My FEC100 is about 4 years old now. Just a reminder to anyone that has added a "chimney & cap" to their FEC100 to clean it of excess creosote to keep the airflow moving better. On mine I added a 5" elbow with about 2 feet of 5" galv duct pipe topped off with a 5" Vac-U-Stack cap connected to the factory 5" exhaust pipe. I wanted to keep wind from blowing back into smoker, direct exhaust smoke up, plus keep rain out of smoker.
Notice recently that smoke patterns had changed, especially when smoker was ramping-up to get back to its set temp. Putting out large billowing clouds of smoke - much much more than usual. I do the normal periodic maintenance of cleaning hopper of sawdust build-up plus clean the ash from end of firepot plenum.
Cleaning the chimney pipe with a chimney brush and then soaking the cap in water with automatic dishwashing soap for about a day made things like new again. My smoke patterns are now back to normal again. Just small clouds of smoke when starting the ramp-up cycle. So now I won't worry about the neighbors calling the fire department thinking my house is on fire due to that much smoke billowing around!!
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