Grease fire -- what did I do ?


 
Lynn Dollar

Lynn Dollar

TVWBB Emerald Member
I'm a WSM/Kettle guy, but last year I found an E310 on sale at Home Depot for $300. I've only used it for burgers, mostly.

Was heating it up last night, for smash burgers. Had all three burners on high, temp gauge was near 600 and rising. And I had a grease fire somewhere around or under the flavorizer bars. It was not in the small aluminum grease trap. I shut it down and it eventually burned out.

Sooo, what did I do wrong ? Is there any damage to my E310 ? I'm a newby with gassers.
 
You may have warped the fire box as they are not nearly as well made on those as in the past. What you did wrong is you did not CLEAN the grill. Cleaning is more than just brushing crud off the grates
 
I doubt you warped the fire box, but possible. These grills are designed to get up to 600. But Larry is right that you need to clean it more often. I had a grease fire in my Geneis 1000 two nights ago as well. I took that as a hint that it needed cleaning and it did.

Just clean it out, scrape out the fire box, clean off the heat sheilds and flavorizer bars and change out the disposable aluminum drip pan with a new one. Then fire it back up and throw on some more meat. By the way, cooking meat like burgers that are high in fat will require cleaning more often than if you are just cooking Sirloin steaks and skinless chicken breasts. And the best thing to do is clean it out regularly instead of waiting for another flare up to remind you. It shouldn't take long and it doesn't have to look new when you are done, just remove the excess grease.
 
Bruce said:
I doubt you warped the fire box, but possible. These grills are designed to get up to 600. But Larry is right that you need to clean it more often. I had a grease fire in my Geneis 1000 two nights ago as well. I took that as a hint that it needed cleaning and it did.

Just clean it out, scrape out the fire box, clean off the heat sheilds and flavorizer bars and change out the disposable aluminum drip pan with a new one. Then fire it back up and throw on some more meat. By the way, cooking meat like burgers that are high in fat will require cleaning more often than if you are just cooking Sirloin steaks and skinless chicken breasts. And the best thing to do is clean it out regularly instead of waiting for another flare up to remind you. It shouldn't take long and it doesn't have to look new when you are done, just remove the excess grease.
Click to expand...

Just got done doing that. The fire was in the permanent grease tray. Headed to Home Depot for the disposable tray.

I guess it would've helped, if I had read the instruction manual :)
 
No worries. My fire was in the permanent drip tray as well. It usually won't get all the way down to the disposable tray unless it is really bad. It is the buildup of heat that causes the grease to ignite and the disposable tray below doesn't get that hot typically.

By the way, the disposable drip tray is the small silver one in the photo below. The permanent drip tray is above it and much larger. The smaller disposable tray should have a sturdy metal one and then you put the tinfoil disposable tray in that.

dOMciDk.jpg


And by the way, if you only paid $300 for a new Genesis E310, you got one heck of a good deal.
 
It was a close out, they said at Home Depot in March, 2017, when I bought it. Weber was bringing out a re-designed model, they said. They had three of them in an aisle, already assembled. I ran across them by accident and could not pass up that price.

Glad I bought it. I actually think the burgers have better flavor than off my Kettle. It doesn't get enough use, we've done wings, veggies, pork chops .........but I just got too many other Weber cookers.
 
Barb and I have a routine we fully clean both gassers once a month and every two weeks I pull the permanent drip tray and clean it out. So far so good.
 
I only have cleaned mine out twice since I rehabbed it. I guess I should probably get on a better schedule so I can alleviate the flare ups as well.
 
I had a grease fire for the first time in my old 1000 last year. Mine may have been partially because it needed to be cleaned. But I think it was mainly due to my grilling a really fatty cut of meat.

There was no damage to my grill. I'll bet yours is ok too. You definitely want to do a thorough cleaning now post fire.

I do a thorough cleaning of my 2 grills about every 6 months.
 
I have seen those grease fires burn completely through the aluminum. Neighbor had one so bad in their Gen 2000 they had to call the fire dept. The fire box was burned through. I went to look at a Viking grill that had one so bad it melted through the stainless steel, melted the entire manifold (which black iron gas pipe on that unit) and even melted the cast iron grates. Grease burns REALLY hot
 
No the Spirit E310 IIRC was $399. Still not a "bad" deal though I have noticed Weber is starting to discount to go along with outsourcing everything to China
 
As others have also indicated my experience has been that the grease fires are due to excessive buildup of gunk. But I really doubt it did any damage if you only got to 600F on the hood temp - the E330's from the same era have essentially the same firebox and can regularly get over 700F+ without issue (they have an additional sear burner).

After cooking anything greasy on my e310 I crank the dial to "11" and burn it off right away. This seems to keep grease from accumulating in the permanent trap and causing a fire. I also disassemble the internals and clean the firebox every so often. Weber seems to be of the opinion that burning off the grill after cooking is unnecessary but my experience has been that it keeps the gunk buildup down and bugs away.
 
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Grease fires are a by product of gas bbq's. But not limited to gas bbq's. Here's an exciting moment I had opening my akorn jr after pulling a pork butt

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ChuckO said:
Grease fires are a by product of gas bbq's. But not limited to gas bbq's. Here's an exciting moment I had opening my akorn jr after pulling a pork butt
Click to expand...

Wow, that is pretty dramatic! I did have a fairly big blue flash late one night when I opened my Gree Egg without “burping” it first. Singed off some hair on my arms and learned a lesson. All my true grease fires have been on my gas grills, though. I had a Coleman grill I bought in 1998, when I just didn’t know enough and couldn’t justify the cost of the Weber I really wanted. It was a lava rock special that went thermonuclear one evening! I have had a couple on a Genesis 1000 and the newer 300 both. Every time my laziness was to blame. That is something I especially like about the simple setup on the Q grills. It is a piece of cake and a few minutes effort to scrape down the whole firebox eliminating the primary source of all grease fires.
 
Yep - Gotta' slide-out the permanent drip tray and scrape the crud off from it once in a while.

Little burnt bits fall onto it and attract grease / fat drippings and keep it from running into the disposable pan after a while.
(found that out a few years back when I ended-up with some "extra-crispy" [blackened] brats...)
It doesn't need to be spotless - but scrape it off with a pastic putty-knive scraper (I used an old cedar shingle and tossed it when I was done)
 
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