Newbie here sorry if in wrong forum. How long should it take to heat up the oven side of the Bradley 6 rack? Trying to get it to 220, and it's gone from 149 - 165 in 30 minutes. Is this correct? Or does that seem a little slow. Thanks.
Well that maybe a bit long so lets see why. Are you plugged into an extension cord? If so how long and heavy? You should plug straight to an outlet if you can. If not then your cord should be at least 12 gauge and as short as possible. I have a 12ga cord just 20 feet long. You should also plug into and outlet that does not have a bunch of other things running on it. Just the smoker is ideal. Have you been opening the door while preheating. Did you put the food in before it was hot and if so how long did you keep the door open. These all effect the times. One thing that helps with recovery time is to wrap a couple of bricks in tin foil an place on the bottom rack. You can heat these in the oven prior or just let them heat while preheating.
Another thought. Was it windy? Wind across the smoke vent seems to really suck the heat right out of a Bradley. Protecting the vent from the wind helps a lot when you are smoking in windy conditions.
If your area is often pretty windy, like mine is, a short section of stove pipe and a vent cap might help reduce the vacuum created by wind across the vent. (Note, I have removed the vent damper from my smoker to prevent additional closed vent accidents. This made it easy to semi-permanently attach the stove pipe to the vent by cutting some tabs on the end of the stove pipe and bending the tabs through the openings in the smoke vent.