Bull Temp swings

[Shebeast]

Did my third cook last night and am really enjoying the Bull. One thing that happened for the first time though was that I had it set for 425 and steady, opened it up to put the veggies on so it dropped temp a bit, closed the lid. It then climbed way past 425 to 480 and was not lowering. I ultimately dialed the target temp down to like 375, opened the lid to drop the temp a bit, closed it, and then it proceeded to drop down on its own as expected.

Once it was "behaving" again, I set and got it back to 425 and it stayed there. But it was a bit worrisome it skyrocketed past the target temp initially. I was not doing anything, i.e. "looking" or anything else, just letting it do its thing.

Should I expect that to happen occasionally? What might be the usual suspects in terms of causes? Do I need to worry about a faulty controller? The first two cooks went fine.

 

[cookingjnj]

Was it your actual temp or set temp showing 480? I am not an expert on the topic by all means and others will also have some ideas. I do know ambient temps do have an impact on how long it takes for the pit to come to set temperature, and the lower the ambient temps and the higher the set temps, the longer and hotter the machine needs to run to get to your set temp. The amount of time the lid was open also will impact that equation as well.

Have you tried to replicate the issue again without any meat on the pit to see what happens? Do you have a remote temp probe you can use while trying to replicate? If your actuals do shoot up to 480 when set at 225 and stay there for a long time, you can compare what your remote probe is telling you. If you do replicate it again, it might be a controller issue and I am sure RT CS would be a great resource. Depending on how many times you have used the pit, maybe your temp probe in the pit needs to be wiped down. I wipe it down every couple of months with a cloth and just a bit of cleaner.

Like I said, not an expert, just some thoughts. Hopefully others will have different thoughts.

 

[Shebeast]

Thanks, I am going to try to replicate it. Just to clarify, set temp of 425, actual temp hit 425 and then kept going up to 480 or so.

 

[Uncle Bob]

You didn't mention how long you watched it staying at 480 (if you use the wifi there should be a chart to give you a measure). The controller will increase the feed rate to compensate for measured temp drop and so you may have had what I'll call an overload of pellets in the fire box that needed to burn off before the temp would stabilize to the set temp. Could especially be a problem if you had a modest amount of product on the grill relative to the large volume of the unit. If you've got a good, accurate pit temp thermometer/probe independent of the RT hardware, it might be informative to track with that in tandem to verify. And as suggested, contact RT tech line, they are always willing to help.

 

[Rickey49]

You didn't mention how long you watched it staying at 480 (if you use the wifi there should be a chart to give you a measure). The controller will increase the feed rate to compensate for measured temp drop and so you may have had what I'll call an overload of pellets in the fire box that needed to burn off before the temp would stabilize to the set temp. Could especially be a problem if you had a modest amount of product on the grill relative to the large volume of the unit. If you've got a good, accurate pit temp thermometer/probe independent of the RT hardware, it might be informative to track with that in tandem to verify. And as suggested, contact RT tech line, they are always willing to help.

I spoke with RecTec and they said not to worry, it will go back to it's set temperature on it's own. The increase won't hurt your meat, because it doesn't stay up long. You just have to be patient and wait a few minutes...Rick