Note: This is a long and involved post about something many people will find boring and is being writting just as much for my catharsis and mental well-being as it is for your reading enjoyment.
With my promotion at my job last year came the reinstatement of my yearly bonus (long story short -- I started at Mentor with a bonus, then it was taken away at one point, and now I have it back). Now, it's not a huge bonus (and because of the way it's structured it probably never will be) and 40% of it is sucked away by taxes immediately. However, all that puts it right at the amount that is perfect for just going ahead and purchasing something, as opposed to having to put it in the "dreaded" savings account (my words, obviously not Tricia's).
Okay -- where am I going with all of this elaborate setup? Well, with my bonus this year we decided that we would purchase a Traeger grill to use at the new house.
Ah, the Traeger. I've talked to at least 10 people who own them and they all swear by them. They tell me "even a complete idiot could use one," which is right up my alley, since I suck at the BBQ. I did copious amounts of research online and found nary a bad review on them. Basically, this was the typical foolproof purchase by Troy.
Which of course means everything went wrong.
So, on Father's Day I go down to Roth's in West Salem and pick up my Traeger Lil' Tex (for 20% off!), one bag of pellets (it burns wood pellets for fuel), and some seasoning. All very exciting. I put it together in about 30 minutes -- no problems there.
I best digress here -- If you don't know how a Traeger works, here is the long and short of it. You dump pellets into a bin. Those are fed down a shaft to a pot, where they are burned, thus creating heat/smoke. Yup, it's that basic. The only three parts to it are 1) a motor-powered auger that feeds the pellets down the shaft, 2) an induction fan that blows air down the shaft, keeping the fire going, and 3) an igniter rod that sits in the pot and heats up to allow the pellets to initially burn.
Okay, so the instructions state to test that all three parts are working. Is the igniter rod getting hot? Yup, that one's easy to notice. Is the auger working? Yeah, pellets are being fed to the pot. Is the induction fan blowing? Well, I see a fan going...and smoke is rising up, so, um, yeah, sure it is (remember this, as it is what comes back to haunt me).
There is a drip plate immediately above the fire pot, which they tell you to wrap in foil. I do so in typical Troy manner (quickly) and I then go ahead and run the thing for 45 minutes, which you are supposed to do before you use it the first time, all the while excited about grilling up that fish I bought for it. After 45 minutes, smoke is all over, it smells good, but when opening up the grill I notice that there is quite a huge fire going...it appears the foil had caught on fire because I let it hang down over the hot pot. Oops.
I clean that up and assume I did everything right and can now enjoy my delicious foods year round (I should note that due to things you'll read in a few lines, I'm still not sure how the fire ever ignited, but the foil was burning...it's odd, trust me).
If you are still reading along -- the next day I go out to cook my delicious fish. I follow the instructions, turn the Traeger to the SMOKE setting, when you see white smoke coming out turn the Traeger to HIGH. Put the fish on for 30 minutes. I do that and come back out in 30 minutes. TONS of smoke comes pouring out, but the fish is cold. Odd.
I check the insides of the Traeger and find 4-5 cups of unburned pellets, which is obviously the problem. I shake my head and clean out the pellets using a shop vac, and start the process over again. Perhaps I missed something. So redo the process, go inside, check it in 15 minutes this time. Same thing.
Now I yell and swear at it and vow to toss it over the railing. I do see that you can manually light the pellets, so I try that. No go. More yelling and swearing. I put 1/2 cup of lighter fluid in there and NOW it burns good.
30 minutes later, we eat fish and asparagus (and it's really good...) The next day, I talk to fellow Traeger owners to get some tips. Apparently, I am doing it wrong. I follow said tip, and night two is no different than night one. Yelling, swearing, fuming, multiple failed attempts and wanting to toss the thing over the edge. We finally eat 2 hours later, when I again douse the thing in lighter fluid. Let's just say that on night three, it's no different, but after one failed attempt, I cook the food in the oven instead. At least it doesn't take 2 hours.
So, the other day I finally take the time to do all the troubleshooting and things I've read on the internet. Due to pellet overflow, I've now gone through $15 worth of pellets (I probably could have reused them, but I thought initially that might cause a problem, so I just shop vacced them). I'm obviously frustrated. Then, I read something online about how the power cord is ziptied to the induction fan and that can cause the induction fan to not work. BINGO. That is exactly my problem.
In fact, what I thought was the induction fan initially turns out to not be it at all. In about 5 seconds of fixing that, I have a working Traeger. Fire starts immediately, it's getting hot, pellets burn perfectly. Hooray.
Then, KABLOOIE. Well, sort of. I trip the circuit breaker for the outlet the Traeger is plugged in to. Oh well, I reset it and go again. After about 5 minutes, same result. I plug it to an inside outlet. Now the Traeger won't even turn on. So I check, and I find out I blew the fuse on the Traeger itself (it has an electronic control board).
After doing some research, it turns out that a faulty component will cause this. I check one by one, and now I see that the igniter rod is no longer working. Which is the best of the three things to have blow-up, since I can still manually light the thing using lighter fluid and a match. So, now Traeger is sending me out a new igniter and I hope to officially break the thing in tonight when I cook some chicken on it for dinner. Since I think I have it all figured out now, I've definitely calmed down and look forward to becoming the Traeger zealot that everyone else is.
There, now that I've written that all out, I feel much better :)
