Rain got in hopper

Steve In Pa · Jun 15, 2023

The PB is kept under cover and I don’t smoke in rainy weather but accidents happen.
The vertical was outside cooling off and we made a quick trip to my daughters house . So it rained and water got in the hopper. This happened before and really no big deal when you shop vac out the damp pellets.
So just FYI for general conversation.
Pics show damped pellets upper left.

DanStealth · Jun 24, 2023

I left mine without a cover over the winter. The last time I had used it was for thanksgiving to do my turkey.

Well…to make matters worse. I had a full 40lb bag of pellets in there mixed 50/50 with charcoal pellets.

The charcoal pellets didn’t swell but the other ones did. Well it pretty much expanded and turned into cement.

I had to take the auger out and clean it, it was surprisingly easy. I thought it was gonna be hard but it was about like 8 bolts. I had to take a broom handle and a hammer to get the auger out. Once out I wired brushed it and vacuumed out all the pellet dust and it’s fine.

I’ll never leave it outside with pellets let alone wirhout a cover lol

mixed up · Jun 24, 2023

the covers work very well but uncovered the hoppers get wet on the glass side my unit sits out side cover up and it stays dry but two time I have left it uncovered and have payed the price

hankhill11 · Jun 30, 2023

anyone have a video link on how to remove the auger in a PBV4PS2 ? I leave mine covered as well and only smoke in very slight rain rarely, but as you said, accidents happen and i'm sure i'll have to to that at some point.

DanStealth · Jul 1, 2023

hankhill11 said:
anyone have a video link on how to remove the auger in a PBV4PS2 ? I leave mine covered as well and only smoke in very slight rain rarely, but as you said, accidents happen and i'm sure i'll have to to that at some point.

It’s pretty much the same. I actually put it on its side to do it, I didn’t feel like removing the stack. It will be easier though if you do flip it on its top.

The only difference because the video is an older model is I had to remove the rails where the drip pan goes because they blocked some of the screws to get the back shield off. It was like 4 screws that hold on the 2 rails. Super easy.

However if you have the right toolset you probably wouldn’t need too and it was mostly because of the awkward angle of doing it on its side.