Amount of ash after a burn

tsquini said:

I have started to pay attention to the amount of ash created after a burn. Recently I have been burning more maple. I have noticed the harder the wood and hotter the fire the less ash I create. Has anyone come up with a process to burn to create less ash from a burn?

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Good question, but I think it's more species dependent than process dependent. My alder produces more ash than my fir, but it also tends to insulate the coals, making the coals last a little longer. Either way, it's not a huge difference.

I agree with the species dependant and also see differences from tree to tree along with different parts of the tree where the bark varies greatly. Also some woods, especially silver maple in my stove, leave unburnt coals which end up getting mixed in with the ash. This can really make the ash seem to build up drastically fast but if you sift the left over charcoal out there is very little actual ash.

I notice the same.

With Fir, I have very little ash.

This year, me entire supply is alder, it leaves a ton of ver fluffy ash and causes me to clean the stove more often

Maple does leave a good amount of ash. Nothing you can do about it.
Black Walnut does the same.
What you should find, is you can lightly lay a fireplace shovel over the ashes and it will compress them quite a bit.

Ash is just one part of the equation on burning wood. We simply do not keep track of which wood causes more ash (although we're not ignorant on this) but instead, we watch the stove and when the ashes need dumping, the job gets done then on with the show.