Greetings! Ive had my 640 with comp cart for 9 months or so now and I am getting ready to use it for the reason I bought it....the Memphis in may world championship cooking contest. This will be our 4th year so we are starting to get the hang of it. I decided to get the yoder after using a friends GMG and loved the ease/results of a pellet smoker in that environment.
My questions is, has anyone experienced issues with power at these comps? We ended up having to manually light the pellets on the GMG to get it going but for the most part it worked fine once we got it lit. If we need to do that on the yoder it's not big deal, but didn't know if the more advanced computer in the 640 would act differently. Thanks in advance for your input
If the other brand worked fine, so will the 640. If you are concerned about the quality of the power at competitions, we would suggest using a battery and inverter to eliminate issues and concerns. The cooker will draw about 200 watts at startup and then about 50 watts after startup.
We will be cooking for 4 days, how long in your experience can a decent set up last? I understand in theory you can build one to last a month if you want to throw money at it, but practically speaking (2-3 hundred) what have you seen out there? I saw a post where you built one, or I think it was you, and you said it could last the weekend. Since we have power we could recharge the batteries at night so how long does yours normaly take to get back to full strength? Any issues with heat?
The one that I built cost in the neighborhood of $500 to make. $300 of that was batteries. I also used oversized wiring and made sure that all connections were covered with rubber boots.
With my unit, I can see running 2 cookers constantly for 2 days with no issues. I use a 15 amp charger, so recharging is fairly quick, and normally only takes overnight. I have had no issues with heat, but I do have vents installed in the box.
Hmm, I wonder if a 1500 VA computer UPS for under $200 would give you at least power interruption protection for at least 20 minutes? Wiring a few more batteries into it wouldn't be hard to do at all. Now, if your worried about long term power loss, like 3-4 hours at a long cooking comp, then yea, you really need to beef up your setup.
Now you made me look HAHA! My PC UPS is using 167 watts and shows 45 minutes battery time. So in theory you would get over 2 hours. Standard Cyber Power 1500 VA. I was more worried about wattage out over short time periods when I used to be a big gamer and sucked down 800 watts while gaming. I'd have time to save and shut down.
Also, sometimes dirty power at ad hock PC gaming events, where things are plugged in, breakers popping etc can cause odd things to happen, I'm sure just like a BBQ cooking comp.. Clean power like a pure sine wave UPS with decent battery backup would be nice.
Herb, you care to post pics etc? I have seen a few of them posted.
I want a Star Trek Phaser with an AC outlet...... If it can burn a hole in a metal door, it'll handle a smoker for a few days, Hehe.
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