Spiders 1 - Gasser ZERO

[oakville smoker]

Well it finally happened.  Spider nest in the venturi tube, major fire in the gasser
I have hear about this happening but in all my years have never had the experience
I had some taters baking on the gasser Saturday.  I was in the kitchen in the house getting some other food ready.
I figured it was time to go give the taters a turn and I walked out and freaked

The gasser is smoking like a 3 alarm fire.  The front panel of the gasser is black from fire, the knobs are pretty much melted.
One of the stainless grates popped its welds from the heat.  I think part of the regulator hose melted.  The ignitor is done like
dinner.  Needless to say I am not a happy camper.

I may be pronouncing the gasser dead.  I was out looking at griills yesterday to replace it and I am pretty sure I am going to go
with a Bubba Keg if I can find one.  Running out of propane, not being able to get the high searing temps I always want and the
flavour of charcoal all seem to becon me

I hope no one else ever goes through this.  Its scary as hell.  I was lucky  the house did not burn down.  NAsy stuff.

[FLBentRider]

Yikes!

I'm glad to hear no one was hurt and there was no home damage.

[Mailman]

threw my gas grill out years ago. Nothing but charcoal for me. I have 3 grills a small 24" square a 42" (approx.) and a big heavy smoker grill with side fire box. Wife wonders why I need another grill. Then for fathers day she buys me the DBS 4 rack. Its going right now. All these grills me must like fire. Going back to caveman era.

[TTNuge]

Scary stuff, glad to hear no one was hurt.

I had a similar experience back in college.  I lived with 3 other guys at the time and had brought my parents old gasser down to school, we used that thing at least 5 nights a week.  One day we ran out of gas and it was time for one of my roomies to buy more propane.  He went and got a refill a few days later, came back and started to hook things up by hand and then went to find the cresent wrench to tighten things down.  Well he couldn't find a wrench so just said screw it and left it.  I had no idea that happened a few days later and went and started the grill, went back inside the house to get things ready for dinner.  Fast forward about 10 minutes and all of a sudden it sounded like a jet engine was in our backyard, I look outside and the entire grill is iin flames and the top of the propane tank is like a torch.

Fortunately and unfortunately we weren't too smart back then so we didn't know to run like hell.  The grill was about 5 ft from the house and we kept trying to put it out.  On the bright side we had a decent size Fire Extinguisher in the house that the Landlord provided.  I was using it and would get the fire out and then the heat would start it up again.  I tried several times and it would just start back up, finally in desperation I unloaded the whole fire extinguisher on it, even after the fire went out I kept spraying it down.  That must have cooled it down enough because by the time the extinguisher was empty the fire stayed out for good.  The grill was a loss, the valve on the tank was shot and wouldn't close, when it finally cooled down enough I took the tank and set it in the backyard as far away from the house as possible.  For about 2 weeks after that everytime you went home you could smell a faint smell of propane as the last of it leaked from the tank.

Scary stuff, I like wood pellets much better!

[ArnieM]

Glad for both of you that no one was injured or structures destroyed.

Every gas grill manual warns of the spider problem.  I've been using gassers for nearly 40 years and never had the problem.  (I was knocking on wood as I typed that.  :D)

[StickyDan]

At least they went out doing something they love. :-[