When I shut down my Camp Chef Woodwind Pro tonight, a load of acrid smoke billowed out of the pellet hopper for about 20 minutes. I emptied the hopper as much as possible in case it was catching fire, but I think it was just smoke coming from the combustion chamber, rather than a hopper fire.
It’s never done it before, any idea what’s going on?
by MossBoss3000
7 Comments
I was getting that. I’ve started leaving the lid open and I lower the temp to about half for 5 minutes before I put into shutdown. It seems to work.
Try letting it cool to 225-250 before shutdown. I’ve heard of this at higher temp to shutdown.
The fire is getting into the auger. Just put it on feed for a minute or so to run those smoking pellets out of the auger.
Happened to me as well. I opened the vents to give the smoke an alternate way to escape, emptied the hopper, opened the ash cleanout and set the auger to “feed”. Smoldering pellets fell out into the ash cup.
It looks like it may have been windy, with the hopper open, could that just have been a backdraft? The pellets burning off properly, but a draft pushing the smoke backwards?
I’ve seen a less smoke version of that on my Mak, closed the hopper lid and turned the grill against the wind a little and it stopped. I had the grill lid open too, might have been too windy for that in my case.
This happened to me when using Knotty Wood. There was a large chunk of pellet debris in the burn pot causing fire to back up into the auger. Empty your burn pot/ash pot. Feed your auger for a minute or so and make sure you don’t have a lot of ash hips up. Easy fix but could be a big problem if ignored
My pit boss portable is notorious for this! It can be a multi-step shut down process. Tip #1: DO NOT UNPLUG IT!! Take your time and step it down bit by bit. Sorry I don’t know this unit, but if it has a sear plate that you can open to look into the fire pot, try to see if the flames are contacting the auger. This will cause the pellets in the auger to ignite. I found just manually running them in until the flame does down does the trick.
Like I said, my pit boss did this almost every time I used it until I figured out how to do it.