Adjustable Chimney Cap Venting for Weather-Protected Grill Exhaust
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional kamado style grill chimney caps are susceptible to weather elements such as rain, sleet, and hail due to their perpendicular design, which allows these elements to enter the grill and affect cooking conditions.
Innovation Solution
A vented chimney cap assembly with adjustable vent openings that can be rotated to control the outflow of smoke and hot gases, featuring a tubular base member and cap member with aligned vent openings to maximize or minimize the escape area, and a sloped cap member to shed water, preventing weather ingress.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the chimney cap is designed with perpendicular vent openings to maximize smoke and hot gas escape, then the venting efficiency is improved, but the susceptibility to weather elements (rain, sleet, hail) entering the grill worsens
Solution Approach 1:
The chimney cap incorporates rotatable cap members with vent openings that can be dynamically adjusted between different orientations. The cap members can rotate to align vent openings with the vertical axis for maximum escape area, or rotate to a weather-protected orientation where the cap structure shields the vents from rain, sleet, and hail while maintaining functional venting capability.
2Productivity
If the vent opening area is maximized for efficient smoke and hot gas escape, then the outflow control is improved, but the temperature control precision worsens due to inability to regulate the escape area
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses rotatable cap members that can be positioned at different angles to dynamically adjust the effective escape area of the vent openings. By rotating the cap members to different positions, users can precisely control the amount of smoke and hot gases that escape, thereby maintaining precise temperature control during the cooking process.
Solution Approach 2:
The chimney cap is divided into multiple independent rotatable cap members, each with its own vent openings. This segmentation allows independent adjustment of each cap member's orientation, providing fine-grained control over the total escape area and enabling precise regulation of smoke and hot gas outflow for accurate temperature management.
Data Source
AI summary
An adjustable vented chimney cap system has a cylindrical base member with vent openings and a cap member that has a cover member and a cylindrical body with vent openings. The base member may be mounted onto the chimney of a grill. The cap member may be mounted onto the base member whereby the cap member can be rotated relative to the base member such that the vent openings can be adjusted to control the amount of hot gases escaping from the grill. In some embodiments, the vent openings in the cap member and the vent openings in the base member may have the same geometry. In some embodiments, the vent openings in the cap member and vent openings in the base member may have different geometries.