I'll add my two cents. Just bought one a few weeks pased run approx 8 bags of pellets though it haveing hot smoked salmon, beef, poor ribs, actually a fair few ribs, lots of chicken. In all it's Ben an ok machine. But it ,issued on aspect not doing a little better research. They advertise that the unit shou,d be able to run I th 180 which is much higher than I like but figured they would be running it on a pic so should b able to get help getting to down to some slow and low cooking range. Being unable to get the machine to operate in advertised range I contacted Louisiana Grills Tim discuss this with them. They recom need I adjusted a few setting whil it was running which weren't effective and and when asked what they do she advised she wasn't sure.
My second respond was received is that they are "hot cookers" and so to exspect tempatures 25 - 30 above their operation guildlines is to be expected. And she suggested that ai simply open the doir to let the excess heat out. Worked for about 6 min until the grill realized the change and add apped the tempatur back up to the250 range despite the fact that's ai had it at 180 but on the prob set to 130 which according to their manaual should drop I think to 160.
I'm going to call back tomorrow after working hard not drying out a chicken back halfs we were trying to slow down so as not to dry them out. Don't get me wrong ai think the unite we'll built but there is something that need to be looked at within the programming of the unit.
I was sold on the unit over the grilling feature which ai have to admit it must be closely watch not to over cook your meat. They suggested at the shop in picked up mine at to bring there girl up to 600 to use the grill part. Did that once I've now dropped it to 400 and watch it closely over ross crisp steaks.
I'm going to call against o see if I can slow this heat on this unit down I may move the thermocouple closer to the flame box and work off that tempature and otherwise I think I'll be replacing the included controller and replace it with a one of my open source pic my controller.
If interested I picked up one of the 1100 units.
Randy Ross