I bought a 5-rack Pit Boss vertical pellet smoker 2 days ago and have started to get the ErL errors. The smoker design is pretty nice so I'm going to work with it a while before I give up. What I have noticed so far is that the error appears to happen when there is a rapid temperature changes especially up around 300F. This is problematic when you are following the instructions to pre-heat or do a burn-off after a smoke. If I adjust the temperature settings one notch at a time during heat-up, the problems seems to be less frequent. Also, I think going from high-heat to 'smoking' all at once is problematic as well since the auger appears to dump a few extra pellets into the pot (for smoke) and the flames/temp go up for a while.
At first blush, this definitely appears to be a temperature probe/circuit induced error. The probes could be shorting out or the sensor circuit get confused when there are rapid changes at high temp. If I remember correctly, the resistance in the probes goes down as the temperature rises. So the voltage fluctuations in the circuit will be more pronounced at higher temperatures. Perhaps the sample rate on the temperature circuit needs to be adjusted (are you reading this Pit Boss engineers)?
Next steps for me are to:
1) replace the temp probe (ordered from
Amazon)
2) build a metal heat shield to surround the new probe (try and dampen the rate of temp change)
3) limit the rate of temp change by not turning the knob too fast
4) vacuum the bottom and burn pot after each use
I successfully smoked a pork butt overnight (10 hours) at 225F after experiencing an ErL error the day before. So, I think the smoker is probably OK in general.
I will post an update and pictures of the heat shield if anyone is interested. But it could be a few weeks.