I went out today and bought a fire extinguisher, $22 at Walmart. I have read some posts on pelletheads.com of members having grease fires or from over feeding pellets. Since my Traeger is on a 6X6 covered wood deck I thought this would be a wise investment.
Lowes had one for $17, good for 6 yrs., disposable. I found this one at Walmart for $22, rated "A B C",good for 10 yrs. And it’s re chargeable. Any extinguisher you buy for your pellet grill should be rated "A B C".
I had one incident where I was cooling my smoker on smoke mode after a high heat cook and forgot about it. When I remembered it and checked it was still running but cold and checking the pellet bin saw it was empty. I figured it had simply run out of pellets. The next day I fired up the smoker for another cook, then went inside. When I went back out it was at 375 deg.; I knew this was too hot for smoke mode! I opened the lid, mistake. The extra air fueled the fire. I dropped the lid and made a smarter move; I shut it off and waited until the fire died down.
When it was cool enough, I checked and there were pellets around the fire pot. The night before what had happened was; by the design of Traeger’s pellet hopper it stopped feeding long enough for the fire to go out and then fed more pellets until the hopper was empty. That was enough to fill the fire pot and run over. If I hadn’t been there to check I might have had a huge fire. My rule now is after any flame out check the fire pot before re starting.
Another good rule is; do not leave your smoker plugged in. One pellethead member wrote his had started by it’s self and had a close call. I would say that was from a controller malfunction.
If you don’t have a fire extinguisher go get one; I think it is a must have safety item. For those who have or use their smokers near combustible material or enclosed you might want to rethink about leaving your smoker unattended for very long.
My fire extinguisher
Smokin Don
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