Brick Smoker Build

Just wanted to share a picture of the brick smoker I built.  The stone structure was already there, it was built by someone else a long time ago as a wood oven.  I tried the new smoker out a few times, pretty good results.  Need to add coals about every hour but it maintains heat pretty well.  The initial load of charcoal is good for about 2 hours.

 

Here's a pic of the side view.

 

Chasing BBQ,

There is a rack a few inches up from the floor where the charcoal goes.  Underneath the charcoal grate, I have 4 1" pipes with valves to control the heat.  I added another rack above the charcoal to put a water pan to help disperse the heat better.  There are two cooking grates, the first one is about 27" from the charcoal grate and the second one is 8" above the first cooking rack.  Other than the waterpan, the rest is wide open.  The opening inside the smoker is 16" wide by 24" deep.  It maintains temp pretty well, I'm still trying to perfect it.  I start it off with one and a half chimney's of charcoal.  It takes about a half an hour to an hour to warm up.  When the temp dips towards 200F, I shovel in some lump charcoal and open the intakes a little.  hope this helps.  Also, I got a lot of the details of my build from the Wilbur Hog smoker (including the door design).  Here's the link which includes drawings.

http://www.ibiblio.org/lineback/bbq/wdh.htm

 

I tried the minion method but all the charcoal/lump ignites and it gets to about 400F.  I tried it with all the intakes closed too.  maybe there's too much air getting through the doors or exhaust stack.