Review: One Season with the Traeger Insulation Blanket

Earlier this year I posted a series of posts related to contacting Traeger Customer Service over an issue that came up with the receipt of a Traeger Insulation Blanket as a gift – I have now used the blanket for the remainder of Winter in Maryland and have had an opportunity to share my experience.

Before the Blanket Came In

During the time of not having the grill I was using the grill as normal and it was working fine for me. The only thing I noticed was potentially a slight increase in the pellet consumption, but never an issue where it was unusable. I will note that the grill is located on a covered porch that is partially sheltering the grill from weather. Wind is still an issue, as well as temperature, but it is sheltered.

Without the blanket the grill seemed to work fine, however I never used the grill on the “Smoke” setting, I would typically set the grill to 180-200 to do my smoking and kick the temperature up to finish things out. While using the Fireboard FBX11 wireless meat thermometer, review here, the grill did have temperature swings, but held its average at the point in which I set the temperature.

After Using the Blanket

After receiving the blanket, I did not notice too much different in the functionality of the grill. The way that the blanket installs on the bottom of the lid is with metal hooks that lead to a small gap in the lid from the barrel. With this, the smoke would seep out the sides and top of the lid more than usual and the blanket did trap this and lead to a lot of the smoke and soot that caked onto the barrel, lid, and other areas, which will lead to some serious time cleaning things up.

The blanket did seem to do a good job insulating the barrel and keeping the temperature. The grill had its usual temperature swings and pellet consumption was noticeably down from previous usage in cold without the blanket. The blanket definitely seemed like it would be worth it to keep the pellet usage down over the life of the grill, even at its retail price of $120. That being said, there was a serious negative that occurred in my testing.

The worst thing that has happened over the months I used blanket was that the bottom of the barrel that was under the blanket has actually had its paint peel away and stuck to the blanket leading to bare metal being exposed on the grill as well as some coating that was originally on the blanket to have come off onto the barrel. I will definitely be looking at any other areas that had as significant of contact with the blanket to ensure I know the extent of the damage. I have since contacted customer service about this issue and will follow up on this as I know more.

Conclusion

I have very mixed feelings about this as I really enjoyed having the blanket once it came in this winter. I anticipate using it next cold season, and I really do feel that it was worth it as it kept me efficiently running my grill through some bitter cold times with snow, wind, and anything else we ran into. However, I cannot find myself recommending this to anyone when it did damage my grill.

While the damage is not inhibiting the functionality of the grill, it does diminish the cosmetic look of the grill and I am definitely disappointed that this happened as I strive to keep everything I own in top quality.

Traeger Review Series:

Read more about my experiences with my Traeger Renegade Pro, and other Traeger products below:

• Traeger Review Series Page – All the reviews about my Traeger experiences thus far!
• No, I am not paid by Traeger, I just love my grill.
• Three Months in on my Traeger Renegade Pro
• Review: Six months in on my Traeger Renegade Pro

Note: Updated 4/10/2019 to include photos showing the damage.