Why do I need a damper?


 
J

Jake.Br

New member
Hey forum, quick into (you can skip this) my names Jake I live in SoCal I've been Eggin for about 8 years and absolutely love it. I've always been too afraid to go to sleep and let a brisket go overnight so I've been looking at some kind of automation. I'm cheap so I didn't want buy a Cyber Q. I like gadgetty stuff so I thought this would be a fun project and I would be able to show off to my friends. I'm also a quitter so it's very unlikely this project will ever get off the ground.

(Start here)
1. Whats all this about dampers on the fans? The project should still work with the included fan right?

2. What are you guys doing with your doors? I looked at the egg and doesn't look like it would be easy to pop on a modified door with fan for long cooks and pop it off for short cooks. Do you heatermeter all your cooks?
 
Jake.Br said:
I'm also a quitter so it's very unlikely this project will ever get off the ground.
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Love it, lol


1) The dampers allow you to shut off air flow completely. With a pit like an Egg like you have, it's very important to be able to shut down airflow in order to properly regulate temperature.

2) I don't own an Egg, so I can't comment on that exactly but I do have an Akorn. It's maybe a 1-2minute deal to change out doors on that. I do not run my HM on all my cooks. I generally only use my HM if I can't spend the time to monitor my cooks. This includes overnight cooks, or if I need to do errand while doing a 4-5 hour cook. Very convenient, and it sure is nice to get sleep and not worry. Just about every brisket cook I do is a HM cook. I throw it on at about 11pm, wrap in paper at 6am or so and it's finished around 10-11am. Then I wrap it in foil, throw it in a prewarmed cooler with some junk bath towels that I prewarmed in a drier and let it sit there until dinner time. Works great! I know I can manually cook a brisket hot and fast in about 6-7 hours, but sometimes its nice to just have the buffer so if anything does go wrong people won't go hungry while the food finishes.
 
SteveCK said:
1) The dampers allow you to shut off air flow completely. With a pit like an Egg like you have, it's very important to be able to shut down airflow in order to properly regulate temperature.
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This makes sense a fully stopped fan will still allow some air flow. Would PID figure this out and factor it into to its temp keeping algorithm? So is a damper setup necessary for the HM to run?


Paul Kierstead said:
2. I pop my fan on and off, no problem, on a door similar to an egg
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Looks very similar to the egg. How do you get it passed the screws on the left? Looks like they're right in the path.
 
The upper and lower channels that the lower vent slides on allow a properly sized piece of sheet metal to be inserted and held in place. Similar to how you get a sliding screen door installed.
 
Probably a stupid question here. If the damper can do adjustments and regulate airflow, why do we need a fan?
 
A damper can regulate air flow but the fan is able to force oxygen into the combustion chamber. Think of running in damper only mode as a vehicle going down hill. You only to modulate the brakes.
 
The HM worked fine on its own without a damper long before the damper capabilities were added. However, without a damper on very efficient grills like kamado's you pretty much had to clamp down the top vent to a tiny crack, because the air flow through the fan opening would allow the pit to stoke itself above low and slow temps, rendering the HM unable to do anything other than monitor temps for you. A damper allows you to close down the input and block the convection air flow though blower, allowing the HM to lower the temp as well as raise the temp, giving it total control over the burn. Another benefit is having a damper allows you to run the top vent open a bit more.

As for why you need a fan if you have a damper, well, you don't... Blower control was the original method used by the HM to regulate the temp, damper control came later, you can use either/or or both. You'll have no problems doing low and slow in a kamado with just a damper, it'll just take longer to stoke the pit to temp without a blower, and you may struggle to achieve or recover higher setpoints without a blower as well
 
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