Slide Daisy Wheel

JimW

I just got a slide daisy wheel so I could control the EGG at the higher temps. With the regular daisy wheel, the temp would peg out at 1000+. Will the EGG stabilize itself at a lower temp with the bottom vent wide open and the slide all the way open? I'm looking for something around 750+/-. Does anyone use a more or less standard setting of the vents to get this?

Gfw

JimW, I have had better luck at the 700-750 range by leaving the top open and regulating the air flow by adjusting only the bottom vent.

Tim M

JimW,
I am not sure what you mean by:[p]"With the regular daisy wheel, the
temp would peg out at 1000+."[p]With a daisy top on and it wide open and the bottom vent wide open you will attain a max of 400 deg - nowhere near 1000+. With the slide/daisy top you will max out at 750-800 with the bottom vent wide open. I think that is the setting you are asking about. Carefull - that top gets real hot at 700 deg dome temp. There might be 900+ coming out the top.[p]Tim

Mark

JimW,
It has been my experence that there is no set in stone setting for tempurture consistency, only a black art learned through trail and error, I think it's voodoo.
All kidding aside I start by relatively equal openings of both vents, making equal incremental ajustments.
Mark

JimW

Tim M,
My fingers got ahead of my brain...not unusual. What the brain really meant to say was that the bottom vent is wide open and the top is completely off. Sorry for the confusion. But thanks for the input.
JimW

King-O-Coals

Gfw, how does the cold weather effect your cooking times and temps. It is cold there I guess. Is it dramatic due to the intake of cold air through the bottom damper. We seem to have to adjust time and damper openings a few weeks ago in the northern part of Ga., but we had also loaded some unfamiliar lump and couldn't decide which was causing the slow pace..

Gfw

King-O-Coals, temps for the last week has at best been NOT tropical. I haven't seen must variation in cooking temps based on the real temperature. Last night was steaks and tonight we did porkchops - the real test will come tomorrow - company for dinner and we're doing (Spin's sauce) pizza.[p]The mid temps (500 degrees dome) have always been harder that either the hi or low.

Gfw

King-O-Coals, I haven't burned anything but the BGE lump - maybe that's way I haven't had problems with the settings - just a thought.

King-O-Coals

Gfw, then our variation must have been the lump coal. It seemed to require wider open dampers. We blamed it on the cold weather. Thanks..

Grumpa

King-O-Coals,[p]I know that I have to use wider damper openings since the cold weather moved in and I use nothing but BGE lump from Royal Oak. The fire does have to work much harder in the colder months.

Gfw

<p />Bob, two thing might be making the difference - I have a medium egg and the location of the egg is somewhat sheltered. I did an all night PP last weekend at dome temps of about 200 and still managed to get 20+ hours at below freezing outside temps.

Grumpa

Gfw,[p]I apologize if I mis-understood. I was trying to point out that I must use a wider bottom vent opening during cold whether as opposed to warm whether in order to maintain the same 200* dome temp. It does not appear to affect the lump consumption by any measurable amount but does appear to require more air flow and the fire appears to struggle a little more to attain and maintain a constant temp. My egg is somewhat sheltered as is yours. I'm still not sure that I fully understand the effects that cold vs warm air have on the fire itself. I know that during the summer when the outside temp is warm that my fires burn much easier even though the humidity is in the upper range. When cold whether moved in the fire appears to need more attention and more air flow. Is it simply because it takes more energy to heat the colder air from a starting point of say 32* than it does to heat warmer air of say 80*? The answer is probably simple and I'm just missing something.

Gfw

Bob, good point - you may very well be onto something - sometime about 2:30am the fire went out - I found it at 3am and re-started it - maybe as it got colder duning the late night hours it was starving for air!

King-O-Coals

Bob, we also have to take into consideration the moisture content of the combustion air, density of the carbonized organic fuel, barometric pressure gradients, intake turbulence variation factors relating to velocity of the intake draft, latent heat of evaporation, and the ambient contribution of heat flow absorption rates from possible exposure of the outer surface of the dome to solar activity. What else am I forgetting?.

Grumpa

King-O-Coals,[p]Like I said...it is probably something simple :~)