Burn Pot: How 'full' is full?

I'm confused. Empty the burn pot of what? Doesn't ash fall out on its own, or do you mean empty it of pellets? Klinkers (if you get any) can get scraped and removed when you add another bag.

Empty everyday.

Knock it out every time you light a fire in the stove. Takes six seconds, literally. Pull it out with two fingers, invert it, and BANG it once or twice on the ash catch pan. That will knock out the clinkers. You will have to scrape the burn pot once in a very great while but knocking it out like this is the way to do it. The stove was made with this in mind.

Had an Integra for many, many years. Wore that stove out, it was a great stove, and we miss it a lot because they're not sold in our part of the country any more...

I scrape down the burnpot just about everytime I add pellets into the hopper while stove is running and don't take too long 10-15 seconds.
The max I can go is about 7 days (running 24 hrs per) before I need to shutdown and vaccum ash out in pan and a thourough cleaning of burnpot.
A cheap investment is a small 6 inch wire brush brush for scraping burnpot.

I usually clean mine out once a week. With dirtier pellets, more often.

I guess the best answer would be: whenever the pot looks like it needs it.

I'm so glad i dont have to ever deal with clinker's or ash buildup in my burnpot.....Whitfield, the first and still the BEST!!

Phoenix Hatchling said:

I'm confused. Empty the burn pot of what? Doesn't ash fall out on its own, or do you mean empty it of pellets? Klinkers (if you get any) can get scraped and removed when you add another bag.

Click to expand...

No, not all ash exits a burn pot in a drop feed system, nor does it all exit your pusher feed system's burn pot.

Your feed system however pushes a lot more of it out of the way than a drop feed system does especially if the drop feed system's fuel/air ratio isn't correct.

The air flow in a drop feed system is what removes the ash in a drop feed system.

If you start with a properly adjusted air/fuel mixture and a clean vent system a drop feed system should be able to go through a good number of bags of pellets before the burn pot needs to be emptied.

Frequently what happens is that the air/fuel ratio isn't correct, the burn pot builds up at the same time the vent system (which starts just above the burn pot) gets loaded up with more than the normal amount of ash so any subsequent fuel/air adjustments are less than optimal.

There should only be a single layer of pellets in the burn pot at any time with a drop feed system, said another way, you should always be able to see the bottom of the burn pot.

To the OP,

Now since the question was how full should you let it get before cleaning the burn pot out, no higher than halfway. The fill up process really accelerates because the airflow is no longer optimal.

Here is a link to some pellet comparisons done by one hearth.com member you should take a look at the ash volumes and weights to get a feel for the differences in pellets that indicate what your stove needs to be able to handle in ash extraction: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/60581/

Once a day during busy burning .. no need to do it every time you start it up..