still in the Northeast so no real difference in climate conditions. Go figure.

Tom

@TomSCT posted:

I had a similar experience in my old house. I did the same thing as the original writer, bypassing the outdoor receptacle with an extension cord into the kitchen. That worked.  Electrician replaced the GFCI but the problem recurred after about a year. He then said he had heard that humidity built up inside the smoker might be the cause. I tried airing out the smoker for about an hour before using. That seemed to solve the problem.

However, I moved to a new house 4-5 years ago and have never encountered the same problem. I’m still in the Northeast so no real difference in climate conditions. Go figure.

Tom

To be clear I'm not bypassing the GFCI, just connecting to a different one via an extension cord. I tried it in two other GFCI outlets and in both cases the smoker worked fine. It is just the one GFCI in my Patio that keeps tripping after 6 minutes. So my conclusion is there must be an issue with that GFCI or that receptacle, nothing is wrong with the smoker. I'll post when my electrician resolves it.

I recently purchased the SM025. I had the same problem.  The unit would trip the CFI after about 5 minutes. I eventually plugged the unit into an outlet with a 30 amp fuse and CFI. I wasa able to do the complete 'burn in' on that outlet with zero problems.

The next morning I plugged the unit back into the patio outlet wich is 20 amps.  I have had no problems since and have done 5 cooks in it. 

I contacted CookShack and explained what I experienced. The response was that humidity can cause this problem.  I live in the Pacific Northwest about 50 miles south of Seattle.  There is little humidity here and besides the problem was right after unpacking the unit.  Perhaps it was humidity that got into and condensed after  the manufacturing was completed.  That is a guess.  Either way, all good now and very happy with the unit.

  Good luck!

GFI receptacles now come in an outdoor rated version, so if anyone has a problem in the future make sure you use the outdoor rated version. They are easy to replace, just turn off the power and pay attention to which wires are going into the live vs load terminals. If you get it wrong, it does not damage anything, it just will not work.

I would usually replace the cover at the same time, my favorite in use cover is by Eaton/Cooper.

@oldsarge posted:

Excessive humidity can indeed be a problem. Glad your problem is fixed.

I’ve read that as well. had a new line put in just for the patio and still happened. Now I open the Amerique door to let it “air out” for a bit first and seems to take away the issue. Cookshack needs an engineer to redesign something to make these problems go away as it seems to be a design flaw.

I feel that I have to defend the product.

Yes, I had this problem through two changes of GFCI units.

Yes, the problem seemed to resolve when I followed my electrician's suggestion re humidity and "aired out" the unit for an hour before lighting off.

BUT, in the 4+ years since I moved into my new house the problem has not recurred.

I have owned my SM-45 for over ten years. It sits outside under a canvas cover through all kinds of New England weather and, except for a handful of instances of this problem, it has been 100% reliable.

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