Does This Happen To You?

Boxerpapa · September 2010

I use my BGE at least five times a week. I do use wood when smoking meats, but most of the time I don't when cooking steak, burgers, chicken....ETC. Nevertheless, the Egg still produces some kind of smoke. I sometimes wonder if the neighbors mind when I'm doing an "overnighter" with hickory puffing away.

The next door neighbor also BBQ's, but he's a proud Weber man that cooks at least a couple times a week. I would often ask him what's cooking for tonight's dinner, he would reply "the usual". Keep in mind, I live in California where our houses are close together.

I also own a whole house fan and usually turn it on when the sun goes down when it starts to cool down outside, as it has been very hot during the day these past few weeks. Those of you not familiar with house fans, they suck the cool air in from outside and push the warm stale air from inside the house out, thus not needing the A/C.

Well tonight the sun goes down, the wife turns the whole house fan on and the next door neighbor starts his BBQ, in return we get all his chicken-fat dripping-on-the-coal-smoke sucked in our house. My wife looks at me and says: "P-U", that smoke smells terrible, in which I must concur. In the meantime, we have to turn the whole house fan off, shut the windows and now our house smells like smokey chicken fat drippings smoke. BTW, this is a common occurance.

I got to thinking about it and wonder when I fire up my Egg if the neighbors feel the same about mine? I asked my wife and she tells me the Egg produces a more tolerant aroma as opposed to the smell of his BBQ. The neighbor on the other side has commented to me a few times about when I'm cooking on my Egg, how good it smells. Maybe he was hinting around for me to bring him some more BBB I made him with my last batch.

After reading all this blah...blah...blah, have your neighbors ever said anything to you regarding all the smoke your Egg produces and it is intrusive? Just curious.

lakemead · September 2010

rich you should get a mini it don t smoke too much just kiddin i m lovin mine thks

Firetruck · September 2010

Nah, I don't speak to my neighbors. :laugh: just kidding. they have never complained but we are not that close either.

Gator Bait · October 2010

Fortunately any of my neighbors that have commented have really liked the smells coming from the egg. The only regret they might have is that they are not invited for dinner. :cheer:

cookingdude555 · October 2010

That's weird, my webers smell the same as my egg when they are puffing away. But I agree, I wonder if my neighbors have an issue when I am grilling/smoking. The houses in my neighborhood are close like yours, and this time of year people usually have their windows open. So I know I am filling their house up with smoke. Oh well I guess ...

Mr. & Mrs Potatohead · October 2010

Sorry, I can't exactly comment, as I have NO neighbors with in smelling distance! This is a good thing, but....
All I can say, is that I have NEVER had a bad smell (except on "fire up") coming from my Egg! Once it is up to temp and the food is on, it always smells REALLY good!
I'm thinking, you're good to go Man!

Mainegg · October 2010

no close neighbors here

But my parents do live across the field and if their two dogs smell our eggs lit then they are begging to go out and make a beeline across the field to our gazebo where the eggs live LOL Bubba the little one always checks to see if maybe dad has his lit before he puts to much effort into coming. and he sneaks and keeps peeking back at dad in the door way to see if he is in trouble LOL

2Fategghead · October 2010

I feed some of my neighbors. No complaints so far. :whistle: Tim

field hand · October 2010

Good post. Have wondered about the smoke and neighbors issue. Currently we have no close neighbors, but one of these years we'll probably tire of taking care of the property and move back to a subdivision. We use our eggs several times a week year round and have talked about the smell, which we think is good, and what future neighbors think. The reply posts seem to be positive with few problems, a good thing.

Barry
Marthasville, MO

Jupiter Jim · October 2010

I have a neighbor to my east and he hates me so much that he has called the police, yelled at me several times and wanted to know one night if I was running some kind of a cooking business out of my house as there was no way we could be eating all the food I cooked. He won’t even look at me if we pass on the street. To bad and so sad for him. It all started before I got my eggs, had an electric smoker that I smoked fish in. He told me one day that I had to get rid of it as it bothered his wife. I did move the smoker but no matter what I do he will complain.
Funny part is she sat on their back porch to smoke cigarettes. Go figure.
I'm keeping my eggs as it is not against the law in Jupiter FL to cook food on an egg.

