Fan mounting location on Weber One Touch Kettle


 

Brent Cooley

TVWBB Member
Hey everyone!

I'm starting to gather ideas on how to hook up a heatermeter fan to a Weber kettle grill with the one-touch system. I've seen a variety of ideas online for the PartyQ and Stoker ATC units. I've also seen a few ideas in this forum. My main question is more about where in the kettle to put a hole to attach the fan rather than how to physically attach it to the outside. I'm pretty set with either a dog bowl-type physical connection or a 3/4" copper connection that I've seen for other cookers in this forum.

In PartyQ/Stoker type installations with a Weber kettle, I've seen:
Some people drill the fan hole above the charcoal grate.
Some others drill the fan hole below the charcoal grate.
Sometimes there is a small deflector on the inside of the hole to direct the air downward.

I imagine a hole under the charcoal grate would be best to support airflow to the coals. But, then again, that's only a few inches above where ash lands at the bottom of the kettle. I'd like to still be able to use the one touch cleaning fins which come within an inch or two of the bottom of the charcoal grate.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best hole placement on this type of kettle?

P.S. I do indirect cooking 100% of the time with either a minion/banked method on one end or a snake most of the way around.
 
I installed a blower on my performer which is a 22 inch kettle and it didn't work very well. I think it's because the kettle is so small compared to a smoker. The problem was that as soon as the blower kicked on it rapidly filled the kettle with cool air causing the temp to rapidly drop, the more it dropped the stronger the fan would run causing the temp to drop even further resulting in ultimately a huge spike in temp with over stoked coals. I went as far as setting the fan to 5% max but still had the same problem. Just for your info I made a contraption that attached the fan to the performers burner tube which put the air below the coals. I would certainly like to hear of someones success in this as I think it would be nice to control a kettle. My experience was that any kind of forced air is too much for a kettle and to make a purely draft system on a one touch kettle would require a large hole I'm not willing to drill. Not sure how anyone has managed success with PartyQ/Stoker installations but maybe they have. I also have a Stoker and its fan runs full speed when on, it controls air by cycling the fan on and off, maybe that would be better than a variable speed fan for this application. Good Luck, keep us posted!




Hey everyone!

I'm starting to gather ideas on how to hook up a heatermeter fan to a Weber kettle grill with the one-touch system. I've seen a variety of ideas online for the PartyQ and Stoker ATC units. I've also seen a few ideas in this forum. My main question is more about where in the kettle to put a hole to attach the fan rather than how to physically attach it to the outside. I'm pretty set with either a dog bowl-type physical connection or a 3/4" copper connection that I've seen for other cookers in this forum.

In PartyQ/Stoker type installations with a Weber kettle, I've seen:
Some people drill the fan hole above the charcoal grate.
Some others drill the fan hole below the charcoal grate.
Sometimes there is a small deflector on the inside of the hole to direct the air downward.

I imagine a hole under the charcoal grate would be best to support airflow to the coals. But, then again, that's only a few inches above where ash lands at the bottom of the kettle. I'd like to still be able to use the one touch cleaning fins which come within an inch or two of the bottom of the charcoal grate.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best hole placement on this type of kettle?

P.S. I do indirect cooking 100% of the time with either a minion/banked method on one end or a snake most of the way around.
 
Well that's disappointing! I've scoured the Internet and found many people posting about using an ATC device on a kettle. I can only assume they were telling the truth. In fact, I found a good write up about a PartyQ on a Performer. I'll find the link and post it later for you.

Perhaps a fan with smaller cfm output is needed than the standard one listed for HM builds.
 
Here's the link that (toward the end) was specifically about someone's experience with the PartyQ and a Performer. Granted, the web site is not exactly a BBQ web site, but the writer seems to know what he's doing. He also references another BBQ info site (that will remain nameless here) that has a top rating of the PartyQ specifically on a weber kettle.

A search on youtube nets several hits for PartyQ kettle, Stoker kettle, or ique kettle. The PartyQ has a 6.5 cfm fan (same as the standard HM unit) and the ique has 5-15 variable cfm. So there has to be a way!!

With a quick calculation, a 22" kettle has roughly 3 cubic feet of air so I can easily see if a 6 cfm fan runs for 30 seconds, all the air will have been replaced. But, I imagine the HM or other ATC units would only do short bursts. But, your post describes otherwise.

Perhaps Bryan or someone else with more experience could chime in on the subject.

P.S. In the link above, the author drilled the PartyQ fan hole just above the charcoal grate with the deflector pointed down (see the pics in the article).
 
I think you are right that a much lower cfm blower should work. The recommended HM blower even at 5% was too much. Sounds like the partyQ works like the Stoker in that it pulses the fan to control temp, that may be the way to go with a kettle.

Dan



Here's the link that (toward the end) was specifically about someone's experience with the PartyQ and a Performer. Granted, the web site is not exactly a BBQ web site, but the writer seems to know what he's doing. He also references another BBQ info site (that will remain nameless here) that has a top rating of the PartyQ specifically on a weber kettle.

