SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20230729-99F4A-2147346141. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: RecTeq RT1250 (Rec Teq, 1250 electric pellet smoker with ceramic heating element. The issues I experienced occurs on their other models for the same reasons.). Incident: I recently purchased a RecTeq 1250 electric pellet smoking grill. Upon my first ignition/startup I was able to quickly determine that the amount of fuel being fed into the fire pot was not appropriate to the amount of oxygen and heat source. This resulted in very large plumes of heavy smoke. When confined to a smoker this can and often results in a smoke explosion. I thought it was just because it was the first igniting, but on subsequent starts it has done the same thing. Upon doing further research I found this is quite a common phenomenon at start up with this brand of pellet smoker. All smokers run this risk, but it is usually caused by pellet voids or flameouts. Where these are happening at startup which shows their formulas and ratios are off. The frequency this this happens also appears to be higher with this as a result of this. It's the design, not an anomaly or fluke. When I wrote RecTeq about trying to return the smoker I was sent an automated reply, that was very similar to others I have seen who have reported this issue. This shows me that it is reported frequently enough that they had draft and modify an automated reply. Upon further inspection of my smoker I discovered that the heating element was not installed correctly. It is not set in a way where it is making good contact with the pellets. It was actually installed recessed and this is why they were not igniting as they should. Again, this is a known issue within their community. As a result of these incorrectly installed heating elements these units are at a high risk of fire, injury, and explosion right