Jupiter Jim

jeffinsgf · October 2010

Can't remember the movie, but there was a scene about this very subject. Guy had an offset smoker that he fired up several times a week and every weekend. Neighbors eventually went postal.

There's ten acres between us and the house to the west, 200 yards between us and the house to the east, and a couple miles of woods and pastures both north and south of us. The folks to the east (closest) aren't very neighborly. They've never complained, which is a good thing...they shoot off fireworks all year round and the spent rockets often end up in our yard. If they said anything about our smoke I'd be the one going postal.

Bacchus · October 2010

Now thats funny! In other words, the lady doesnt like to smell your Egg smoke when outside sucking a Winston. To bad, so sad is eggzactly right.

Pork Butt Mike · October 2010

Wow this has been going on for over three years now at my place. He even try to throw a bucket of water on my hot Egg. I tried everything to make matters better, but what ever I did he was never happy.

So when he gets in his mood and starts breaking my chops now about my BBQing, I just go get a whole bunch of wood and get all the eggs going and bring out my fan and give him a good smoking. I am like you, not big on smoked food, so we don't smoke that much. I bet I use more wood for him then Food. LOL.

All my other neighbors love it when I cook on my Eggs and tell me I am killing them with the great smells. One of my neighbors is a sheriff and he even brings me wood to help out. LOL

SO good luck and keep on smoking. When nothing else works. :woohoo:

Clay Q · October 2010

My neighbors like my egg, no problems with my cooking and we are far enough apart if I got heavy wood smoke or chicken cooking direct with grease smoke(which I don't do often at all)it still smells good because it is a small amount of smoke for a short time. I know what chicken grease burning on charcoal is like and it can get heavy and raw down wind.
The kettles are good cookers and with the right setup will grill with little grease smoke,(offset the charcoal to the sides, chicken in the middle of grid) and perhaps your neighbor could use a few tips on grilling this way. There is a kettle cooking forum you could turn him on to, just an idea.
Good luck.

Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker · October 2010

i have very close neighbors, all sides, as our lots are old "city lots", and 50 feet wide, 150 feet deep. yeah, i feel bad (for 'bout a second and a half) when the egg is really chugging. but most times, i will giggle like a schoolgirl to myself when the smell of smoking ribs or pork butt is gently wafting its way over the fence into their patio area. for one, the guy is a bit of a perfectionist (not a bad thing necessarily), and things like wiffle balls in his yard and my unkempt grass probably drive him crazy. can't help it. they have bigger lots in Weston, if that's what a person wants.

so i never sweat it too much when my cooking makes its way over. we cook a LOT outdoors, and i know they already think we are odd. it's not like i can say his chicken stink floats in my direction. but they do cook out too. and they have a fire pit, which smokes.

we've invited them over, but they have always had "something else to do".

way i look at it is, we're having whatever we are having, and i'm assuming if there really is a problem, they'll let me know. he lets me know about every other little problem with no hesitation whatsoever, i imagine if it bothered him they'd tell us.

honestly, i am waiting for the day when someone points to the visible smoke, and says "that can't be good for the environment" and works to ban smoking and grilling, or to limit it. ...all the while having no clue what similar (or greater) environmental costs things like their car, computer, and general energy waste,might have.

mark my words, you're going to need a permit to grill or have a fire in your fireplace some day.

meanwhile, i heard that the energy cost of sending a large file via email (i think it was 4megs) was the equivalent of something like bringing 15 kettles of water to boiling. not sure how true that is, but the point is the same... people complain about what they see, whether it is a true problem or not

jeffinsgf · October 2010

Biff Wellington wrote:

...
mark my words, you're going to need a permit to grill or have a fire in your fireplace some day....

Help me out Colorado residents...isn't there already some sort of restriction on fireplace use in Colorado? Maybe it is Denver specifically.

2Fategghead · October 2010

I just remembered a day when a lot of smoke was coming out of my egg and the nice elderly lady two doors down came over to warn me that my house was on fire. I was tending my egg when she walked across the back yard and seen me tending my pit. As far as I know all is good with us.