A search on youtube nets several hits for PartyQ kettle, Stoker kettle, or ique kettle. The PartyQ has a 6.5 cfm fan (same as the standard HM unit) and the ique has 5-15 variable cfm. So there has to be a way!!

With a quick calculation, a 22" kettle has roughly 3 cubic feet of air so I can easily see if a 6 cfm fan runs for 30 seconds, all the air will have been replaced. But, I imagine the HM or other ATC units would only do short bursts. But, your post describes otherwise.

Perhaps Bryan or someone else with more experience could chime in on the subject.

P.S. In the link above, the author drilled the PartyQ fan hole just above the charcoal grate with the deflector pointed down (see the pics in the article).
 
I can't speak for how it works but it only has 6V worth of batteries in there soooo does it have a boost circuit or use a 5V fan? It must do some sort of throttling because 4x AA batteries boosted to 12V will give you roughly 1A for an hour (best case) or run our blower at 50% for maybe 4 hours?
 
I'm not sure either how the PartyQ works in that regard. I've read of people using it for pork shoulder cooks (ie. 10-12 hours) on a single set of batteries. But, that may be on a smaller smoker/grill like a kettle and thus the amount of fan time is not 100%.

Can you comment on Dan's issue above with his HM blowing so much cold air in his kettle that it turned into a self-defeating situation? Have you ever seen that behavior before on any charcoal grill/smoker? Even with a larger cooker than a kettle, I could see the same "cold air replacement" happening after the fan runs for a minute or minute and a half.

I'm thinking a damper partially closed or simply a smaller volume fan might help his (and maybe my eventual) situation. But never having used any ATC units, let alone a HM, I can only guess the outcome.
 
I can see the cooling effect happening, I mean it logically makes sense. I don't have any practical experience with it because if I open my top vent and let the blower go 100%, my Big Green Egg will keep getting hotter and hotter until it eventually reaches the point that there's not enough oxygen to go any hotter (500F ballpark). That might have more do do with the shape of the grill than the CFM?
 
I just want to be clear that this is not an issue on any smoker I have used (or any other smoker for that matter) the Heatermeter on. It works perfectly on my WSM and Green Egg. One reason I just thought of that may be a factor in the kettle is that I had coals on each side of the kettle with a drip pan in the middle. The Egg and WSM have a solid layer of coals across the bottom and all air must pass through the coals. I don't know how you can do an indirect on a kettle with coals covering the whole bottom grate. So this combined with the small volume may be the issue.

Edit: Looking at the link you posted I see he has the blower above the coals with a deflector facing down towards the coals. If you have your coals directly below the deflector all the air will be used to fan the coals. Might be why it works for him.


I'm not sure either how the PartyQ works in that regard. I've read of people using it for pork shoulder cooks (ie. 10-12 hours) on a single set of batteries. But, that may be on a smaller smoker/grill like a kettle and thus the amount of fan time is not 100%.

Can you comment on Dan's issue above with his HM blowing so much cold air in his kettle that it turned into a self-defeating situation? Have you ever seen that behavior before on any charcoal grill/smoker? Even with a larger cooker than a kettle, I could see the same "cold air replacement" happening after the fan runs for a minute or minute and a half.

I'm thinking a damper partially closed or simply a smaller volume fan might help his (and maybe my eventual) situation. But never having used any ATC units, let alone a HM, I can only guess the outcome.
 
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I'm awaiting parts for a HM 4.1 build to use on my 22-inch One-Touch Gold, so I'm keenly interested in this issue.

I may be uninformed on the concepts involved, but would it work to simply make a smaller hole for, or use a screen over, the air intake to limit the maximum airflow?

Would that overload the fan? If so, how about some sort of flapper valve on the air connection to let the excess air out while preventing backwards flow?
 
If pushing air through a weber kettle with a blower causes a cooling problem perhaps try running with a servo damper instead of a blower?
 
I've built a combination servo damper and ball valve "system". Unfortunately, I've yet to been able to try it since the winter just won't end, and it's not the sort of experiment I'd want to try in conjunction with winter cold and wind.

My current plan once I can get to drilling the hole in the kettle and mounting it is to put the servo into full open/close mode and adjust the inline ball valve to "throttle down" the flow, even after setting a lower fan max in the HM. In "bench testing", the ball valve does a great job in reducing the maximum volume of air that comes out the end. The valve may not actually be needed, but it's easy to take off since it's just a 1/2" threaded connection.

When closing the valve ~75%, the fan does work harder since the static pressure increases. I wouldn't expect that this would be a major longevity issue. Even if it reduced the lifespan of the fan to a "cooking season", they're only $10. If it were to conk out, I'd probably get one with smaller airflow output. Digikey has similar ones in the 2.5-3cfm range.

I don't have any pictures of my contraption right now since I hadn't planned on sharing it until I had some results to go along with it. If you'd like, for "inspiration", I could take a few and post them.

I'm awaiting parts for a HM 4.1 build to use on my 22-inch One-Touch Gold, so I'm keenly interested in this issue.

