forced air chimney?


 
C

Carl H.

TVWBB Super Fan
After procrastinating the start of tonight's chicken cook, I wanted to speed up the charcoal lighting process. About 30 seconds of air blown up into the bottom of the chimney saved about 15 minutes.

Admittedly, the 1.5 hp Shopvac handheld was overpowered for the job and the shower of sparks was truly epic. But there is clearly potential here. Surely someone must have thought of this before. Is there a more refined approach out there?
 
years ago my dad owned an amusement park kiddie train - an actual steam locomotive that pulled kids around a loop in the park on 12" tracks. When we fired up the locomotive, we had this thing that had someone had rigged up years before. It was basically an old vacuum cleaner motor with a coffee can attached to the intake end. We'd plug that into the smokestack once we got the fire going in the firebox, plug it in and flip the switch. That sucked air in through the fire box door creating a tremendous draft, accelerating the fire 'til the fuel was glowing hot and roaring.

On the locomotive, the smokestack was about 5- 6' away from the firebox and not right on top of the fire. And those old vacuum motors were all metal.

I know some guys use a weed burner. Probably a much better idea than the vacuum cleaner rig.
 
I use my Stihl leaf blower on idle when I need to get the coals going. Iv'e used it for the chimney, WSM, and the grills, works great.
 
i have successfully used a tall glass of Tanqueray and Tonic to help get my charcoal going.
step one) simply fill the glass to it's very top and sit back until it's gone.
step two) refill if necessary.
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Jim, with your refined tastes I would have thought you'd be a Hendricks Gin Man. Oh who am I kidding, I have a handle of Beefeater here right now.
 
I second the Tanq and Tonic!!! I light my chimney on the gasser side burner so if I'm in a hurry I let the burner go 8 min rather than the usual 3 to get it going.
 
I have used a hair dryer many times. If you try it, plan on retiring it from actually drying hair. It will smell like smoke, no matter how far you hold it from the fire. An old dryer is a nice thing to keep around in case of emergency need of quick fire.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chris E:
I second the Tanq and Tonic!!! I light my chimney on the gasser side burner so if I'm in a hurry I let the burner go 8 min rather than the usual 3 to get it going. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>I do something similar, though with a burner for a fish/turkey fryer. Just set the chimney on it, light the case and turn it all the way up. 3 min is usually sufficient to get it started well; 8 would be very fast and I would be afraid might actually start to melt the bottom grate of the chimney.
 
Over the winter I was playing with a new smoking apparatus on my kettle and had a hard time getting it hot enough on that cold day so I busted out the hair dryer. Never seen the sides of a kettle glowing before
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I suppose that if someone here was handy with metal-fab or an HVAC "tinner" - you could do something similar to the following:

Make a base that your chimney starter would sit on, with a right-angle at the bottom.

Adapt a computer muffin-fan to blow air into the bottom of the base, from the side (so that sparks do not fall into the fan). I would try to source an all-metal, low-voltage fan, and use a small plug-in adapter to power the fan.
this low-speed, high-volume fan would probably work better than a higher-speed airflow.
 
I never very often get in a hurry but I have a few times fired up my air compressor and used a blower on lower presure to get things moving ! Man if its night time the fire show is amazing
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I forgot to lower the presure one night and hit it with 120 psi man that got interesting quick
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Another case of poor planning led to a second, even more interesting experiment. Weber chimney full of lump. Torn charcoal bags in the bottom (the news is too depressing these days). Added a 2-foot length of 8-inch chimney flue pipe to the top of the Weber chimney.

The results were truly impressive. The thing started out normally but once the air flow was established it just kept building and building. Flames were coming out the top of the flue in about 5 minutes
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and I was grilling in less than 10.

Who needs a gasser?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jim Lampe:
i have successfully used a tall glass of Tanqueray and Tonic to help get my charcoal going.
step one) simply fill the glass to it's very top and sit back until it's gone.
step two) refill if necessary.
icon_biggrin.gif
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm trying, Jim, really I am.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jon Duttweiler:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chris E:
I second the Tanq and Tonic!!! I light my chimney on the gasser side burner so if I'm in a hurry I let the burner go 8 min rather than the usual 3 to get it going. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>I do something similar, though with a burner for a fish/turkey fryer. Just set the chimney on it, light the case and turn it all the way up. 3 min is usually sufficient to get it started well; 8 would be very fast and I would be afraid might actually start to melt the bottom grate of the chimney. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yup. I've done the gas assist thing more than once.

A couple other things I've used to blow the coals:

electric fan
hairdryer
raft inflator (real cool cause mine is rechargeable)
old golf shaft (works great when camping cause it doubles as a fire poker)
 
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