Reviving this zombie thread,...
I own this same Bar B Chef smoker. It has performed well for me except for yesterday 5/26/19. Was able to get the smoker up to temp rather quickly to 235-250 and slid the 7lb butt in. Everything was great until the butt hit began to stall at 150. I had thrown in 3 full racks of ribs in the chamber about the same time and could not get the smoker higher than 200 after that. It actually started floating around 190 with all the meat in there and I started to get a bit concerned.
Everything turned out excellent, just took longer.
In retrospect, I started thinking about what might have happened. The only thing that could have effected the temperature was that we had a little bit of wind come thru our backyard for 1-2 hours, which could have affected the smoker's draw. I had my smoker in an elevated location on my backyard deck. I ended up blocking the wind with some pieces of wood to shield the box and smoking chamber. Temps started coming back up but it took awhile and never reached 250 again. I too, was adding charcoal in an elevated basket. At times, I had the firebox door and chimney wide open, too.
I think the operation of these particular smokers are dependent on the weather but would like to hear from others on the forum that might have some thoughts and suggestions on what to do when the smoking chamber temps drop and one can't get the temps back up. I would love to blast through that stall with temps at 250+.