Ash Depth

In the shoulder season I'll dig some out once I get up to the bricks(bottom of door) which is about 6 inches, when it's cold and I have a bigger heat demand I typically keep it around 3 inches. I haven't needed to take anything out this season yet and won't for a while.

When they start falling out the door or every thursday which ever comes first.

I never take out ashes until I have to.....box is full, starting to come out the door

I could have 10" prolly and still have plenty of room for wood.

I clean some out once or twice a month when the cold weather gets here.
I like to have a few inches also most of the time.

HotCoals said:

I could have 10" prolly and still have plenty of room for wood.

I clean some out once or twice a month when the cold weather gets here.
I like to have a few inches also most of the time.

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They say the BKK has a big enough belly to hold a cord of wood, the Princess isn't as deep but still holds a bunch. This is one of the big perks of these stoves. If I have ash spilling out the door I've been really lazy.

begreen said:

I'm with you chief.

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Hey, ashes are the trophies!

I take out ashes only when i need more room for a bigger load of wood.

tfdchief said:

I never take out ashes until I have to

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Which is not often, with my , 9.5 cubic ft,smoke dragon monster.

My Avalon Ranier Insert gets cleaned every week to 10 days.....usually a couple of inches of ashes removed

1-2 inches are what I usually aim for in my Oslo.

rdust said:

They say the BKK has a big enough belly to hold a cord of wood, the Princess isn't as deep but still holds a bunch. This is one of the big perks of these stoves. If I have ash spilling out the door I've been really lazy.

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A cord? Your stove is 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet? How did you get the spousal factor to allow something like that in the house.

My stove is small and if the ash is more than a couple of inches deep it interferes with adding a big load of wood. I empty the ash probably twice a week, and each time I remove maybe half a gallon or less, so it takes only five minutes.

When I started, I read in the Jotul manual to empty the as pan every 2-3 days, and was constantly scraping ash thru the grate and emptying the pan. I could fill a 2.5 gallon pail every few days.

Then I realized there's still usable fuel in that ash, and I started letting it just lay. After that, I noticed my total ash output went WAY down, and removing it after two weeks gave me barely more per cleaning than removing it after two days.

A topic that's been beaten to death, I suppose, but still worth debate to those of us newer to stove burning. (Actually, I've had fireplaces with and without ash pits, too, but that's another subject.)

When I was burning more intermittently, I appreciated the ash tray. Take it outside when the stove was cold, dump it, and then vacuum up the inevitable spillage due to Jotul's stupid tray design (ash tends to get screed off the top if the pan as you withdraw it, and then get compacted at the rear of the ash pan tray, preventing the ash pan door from closing right).

Now that I'm burning closer to 24/7, there is little opportunity to safely vacuum up spilled ash, and so it seems easier and safer to just shovel it out of the stove, as if I had no ash tray.

Having a sense of deja vu here . . .

I have a new stove this year and it is fun to see how long I can make it burn. More fuel wood means longer burn on a cat stove so I tend to remove ash too frequently so that I can do cartwheels inside the huge firebox. The bottom 3 inches is enough to fill my ash bucket, it's not a 5 gallon bucket but one of those pales, maybe 3 gallons? Anyway, the bottom has two layers of bricks so I don't feel like I need to leave an inch of insulating ash down there.

I don't ever plan to let it fill up to the doorway. The prescious real estate in the BK is the vertical. I can get two rows of large splits but every inch counts on the top row.

We have yet to clean the ashes this fall. In the coldest part of winter we clean about every 4 days but most times in winter it is closer to a week and sometimes more.