@thomtrottier,
Man, I wish I lived with you! We got a Bradley smoker for a wedding gift in 2008 and my husband has used it once and has now lost the stack to it so we would have to manually check on the bricks. He has also never used the gas BBQ I bought back then, lol. He also left a couple of dozen packages of bricks out which dissolved when we had a thunderstorm

Where's Bobby Flay when you need him? No advice, but love you already.