Temperature variation is normal. Your Z Grills adjusts the auger-fed hardwood pellet delivery system at specific intervals to control temperature, which will cause a swing in temperatures of +/- 25 degrees.
Four things you should know about temperature swings:
- It takes 30-45 minutes (WITH THE DOOR CLOSED) for a pellet smoker to settle into temperature.
- Opening the door will cause the temp to spike down. The grill doesn’t know you opened the door and will try and compensate by burning more pellets, causing the temp to spike up after you shut the door, which will then take some time to settle back into temp.
- Make sure your stack cap is properly adjusted. Normally raise the chimney cap up. If your grill is having trouble staying up to temperature in extremely cold weather, try lowering the chimney cap.
- Low-quality and old pellets burn less efficiently than fresh, high-quality pellets and can cause temperature fluctuations.
Just purchased a 11002b from Sam’s Club. Very excited. However, during first burnoff, set to 275 deg F for 30 min before a 30 min @ 500 deg, yet it went up to 340 deg. A bit more than I expected. Is this normal?
Due to the characteristics of pellet grills, feeding pellets periodically will always lead to inevitable temperature fluctuations. It takes 45 minutes (with the door closed) for a pellet smoker to settle into a temperature, and temperature swings of up to +/-25 degrees are normal after running for a while. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team:[email protected], we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.
only used mine ten times. Vacuumed out. Tried to cook a brisket. Temperature kept going up on smoke. started a Greece fire had to. to shut it down, what’s going on?… I let it run on high twice 2 days before to burn off anything.
Please feel free to contact our support team: [email protected], and get the support quickly.