So I'm trying to warm up the smoker so I can put a turkey in.
I have the oven set to 240 and in an hour it only got to 115. Since its burning briquettes the entire time with no meat in, I thought that I would turn the smoker off and just run the oven to get it to temp. I went inside for about 20 minuites and came back to see it at 84 degree.
How long should it normally take to heat up? Outside temp is around 60 with no wind.
Please help!
Shep
sounds like your heating element isn't working.
So how long should it take to heat up?
Sounds like the only heat you're getting right now is from the smoke generator. The main heat element should be a dark red and, obviously, feel hot if you put your hand near it.
If your main element is not heating, try unplugging and re-plugging the power cords between the smoke generator and the back of the tower. Sometimes they can be a bit sticky and not seat completely.
Hope that helps! Let us know if that solved the problem.
Try unplugging and re-seating every plug connection. The plugs fit pretty tight and if there's one out a bit it can appear that the element is defective. Also, I never load any pucks until it has been heated up and I put the meat in. Then I unplug the smoker for a few seconds to let the timer reset to 20 minutes and manually advance the first puck onto the heating element.
On my OBS I believe it took around 25-30 minutes for it to get up to temp if it wasn't too cold out. Since I did the dual element mod it is much, much faster now. ;D
OK... So I unplugged EVERYTHING and plugged it all back in.
Then I turned the smoke generator off and turn the oven on 260 to try to get it going.
It just 5 min it was at 150. It took about 20 min total to get it to 220 which is where I wanted to be to smoke my bird. I started the smoke to get it rolling and put the bird in....... now the wait.
Thanks again everyone for helping me with the problem. Hopefully I'll have some pictures for you guys soon.
Shep
Welcome to the forum.
To save some money don't load the bisquettes until after you have place the food into the smoker.
Click on the link for troubleshooting tips:
Bradley Smoker FAQ's (http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?481-Bradley-Smoker-FAQ-s&p=748#post748)