Fire on initial seasoning

KarimTarabishy

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Grill
Ironwood 650
Hello, I just bought an ironwood 650 and started with the initial steps, seasoning the grill, did the 20 min on 350 then when increasing temp to 500 I started smelling very bad smell and large fire started to come out from the back of the grill… I went ahead and unplugged it. Is this something normal or what?
 
Definitely not normal but I don’t have an Ironwood. A new grill shouldn’t catch fire.
 
I would remove the grill and covers and look for anything that might have caused the fire. Maybe some packing material that wasn't removed that wasn't noticed. Just a thought, the 650 looks like a nice unit.
 
Agree here, the only logical explanation for a fire on initial burn without any food is some missed foam or cardboard etc. Nothing else it could be.
 
The Ironwood has a firepot that has a removeable flame shield and then a large drip tray over top of that.

What I would suggest you do it remove the grates and drip tray. Be careful so you do not bump the RTD thermocouple along the right side of the grill chamber that sends temperature information to the controller. I bumped mine and the ceramic coating on the thermocouple junction cracked, exposing the thermocouple junction. I repaired mine by applying a drop of high temperature red silicone.

Once the grates and druop tray are removed, look around the chamber for anything unusual. If you see any packing material that has not already burned to ash, remove it. Next remove the flame shield so you can see into the burn pot. Since you disconnected power rather than shutting down the grill in the normal shutdown sequence, there are likely to be pellets remaining in the hopper. Clean up any pellets and ash in the burn pot. A small wet/dry vacuum is ideal for this purpose.

Once the burn pot is clean, prime the auger and ignite the grill. Leave the flame shield off and the lid open so you can see and hear what is happening in the burn pot. As you prime the auger, you should hear the auger turn and hear the pellets drop into the burn pot. When you press the ignite button, the hot rod should get glowing hot and pellets should soon start to smoke. Once the fire pot is fully engulfed in flame, perform the shutdown sequence and watch as the fire burns itself out.

Once the frill is cool, replace the flame shield, drip tray (and liner if used), and grill grates. The go through the same auger priming and ignition sequence. Although Traeger says you can do this with the lid closed, I prefer to leave the lid open until smoke starts rolling from the grill. Then I close the lid and allow the grill to come up to temperature. The reason I do this is that it avoids buildup of hot gasses in the chamber. There have been a few reports of grill explosions when these hot gases are ignited. leaving the lid open is an easy way to eliminate this possibility.


I generally start with the controller set to around 225F. If I want to cook at a higher temperature, I will boost the temperature setpoint 50 degrees F at a time until I am where I want to be. Since you did not fully complete your grill seasoning process, it might be good to repeat the entire process. Hopefully, the process will complete without incident this time. Like others, I suspect some packing material might have been left in the chamber.

If you have not already done so, I highly recommend purchasing a set of 3rd party thermometers to confirm the accuracy of the Traeger thermometers. They are notoriously inaccurate.
 
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