I'm not seeing any more ash than with my other wood either. 8 hours??? You must get 16 hour burns from a load of hardwood! The best I've been able to do so far is 6 hours but at that point there really wasn't enough coals to start a fire without a fuss. I'm only a few years into this and have a habit of splitting my wood to small. Maybe with some larger splits I could stretch it a bit...