Help! How long does a bag of pallets last

1Jarhead

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Ironwood 885
Im new to Traeger, I just purchased an ironwood 885, I did the initial seasoning yesterday of the 20min them 30 min at the higher temp. When I did this I dumped the whole 20 lbs bag in the hopper and today I did the chicken challenge. So the temp was at 450 according to the receipt, at about 1 hour I checked the probe temp and it was at 150. About 10 minutes later I went outside again and looked at the temp of the grill and it was at 160 I opened the hopper and it was completely empty, all the pallets were gone. I ended up adding another 20lbs bag and it took another 45min to finish cooking to 170.
Is this normal? I can’t imagine how many bags I will need of I smoke a pork but or something that requires a long smoke time.
Pic is how the children turned out. I must say it was really juicy.
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My ironwood 885 ate pellets like a monster when rippin high heat for the burn in, but it was also cold outside and without a blanket. It will also burn a bag of pellets in a couple hours of high heat, lower heat it does much better if it’s not overly cold out. I didn’t find it overly concerning as it’s a large steel drum full of metal parts that it will try and keep at the temp desired. The lid also leaks. So is it as efficient as I’d like, no. But it’s also less the desirable circumstances for it to be operating in northern Alberta. Just my thoughts though.
 
A rough guideline I've seen is about one(1) pound per hour cooking low and slow; three(3) pounds per hour going hot and fast. In very cold temperatures, that will increase, of course. My personal experience has shown those numbers to be reasonable. I'm in south Georgia, USA.
 
The food always comes out so good that I never even think about it, other then making sure I have a spare bag at all times :LOL:

Welcome to the forum @1Jarhead - Congrats on the new Ironwood!
 
Welcome aboard. I'm in Florida so we don't deal with a lot of cold. I'm finding it's about the same as reported by @BA_Ga .
 
Thanks to all the reply's how could I seal up that lid?
 
I bought a 4 x 5 foot welding blanket at Northern Tool and draped it over my heat chamber on my 570 and it cut pellet consumption considerably. Don't drape it over the control box.
 
My insulated T1300 burns just under 1 lb/hr…. @350-400
about 0.75 - 1.0 under 200…. Traeger Pellets'
 
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While you didn't ask this directly, I started out using the Traeger pellet, but for the most part have switched over to Pit Boss. I usually get them delivered from Walmart and they're 1/2 the price of the Traeger and work very well in all of my cooks. Of course, lots of forum users with varying opinions on what pellets work best, and I've used others as well, so experiment and you'll find what works for you in terms of flavor/cost/amount of dust etc.

Good luck!
 

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