Sorry to hear about your near disaster, but glad it turned out minor.

I set it on the patio because it's easy, but after seeing dead grass under the smoker not go up in flames after a 6 hour smoke, I figured the manufacturer's warning was for the blatent mistakes most would not do. I guess that's not true.

Here's my dumb smoker mistake. I couldn't find the metal bucket to put the burned chips in, so I used a small plastic bucket, thinking I would just put a little water in with the hot chips. Well I got the fish rotated and forgot to add the water. When I picked the bucket up later, I found the bottom of it was melted to the patio. Yuck, and to this day I can still make out the mark to remind me.