I may be uninformed on the concepts involved, but would it work to simply make a smaller hole for, or use a screen over, the air intake to limit the maximum airflow?

Would that overload the fan? If so, how about some sort of flapper valve on the air connection to let the excess air out while preventing backwards flow?
 
Well, TBHWY that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me Brent...
A servo valve does pretty much the same job as a ball valve, except it is automatically controlled by the Heater Meter, so you shouldn't really need a ball valve. I was suggesting to use a servo valve operating the full range of motion (not open/closed mode) and either not use a blower at all, or set the blower to run at "Max Only". This would essentially give you an automatically controlled ball valve or grill vent and eliminate the forced air from the blower. That said, you'll have to make sure to seal off your pit well, make sure the existing vents aren't leaking and the lid is sealing well enough to prevent a bunch of air from seeping in. The idea is to make sure as much of the air that is feeding the fire comes through the servo valve as possible so it is able to control the fire.
 
Well that would seem like a reasonable plan (no blower), given that my grill would have no trouble getting too hot on its own with open vents. I guess one worry would be lag in temp adjustment -- would temperature be as responsive to damper opening as to forced air intake? But also, and this is where I'm pretty ignorant of the system, is the HM's logic tuned to a damper-only intake, or would it over or under compensate for temperature fluctuations? Does it work by varying fan speed or by shutting fan on and off?


Well, TBHWY that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me Brent...
A servo valve does pretty much the same job as a ball valve, except it is automatically controlled by the Heater Meter, so you shouldn't really need a ball valve. I was suggesting to use a servo valve operating the full range of motion (not open/closed mode) and either not use a blower at all, or set the blower to run at "Max Only". This would essentially give you an automatically controlled ball valve or grill vent and eliminate the forced air from the blower. That said, you'll have to make sure to seal off your pit well, make sure the existing vents aren't leaking and the lid is sealing well enough to prevent a bunch of air from seeping in. The idea is to make sure as much of the air that is feeding the fire comes through the servo valve as possible so it is able to control the fire.
 
I use the HM all the time with the blower off (blower on at Max Only, servo damper operating full range), it works fine, great actually. This is my preferred method of operation for low and slow cooks. The only "lag" you may experience is during the initial fire up of the grill, the blower will definitely stoke the pit up to temp faster than natural draft (that is why I set the blower to "on at Max only", so it will stoke the fire faster then turn off when the pit temp starts to rise), although fast stoking of the fire during light-up may also lead to initial overshoot depending on your setup. Like you said, your kettle is perfectly capable of stoking itself with natural convection, the servo damper will control amount of convection air that can be drawn. IMHO natural convection controlled by a servo damper is the best way to run low and slow cooks.

PS As for HM logic and tuning, that is what the PID settings are for. You can adjust how the HM operates by altering the PID values, however, in my experience it works just fine without too much PID tweaking.
 
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Does it work by varying fan speed or by shutting fan on and off?

The HM varies the speed of the blower, it does not simply turn it on and off at full speed. There is a TON of flexibility in the way the HM operates thanks to Bryans hard work and lots of feedback and experimentation by forum members, so the rules of operation are not hard and fast. To generalize, if the HM decides it needs 50% air flow the blower will blow at 50% of top speed, if you are using a servo damper the damper will be 50% open...

You can also set the blower to be "on at Max Only" which will turn on the blower only when the HM decides it needs 100% air flow (the fan will blow full speed, or at whatever speed you have set for blower MAX). This is my preferred setting for low and slow cooking, the blower will aid in the initial warm up of the grill, and will help recover temperatures faster after lid opening, the rest of the time the servo damper will control the air flow by opening however wide it needs to be to achieve the target temp.

Conversely, you can set the servo damper to run "fully open/closed only", which will set the servo valve fully open when the blower speed is anything above zero, and fully closed when the blower speed is zero. This is my preferred setup for higher temperature cooks. The blower will run all the time at variable speed providing lots of air flow to stoke the pit to higher temperatures, the servo damper will only close down when the pit temperature is higher than the setpoint which prevents runaway temperatures.
 
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Thanks for the info, Ralph. I've spent the past half hour looking at servo threads. Another basic question:

Is the servo damper supported in the basic 4.1 hardware configuration, or do I need to do something special/undocumented during assembly? Is there a place on the board to solder either servo wires or a jack to?
 
I can chime in here. I use my HM v4 with my 22" kettle / smokenator combo frequently. I drilled a 3/4" hole directly under the coal chamber of the smokenator and plugged in the fan with a copper tube. PID settings fiddling and max blower output at around 15% and it works like a charm. I've kind of wanted to do a little more interesting stuff like pump the fan into something like this:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/SharkBite-3-4-in-Barb-x-3-4-in-Barb-Copper-Manifold-with-3-1-2-in-Barbs-22784/202721983

I haven't had time for that because the WSM has been getting most of the winter action.

However, you should also look at the "air burners" that folks have come up with. You pretty much have to drill a hole in the kettles no matter what because the ash-catcher mechanism prevents a lot of the dog bowl solutions from working.
 

 

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