Chris it was a pleasure speaking with you last night. I wanted to share a few of the things I discussed with you here for other Vault users as well. First let me say that this is what works well for me. For me to get a good quality smoke, I run the exhaust wide open. I never close the exhaust at all. Never. Once I started leaving the exhaust wide open, my problems went away. Next, I never run water in my Vault. A dry pan is the way to go in my opinion. With a dry pan, you use considerably less fuel. I always preheat my Vault with a weed burner to within 25 degrees of my target temp. This is also a huge fuel saver. Once the Vault is preheated, it takes very little fuel to keep it at temp. Especially if you don't use water. As far as wood use in the Vault. I use it religiously. I have found that if I keep my chunks on top of the charcoal instead of buried or mixed in, I get a much cleaner burn. Also with a cabinet style smoker, I find that using well seasoned wood is much more important than it is in a offset. Green wood does not perform well in the insulated verticals. Of the things I listed above, leaving the exhaust wide open is what helped me the most in producing near offset quality bbq in the Vault. I still can't quite match the deep smoke flavor that I get with ease on my Shirley offset. But the average Joe wouldn't be able to tell the difference. With patience and a little practice, the Vault will turn out very large loads of high quality Q with minimal fuss or attention. Once dialed in, it's truly set it and forget. Again it was a pleasure speaking with you last night and I hope that I was able to help my friend.