Jeffersonian · October 2010

Our houses aren't as tightly-packed as yours, so smoke isn't a problem, but the smell of the rendering pork fat can be detected several houses away. And yes, my neighbors almost always comment on the smell of my long cooks: They say the aroma drives them batty with hunger, and the lady across the street says she's buying her hubby an Egg because of it :woohoo:

BigA · October 2010

i have a really loud neighbor, the one that you can here from about a mile away. well when she is outside shooten her yapper, i go out and fire the egg up with heavy heavy smoke to smoke her out and to put her back in the house!!! the wind seems to be in my favor, so i think the bbq gods are on my side. but when i do an overnighter she says it smells great but when ever i am outside and you light it, it sure stinks.... heheheheehe :evil: :laugh: :laugh: i said that is the great taste of smoke.
i use it as a weapon to the neighbors that bother me.... :evil:

FrankC · October 2010

My neighbors are very close by. The one to the west says that he looks forward to me cooking/smoking...says he loves the overnighters the best! He also thinks I'm crazy when it's the middle of the winter and I'm out enjoying the eggs.

The neighbor to the east just gets a kick out of how much I cook outdoors. One winter day, he took a picture of me, then handed me his phone to say hello to his friend in London...told me he had to show proof about the crazy yank who bbq's year round!

fc

Jeffersonian · October 2010

mark my words, you're going to need a permit to grill or have a fire in your fireplace some day.

I think California's legislature is already contemplating registering and restricting BBQ pits, if they haven't done it already. It's apparently a lot easier than balancing their budget.

danny285 · October 2010

My closest neighbor is 1/4 mi away, nice to be in the country.

fishlessman · October 2010

my "country lot" is half that size :laugh: :laugh: your a land baron. maybe a new england thing but my neighbors will be out for hours without even noticing anyone else is out there too, just going about their business, then all of a sudden someone says hi :laugh: maybe they just dont want to make eye contact with the drunk next door :whistle:

NC-CDN · October 2010

I live in a subdivision so houses are pretty close together. Even if they are not you can smell the EGG cooking away for a block sometimes. I've had friends in our hood over and they could smell it from pretty far away.

Like has been said I think it's a nice smell. I do give my neighbours some of the finished product at times and hopefully that makes them happy. I also don't BBQ every weekend. At least low and slow cooks. So they can't really hate on me too much. We use AC here so no stuff is sucked in and inside my house I don't smell the Egg cooking, even when smoking with hickory or what have you. So I doubt they smell it either. It's just when they are outside, which they usually aren't at 12am and through the night. No harm, no foul. Either way I am within my right.

Oh and I picked up Baby backs here at Harris Teeter for $2.99/lb I think it was. So I'll be smoking this weekend. YAY.

Hustling Hare · October 2010

I once was cooking a batch of chicken parts and generating a whole lot of smoke. My egg is between my house and garage at the back of the house. I noticed my neighbor coming up my drive to check out the smoke. He saw it was my cooker, turned around, and went home. I presume he was verifying my house wasn't on fire and I'm grateful for that.

Hustling Hare · October 2010

I once was cooking a batch of chicken parts and generating a whole lot of smoke. My egg is between my house and garage at the back of the house. I noticed my neighbor coming up my drive to check out the smoke. He saw it was my cooker, turned around, and went home. I presume he was verifying my house wasn't on fire and I'm grateful for that.

Hustling Hare · October 2010

Well, I didn't mean to post it twice or where it landed, sorry. I was just answering to the main poster about neighbors. Guess I need to post a little more often.

ddmax · October 2010

My neighbor two houses down is a fireman and was a little concerned one of the first times I fired my BGE up. He came over to investigate why there was so much smoke billowing up from my back yard. We had a good chuckle about it at the time, but now he comes over almost any time he smells it cooking. It's more of a nuisance to me now than my neighbors.

2Fategghead · October 2010

It sounds like you have planted a seen and now you are watching it grow.

"Now is the time for all good men ..."

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