Billows® Damper

Works great, specially in low temperature/air flow applications, it gives you a more precise control

This product made me a loyal thermoworks customer. I had an issue with the billows having some trouble on my primo xl with keeping the temps low. This iterative product solved that issue. Clearly the company cares enough about their customers to engineer and release such a product. However what really won my trust is the fact that they seemingly sell and ship this product at cost. Extremely reasonable. Love everything about this.

The damper is absolutely needed for low temp smoking with a billows and the BGE.

I bought a billows so I could sleep better during long overnight cooks on the BGE. The problem using a billows without the damper is there is too much free-flowing air coming in with the fan off to hold a low temp. My first cook without this I blocked off about 75% of the opening with blue painters tape just to keep the temps down.

I later bought the damper and I use it for inlet air adjustment. I get temps stable, smoke clean and meat on and only after it is all on and stable do I plug the billows in. The billows is really just my insurance policy to guarantee a good nights sleep doing overnight cooks, and the damper is part of the system.

I found that this damper was just what I needed to help tune-in the temperature regulation on my Weber 22” kettle equipped with a Slow ‘n Sear to prevent excessive overshoot of my target temperature of 225 degrees F while using a Billows fan and a Smoke X4. Without it, the temperature would oscillate between 200 and 250 and I was unable to tune it any finer than that with the top vent without closing it. Then, smoke just poured out every crack whenever the fan ran. (That Billows is powerful!) With it installed, it holds between 220 and 230 and will do that for hours. (And that’s with the damper opened to only two of the stop detents. I opened it a couple more to achieve 325 for poultry.) Once installed though, it’s permanent, without some destruction. If you’re unsure but want to try it, do what I did: tape it in place around its edges to seal it and try it out. If it works for you, snap it in. If it doesn’t, well, it’s only about $3.00. I suppose that’s the only drawback: if you have a big smoker that needs the full flow of the Billows and a small one that needs a damped Billows, you’ll need two separate Billows. But hey, if you need to run them at the same time and want to automate them, you need two anyway, and two controllers. (And who’s only got just one smoker or cooker?)
I only made a 7/8” intake hole in my Weber to receive the Billows because I had done some reading first and realized that was exactly the same as what one would have on the larger Weber Smokey Mountain smokers using one of the intake vent holes with the others taped off. I also had the Billows damper in hand first and was able to clearly see that with it fully open it had a total opening larger than a 7/8” diameter hole, so I wasn’t at all worried about needing to drill anything larger. If you’re ordering a Billows for a smaller cooker, go ahead and get a damper too. I think chances are that you’ll need it!