- Oct 2, 2016
- 11
- 11
Hello,
About three years ago, I bought a Green Mountain Daniel Boone grill to start my adventures in smoking. I have a great love for smoked meats and was really excited to open this new chapter in my food life. The first year, all went pretty well, and I enjoyed some great meals.
Starting with he second year, I had some problems, off and on with the Green Mountain. The pellet feeder jammed up a few times, the temp probe also failed me a few times, I once ended up with a pork roast which was literally raw inside after the temp probe told me it was done. People in various smoking forums told me that they feed mechanism wasn't the best, and that the temp probes were sometimes known to fail. Now I have yet another issue with the grill. When I last used it, I put some chicken wings on and set it to smoke them. All went well for about 20 mins, the smoker was up to temperature, and then, the temp started slowly dropping, and nothing I could do would impact it. Everything checked out, but it wouldn't work. I shut the grill off and restarted it, thinking that might help, it went through the starting sequence and then completely died. It will not restart, and is completely dead.
Now this is not intended as an indictment of Green Mountain. Though, the smoker has not been at all heavily used due to a severe concussion, and the recovery from it, that left me barely able to function for the last eighteen months. Thankfully, just in the past six weeks, I have overcome those issues and am now just about 100%.
Several people have told me that keeping the smoker outside year round may be the issue, that it is simply not good for any grills with electronics, as the Green Mountain and, I think, all pellet smokers have. My issue is that the smoker is on the deck outside my kitchen and dining room. The deck is about 100 feet from the back door of my garage. My home is in the woods, and has no grass in the yard (try growing grass successfully in the woods). It would take two strong men to carry any regular sized pellet grill from the deck to garage over the uneven, and somewhat rough woodland terrain of my back yard. And two strong men arent available. For that reason, it stays on the deck, as I smoke/grill year round. If anything, I smoe more in the fall and winter as the bugs are gone, at those times. I'm in Michigan, where the temps run from 90's at times in the summer, to -10/15 below on rare occasions in January. I do l keep the grill covered at all times except when using it, and even have a special covering to use on it when grilling in cold temps.
I'm about to write off this experiment as one where you get what you pay for, and probably invest in a RecTec which are universally highly reviewed. However, if keeping the grill outside year round isn't feasible, it may make no sense to do that. Your thoughts, and expertise would be appreciated. Thanks.
About three years ago, I bought a Green Mountain Daniel Boone grill to start my adventures in smoking. I have a great love for smoked meats and was really excited to open this new chapter in my food life. The first year, all went pretty well, and I enjoyed some great meals.
Starting with he second year, I had some problems, off and on with the Green Mountain. The pellet feeder jammed up a few times, the temp probe also failed me a few times, I once ended up with a pork roast which was literally raw inside after the temp probe told me it was done. People in various smoking forums told me that they feed mechanism wasn't the best, and that the temp probes were sometimes known to fail. Now I have yet another issue with the grill. When I last used it, I put some chicken wings on and set it to smoke them. All went well for about 20 mins, the smoker was up to temperature, and then, the temp started slowly dropping, and nothing I could do would impact it. Everything checked out, but it wouldn't work. I shut the grill off and restarted it, thinking that might help, it went through the starting sequence and then completely died. It will not restart, and is completely dead.
Now this is not intended as an indictment of Green Mountain. Though, the smoker has not been at all heavily used due to a severe concussion, and the recovery from it, that left me barely able to function for the last eighteen months. Thankfully, just in the past six weeks, I have overcome those issues and am now just about 100%.
Several people have told me that keeping the smoker outside year round may be the issue, that it is simply not good for any grills with electronics, as the Green Mountain and, I think, all pellet smokers have. My issue is that the smoker is on the deck outside my kitchen and dining room. The deck is about 100 feet from the back door of my garage. My home is in the woods, and has no grass in the yard (try growing grass successfully in the woods). It would take two strong men to carry any regular sized pellet grill from the deck to garage over the uneven, and somewhat rough woodland terrain of my back yard. And two strong men arent available. For that reason, it stays on the deck, as I smoke/grill year round. If anything, I smoe more in the fall and winter as the bugs are gone, at those times. I'm in Michigan, where the temps run from 90's at times in the summer, to -10/15 below on rare occasions in January. I do l keep the grill covered at all times except when using it, and even have a special covering to use on it when grilling in cold temps.
I'm about to write off this experiment as one where you get what you pay for, and probably invest in a RecTec which are universally highly reviewed. However, if keeping the grill outside year round isn't feasible, it may make no sense to do that. Your thoughts, and expertise would be appreciated. Thanks.