FAIL

[FireTechMike]

I was trying my regular vodka brined salmon today, but it failed. I was cooking on “smoke” for 15 minutes then I went to turn it up to 225’. I noticed the temp was at 100’, which was unusual because “smoke” is about 180’. I turned it up anyway and it immediately started “over smoking”. A huge white cloud of smoke was billowing out everywhere. I shut it down and finished in the oven. The Traeger smoldered while we ate and when I went out to clean it up it started on fire! The entire fire pot was full of pellets and on fire. A cup of water fixed that. I think it flamed out because I hadn’t cleaned it for a couple of cooks, probably 3 or 4 hours of cooking.

 

[traeger860]

Do you start it with the lid open or closed? What kind of pellets? I would recommend vacuuming out the fire pot and getting as much out of the auger tube as possible. If you think your pellets may have gotten wet or have been sitting in the hopper for a while in a humid environment (this would be my guess as to the cause of this issue), dump whatever is in the hopper too. Then follow the Initial Firing Instructions for your grill.

Page 7: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/traeger-web-public-prod/manuals/grills/bronson-20/en/Bronson TFB29PLB MANUAL REV A 10-05-2015.pdf

 

[RayClem]

My procedure is to always prime the auger, even if i have not cleaned the fire pot. Then I ignite the grill with the lid open , even though Traeger says to close the lid. I then wait until smoke is rolling out of the grill before closing the lid.

If the grill flames out, always let the grill cool and then clean out the fire pot before you try to restart it. Otherwise, you might get a fire or even an explosion of hot gases.

 

[FireTechMike]

Do you start it with the lid open or closed? What kind of pellets? I would recommend vacuuming out the fire pot and getting as much out of the auger tube as possible. If you think your pellets may have gotten wet or have been sitting in the hopper for a while in a humid environment (this would be my guess as to the cause of this issue), dump whatever is in the hopper too. Then follow the Initial Firing Instructions for your grill.

Page 7: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/traeger-web-public-prod/manuals/grills/bronson-20/en/Bronson TFB29PLB MANUAL REV A 10-05-2015.pdf

I always start with the lid open. Once it’s smoking away I close it and set the temperature. I usually vacuum out the firepot and area after 8 hours of cooking. My pellets are Kirkland and they usually stay in the hopper because the Bronson doesn’t have a way to empty the hopper. We’ll see what happens next cook.

 

[Timmy]

I was trying my regular vodka brined salmon today, but it failed. I was cooking on “smoke” for 15 minutes then I went to turn it up to 225’. I noticed the temp was at 100’, which was unusual because “smoke” is about 180’. I turned it up anyway and it immediately started “over smoking”. A huge white cloud of smoke was billowing out everywhere. I shut it down and finished in the oven. The Traeger smoldered while we ate and when I went out to clean it up it started on fire! The entire fire pot was full of pellets and on fire. A cup of water fixed that. I think it flamed out because I hadn’t cleaned it for a couple of cooks, probably 3 or 4 hours of cooking.

I had this same problem with the Junior Elite at work. I never did figure out what happened but it got hot enough to burn the paint on the belly pan.
I cleaned it all out ran the auger to get the burnt pellets out and a good vac. There were pellets in the bottom of the belly pan so I can only assume that the fire went out, the controller called for more pellets assuming the fire pot was lit, over filled it and then it lit. The blower was blowing on high trying to make the grill hotter, when the pellets lit, major fire in the pit. This is all speculation but this is the only thing I can figure happened.