Is calibration required on new RecTec grills?

RHEINLEIN

Premium Member!
Premium Member
Messages
383
Location
Indiana USA
Grill(s) owned
  1. Bull
  2. Stampede
  3. Patio Legend 410
  4. RT-300
Has my Bull been calibrated at the factory or is this something normally required by the owner?
Both RTD and meat probes?

or is the topic for techno-geeks ?
 
@RHEINLEIN my Rec Tec Bull pellet grill was shipped to be pretty much right on the spot on both the RTD and meat probes.

I did check both just in case and I think only one of the meat probes needed a 2-3 degree adjustment.
 
My new one is off by about 7-10% foot RTD temp. Probes were both off a little too but not by much. Kind of annoying having to calibrate something straight out of the box.
 
The folks at rec tec go through a calibration sequence (or so they say). The biggest issue is there are so many variables that go into what a probe will read in any given situation across the country its damn near impossible to get them all to read 100% the same everywhere let alone perfectly calibrated in each instance. As most and i am a just a few feet above sea level on the coast, mine were close. But off enough that cook times for different things were not right so that led me down the road of calibrating the grill to my liking. What that means for me is i do most of my cook right smack in the center. So i calibrated my RTD to be the temp i wanted right in the middle. But like anything else as you start to get close you need to monitor your cook so its done at the temp you want it. If its not finishing fast enough heat it up a bit, if its cooking to fast slow it down some. A couple degrees on probes and 25-30 on rtd in the larger picture are not a huge deal, you will learn quick enough the characteristics of your particular unit and produce food you are proud in no time.
 
There's an actual RTD Calibration procedure just incase anyone is curious. (As far as area to test it) remember it's also a RecTec algorithm of various sensors not just the one that determines read out.
I think when I did mine it was off like 4%
 
I went through the same thing when I first cooked on this, the temp probes are saying the meat is hotter than is reality, I used two redy chek units that I have faith in, put one on either end of this grill and had to offset the main temp by 6, probe A by -2 and B -5 just to get this grill to agree with my redy chek units, so I don’t really use the supplied meat probes, I use my redy chek units along with a meat probe for meat temps. I DO NOT trust rec tec meat probes after having bloody chicken that rec tec said was 175 on more than one occasion. I did the water boil tests and offset to agree at boiling, and then waited for everything to cool down and then did the boiling water test again and got different readings, so not very trustworthy.

So in my opinion the grill works pretty good but don’t trust the readings, have another way of checking your temps.
 

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