Fire in the Bradley

[DonInCarlsbad]

I was doing 2 pork loins and opened it up to a full on fire on the inside. The unburned pucks were ablaze along with the drip pan.  I was able to snuff it out and rescue the meat for some excellent pulled pork sandwiches but while the digital display still works the heater is shot.  I will replace the heating unit but is there any thing else that could have been damaged in the conflagration?

Thanks,
Don

[Toker]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience  :( Would you know what caused the fire Inside your tower? Was the water bowl full of water or if the juice (or fat) dripped into the element?

[pensrock]

Can you take a few pictures of the inside of the tower? Showing the V tray, water bowl, puck burner area. It may be helpful trying to figure out what happened. there should not be a lot of fat coming out of a loin, could there have been grease accumulated from previous smokes that caught fire?

[tskeeter]

Hi, Don.  Sorry to hear you had a fire.

When you start to put things back in commission, you could find that the heating element in your smoker cabinet will not work.  There is an inline fuse between the power plug on the back of the smoker cabinet and the heating element.  I think it is probable that the heat from a fire would have caused this fuse to fail.

You can get a replacement fuse from www.yardandpool.com for about $4.25.  You might consider getting more than one of these inexpensive parts to maximize what you get for the shipping and handling charge.  And, this might be a good time to pick up a spare heating element, if you don't already have one, too.  (I like to have a few parts on hand so that if something fails during a smoke I can just change the part and get back to smoking, rather than waiting for a week or so for replacement parts to arrive.)

Replacing the inline fuse is easy.  You unscrew the back from your smoker.  You'll see a red wire going from the plug connection on the back panel, up to a clip on the back wall of the smoker cabinet, and then down and through the back wall of the smoker (and to the stud on the end of the heating element).  The spade connector on the inline fuse plugs into the plug connector.  The lump (the fuse section) of the inline fuse goes under the clip attached to the back wall of the smoker cabinet.  And the round lug is supposed to feed through the back wall of the smoker cabinet and attach to the stud on the heating element.  When I replaced an inline fuse in my smoker, I decided I didn't want to fiddle around with removing and then replacing the heating element.  So I cut the wire on the heating element side of the old inline fuse, leaving about six inches or so of wire.  And I cut the round lug off the new inline fuse.  Then I crimped a pair of insulated spade connectors onto the cut ends of each wire.  This let me plug the new inline fuse into the old wire feeding power to the heating element, without removing the heating element from it's mount in the smoker cabinet.  If you can't get insulated spade connectors, I expect that wrapping the connection well with electricians tape will keep the connection from shorting out against the back panel of the smoker.

By the way, I agree with the  folks who have already responded.  We'd like to learn from your experience.  So, anything you can tell us about what you think caused the fire to happen would be appreciated.  Even if you think you did something that wasn't very smart and are kind of embarrassed, remember that some of us have charter memberships in the dumb things I've done club.  We need your help.