Are there any issues with over heating your pit on startup?


 

Jason Abendroth

New member
When starting up your pit for a long cook it is no where near your set temp. Has anyone seen any issues with the fan and damper running 100% as it ramps up causeing a big bed of coals forming that would expell too much heat at first? Or does the damper shutting off the air flow not allow much over shooting?

Basically I'm asking if you let the pit get up close to temp prior to putting the damper on and blasting air on the coals.
 
I have a fan and controller but rarely use them. When I do--and on my first couple attempts--I recall running the fan immediately and overshooting my target temp. Then I started keeping the fan off until I reached the target temp naturally.
 
On my kamado joe, I've had some startup overshoot. I dial back the blower startup max to 50% and find that helps. How you build and start your fire also plays into it. I don't light very much to start if I'm going to let the HM bring the pit up to temp.

Something else I've done at times to avoid overshoot on startup is use a lower setpoint. So if I'm looking for 225, I'll set it for 180 and then I'll bump it to 200 and then 225
 
Initial temp is strongly affected by how many coals you start with. Too few, it will take a long time to reach and not overshoot much. Dump a whole chimney in, you might overshoot bad and take 45 min to come down.

It can be as much you as the controller. It needs a reasonable place to start.
 
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yea im my run last night it did over shoot but it came back down relatively quick and steadied out fast. Looks like i was worrying about nothing. but i think i still might only put the damper on after the temp has naturally risen to 200+.
 
I have at most 5F overshoot when I start my Big Green Egg with a microdamper set to Fan On Above 50% and Damper Fully Open At 50%. I know my Dad has an RD3 with the same big green egg and he does had overshoot of sometimes 10-15F even with a 75% startup fan speed. What he ends up doing is just setting the pit to 215F to start, then setting it to 225F when he puts the meat on.
 
I think I need to give the microdamper design a try, especially since I'm trying to do things with natural convection as much as possible.
 
@Steve M

I have been running my PBC with no fan for about 2 years now using my FlatDamper design. It works really well, though it won’t stoke the coals nearly as well as a fan based option. I’ve got lighting it down pretty well and don’t really need the HM to bring it up to temp.
 
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