Do I need rice hulls

I am going to brew a wheat with 4lb wheat malt & 4lb 2row do I need to add rice hulls to prevent stuck sparge?

It depends on your lauter setup, really. I would. What will it cost, 50¢? Worth it to prevent a stuck sparge, IMHO.

I would add 1/2lb just for insurance. I like to rinse them off first as they're usually quite powdery.

I use a copper manifold in a sq. cooler 48qt. I don't if the so called LHBS carries rice hulls the next one is 40mi. one way.

So wheat malt causes stuck sparges? I have a 5 gallon cooler MLT with SS braided hose. will 1/2 lb of rice hulls really make a difference?

Rice hulls will definitely help. It's not so much the manifold design (although that is a factor) as the fact that wheat malt can setup like glue in the grainbed itself and prevent good sparging/runoff. The rice hulls just break it up a bit and let the wort flow.

I've noticed with high %'s of wheat and/or rye I sometimes have to cut the top 1/2 of my grainbed even with rice hulls in order to prevent a "bathtub effect". I generally try to avoid it however, since it can lead to channeling.

I"m a batch sparger and I STILL use about 5% of grain bill rice hulls EVERY time I use wheat or Rye. It is cheap insurance.

Baron, since you're a decoction master, do you still add the rice hulls at the beginning when you're doing a decoction? I wasn't sure if they wanted to be boiled, so I just added them after I did the decoction (screwed up my temps, though).

In a decoction scenario I stir them in when I'm mashing out. I'm not sure it matters either way, though.