How to Keep Your Grill Secure From High Winds

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A grill is an investment. For the most part, they are definitely not cheap and they can bring you a lot of joy in the form of grilling up your favorite meals with either gas or charcoal. If you are leaving your grill outside for any reason, it is imperative that you take measures to protect the grill.

One of these steps to protecting the grill is making sure that it is secure when those high winds whip up and can potentially knock your grill over. If this happens, it can cause serious damage to your grill, even rendering it unusable.

Take These Steps to Secure Your Grill

The first thing is that, if your grill has wheels (and this is likely), you want to block it in to prevent it from rolling around.

There are far too many horror stories involving grills being blown into the street, blown into cars, and a litany of other things that ultimately meant the destruction of the grill and other property.

By placing heavy blocks around the grill wheels, this restricts any potential movement and keeps it from blowing into your car, rolling into a neighbor’s yard, or any other potential damage that can happen when your grill rolls.

An absolute must is a grill cover. The grill cover keeps your grill protected from wind and snow throughout the year. This makes it easier to store your grill outside yet keep the peace of mind of knowing that it is safe from the elements.

Plus, with a grill cover, you can tie it down. Secure the grill cover by using the ties that come with it to tie it down to something more stable.

You can use slats or poles on your deck, for instance. You can substitute those slats with something heavy, such as the blocks that you are using to block in your grill.

By anchoring the grill in place, you will almost guarantee that it stays in place during even the heaviest and most inclement weather conditions. Granted, there may be some severe weather systems that you just can’t account for but it should largely keep your grill safe year-round.

Another important note: always keep your grill tied at least three feet from your house or garage. This is meant to prevent any potential fires from spreading to your home if something should happen with the grill itself.

If you are grilling in high winds, make certain that the grill is anchored. The last thing that you want is for the grill, fully lit up with fire, to start rolling away or towards your house.

Securing Your Grill Step by Step

While it may not be the most difficult thing in the world to secure a grill, it is important that it is done the right way to prevent any potential damage from being done to both the grill and the surrounding property.

That is why keeping your grill secured in a stationary position is so imperative. Keeping it from rolling or sliding, while also providing it with a better chance of not blowing over, is how to properly secure your grill to keep it safe.

The steps for doing this can be very simple. Here’s how to do it.

1. Find some angled wooden blocks, cinder blocks, heavy paint cans or whatever else that you may choose to use to anchor your grill into place. Whatever you use, keep in mind that the goal here is to keep the wheels from moving at all. If the wheels can move, there’s a chance that the grill could rock free and wind up causing damage even if you thought that it was properly secured.
2. This step can vary slightly based on one thing: a grill cover. Again, it is highly recommended that you have a grill cover to keep your grill protected from the rain throughout the year. With a grill cover, you can use those heavy blocks to anchor down the grill by placing them on top of the ties of the grill cover. If you don’t have a grill cover, place a couple of heavy sandbags across the grill’s crossbars to anchor it. This helps keep your grill from not only rolling or sliding but from tipping over as well.
3. Anchoring the grill to a nearby structure is the best way to truly secure the grill in the face of high winds. Try tying it to your deck or porch using the struts that should be visible. You’ll want to leave a gap of at least three feet between the grill and the house, though. Fires could start should the grill get knocked over and you definitely don’t want that fire to spread to your deck, garage, or home. Use a sturdy nylon rope and secure the loose ends with a knot. This will keep your grill from moving beyond the slack that you have given the rope.

BBQ Windscreens

There are also windscreens that are meant to help protect your grill as well. This is because a common fear of grill owners is the grill getting knocked over during the high gusts of wind while they are grilling. Sure, you can secure the grill by tying it down while it is not in use but that can be cumbersome when in use.

If you want to supervise the activity that is taking place on the grill, it helps to have a wind block to help keep the wind off of your food as it is grilling. If the wind is allowed to blow freely, it can not only alter the temperature of the cook but it can actually blow out the flames of your grill.

With a windscreen, you can keep the wind off of your food as you cook. This means that you can cook without feeling particularly hindered by the wind. When cooking in the Midwest in particular, this can be a serious issue if left unchecked.

There are pre-made windscreens out there that you can purchase to keep the wind off of your grill but there are grill masters out there who prefer to make their own. A cursory search can give you ideas on how to create your own custom windscreen to keep the wind off of you while grilling up something tasty.

Be Cautious

When cooking in the elements, it is important to exercise caution. Even with as much preparation as possible, the elements are unpredictable and can do a lot of damage if you let them. That is why exercising caution, even with the use of things such as windscreens, is of the utmost importance.

Getting careless can mean something as little as your food getting ruined. But it can get so much worse than that. Without being careful, it can mean your grill being ruined or, in an absolute nightmare scenario, a fire starting.

By taking the proper precautions, you can keep your grill from getting ruined by being pushed over by the heavy gusts of wind. It might feel like overkill at times but it is always better to be safer than sorry when it comes to your grill and the safety of your property.

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