Anyone have a fix for the smoke coming out of the hopper instead of grill?? I just started using my Recteq after several months of not using it, and it started having this issue.
I cleaned it out really well this morning with a leaf blower and vacuum, put brand new pellets in it, and it still has the issue. The smoke was coming out the correct spot for like the first 20 minutes, but now it’s coming out of the hopper again…..
by steven_d5
9 Comments
Could be burn back. Have you messed with your minimum feed rate? That happened to me after lowering it too much. I shut down the grill then got all the pellets out of the hopper. Ran an auger test to push out all the burnt pellets. Refilled and upped the feed rate and luckily haven’t had another issue.
When this happens, open the lid to the smoker and that should pull the smoke out the proper way. It’s burning back towards the hopper so you need to keep the fire moving in the correct direction.
Burning pellets back up the auger towards the hopper.
This is from not cleaning the burn pot out. Ash has built up in the pot up to the level of the auger allowing fire to burn back into the auger.
Shut down the pit and unplug it so it immediately stops the fan. Let it cool and clean the burn pot. If you keep running it with that happening, you’ll end up with fire in the hopper and that will ruin your units electronics from the heat.
Careful! Your plastic fan is likely melted or melting and that smoke is going to your food. I have been pretty vocal about my previous RecTeq’s — never again. I’ve got a Pitts and Spitts — can’t even compare the build quality. Granted they cost a lot more, but given you’ll be replacing yours numerous times, you’ll spend as much as I did on my P&S.
Why do people buy this garbage? Only thing I ever hear about RT is “they have great customer service” like that is supposed to be a selling point.
This happened to me last month on my RT-590. Fan, augur, burn pot, and everything else seemed fine. Checked the back of my unit and soot had completely blocked the smoke outlet vents on the back of the cooking chamber. Only place for smoke to escape was back up through the pellet hopper. I scraped the soot out of the vents and the unit was back to normal.
On my camp chef, it was an airflow issue. I embarrassingly let the louvers that the smoke was supposed to come out of on the back of the grill get clogged.
I get this every so often, these recteqs dont have the little side chimney stack so the smoke exits through the vents in the back. They’re likely clogged so check that. Grab a flat head or in my case, a paint scraper and just clean them out if they are clogged.
Several owners have said this happens when the louvered exhaust vents get clogged with soot/creosote. If this is the case, this seems to be somewhat of a weak design point. Why did RT move away from the normal stack design that has been prevalent and successful in every other make and model??