What is the chimney cap for?
The chimney cap serves a few purposes:
- Reduce cross wind effecting the air flow out of the chimney
- In the case of light rain (grill should not be outside in the rain) it will prevent water entering the grill
- Prevent anything being dropped down into the grill (kids!)
What height should the chimney cap be?
This is a bit of a contentious issues and some people spend a lot of time playing with their chimney height to get the most optimal temperature stability in their grill, but the reality is a small change in height won’t impact the grill operation noticeably.
Far too low and the air flow through the grill and out the chimney will be restricted, and far too high will be more easily impacted in windy conditions.
The Z Grills engineering team has done extensive testing, and in most cases the ideal gap is 7-8mm, which happens to be a little more than the thickness of the box the Z Grills came in. If you took the chimney out of the box and screwed it on until the nut was tight (didn’t change the position), then it is already in the correct position.
