self built backwoods clone warm up time when cold.

So I built a backwoods clone and have been having problems with warm up time. All three times I have fired this thing up the temps have been right around zero. I am using a pitmaster iq110 and have learned that I have to wait for the temp to come up before I can use it.

On my seasoning run and my first cook the warm up time took hours. I blamed it on an air diverter plate that I put in to spread the intake air around the firebox and stop the cold air from being sucked straight up the sidewalls. Fast forward to yesterday when I cooked up some ribs. I removed the air diverter and I did the initial heat up without the water pan or heat diverter in place. Once the temp hit 250 in about 30 minuets I put the water pan and diverter in place and added about 2 gallons of boiling water and the temp dropped to arround 175 and took over an hour to warm back up to about 225 when I put in the ribs and the temp droped again and took at least 45 min to an hour to warm up to 250. Once it was there it seemed to be stable even when I wrapped them at 3 hours the temp came back up pretty quick. Is this normal in cold weather or do I have a problem with my design?

Here is my original build thread

*backwoods style build finished with q-view

I have been starting with about 10-12 briquettes from my mini chimney same as I do on my uds. Next time I will try more.