Flame out and then fierce pellet fire Pro 34

[DennisC]

I recently had a flame out when cooking. Not sure what caused it. The smoke stick was close to under the temp sensor so that may have caused an issue when the burning in the smoke stick moved along to be directly under the controller sensor. I wasn't monitoring the internal temp like I usually do with a probe, but I was out to spritz and noticed the displayed temp on the controller dropping fast 3 hours into a cook. I reset the controller and then restarted it. Soon there was a lot of smoke but the displayed temp on the controller hadn't risen very far. A bunch of pellets which had piled up in the fire pot when the unit went out, had spilled over into the drum. Fortunately I took the pan and deflector out to see what was going on and found a fierce pellet fire in the fire pot. I had a previous Pro 34 suffer a fire with piled up pellets and recognized the symptoms this time, before the spilled pellets in the bottom of the drum ignited.
This Pro 34 has been very reliable for 2 years and I have run another cook since with no issue. Going to have the internal minimum temp probe alarm set for all future cooks. Whatever the cause, if you have a flame out while cooking be sure to check for piled up pellets under the deflector before doing a restart. If there are a lot of unburned pellets in the bottom before a relight, the fire can pretty much destroy the smoker. That happened with the previous smoker but it was inside 60 day retailer window to return so it was replaced. This time I prevented any fire damage, but some partially burned pellets in the auger tube jammed the auger. So I did have to take it apart to free the auger.