Smoke coming through lid


 
J

Jimmy Palm

New member
So I did my first burn in my wsm 22.5 with lump coal and about 5 chunks of pecan & hickory wood. I had some smoke coming out the door which was expected but there was also some smoke coming out of the edges of the lid. Does everyone generally have a airtight seal on the lid or is it normal to have some leakage. A few threads I read made it seem like everyone generally shouldn't have leakage on the lid. Thanks for the replies
 
True. And even if you lose a little smoke here and there , there's plenty more where that came from! :wsm:
 
The best way to determine if it's an issue is to see what happens when you shut all the vents. If the temp goes down quickly and the fire goes out, the WSM is tight enough. I don't think my WSM is all that tight and my fire is out in about an hour. Of course, you can never say that charcoal is totally out in that short period of time because oxygen can reignite the coals for many hours or even days after the fire appears to go out - so be careful. Another way you can tell if the unit is tight is how much vent opening is needed to hit a certain temp. Again, I don't think mine is very tight because I can run about 250° with only one vent open less than half way. When my door was leaking badly, I could cook with all my vents closed (except for the top) and even with the top vent closed, the fire took a very long time to go out. Basically, if you can control the temp and the fire goes out, no need to worry about a little smoke leaking. It will always leak some.
 
Once you have a few cooks it should get less leakage. If you want you can install a gasket kit from bbqgaskets.com and that will seal it right up. That is what I did as soon as I got my WSM22. Never a leak. Take a look at the mod section ang search for gaskets. Enjoy and welcome to the forum.
 
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