Raking coals forward?

Yes. It burns front to back in a more controlled fashion. Just leveling it out and reloading results in a much more robust burn which is usually hotter and can lead to reduced burn times.

As far as I know, the air comes in from the front, so the front of the ashes burn up first, leaving coals in the back. Take them forward in an effort to average out a level bed.

Couple things. If you rake the coals forward you can lay in a couple splits on the bare floor of the stove behind the coal pile EW ( or left to right if you prefer) then having now a three piece level base fill the stove N-S ( or front to back if the nomeclature fits you better) up to the top.

My stove manual says to lay all my cord wood in left to right, parallel to the glass; but I don't like having burning splits roll off the pile and crash into the door glass.

With the loading door barely cracked open all the air flow will hit the coals and get the rest of your new load lit off pretty quick. Plus the old coals will burn down better in front by the airwash on most stoves, so when you go to reload again you aren't dealing with an ever increasing bed of coals.

I am sure there are exceptions, on my Ashford 30 it is the quickest way I have found to get the new load burning good to get the cat back up into the active range as quickly as possible.

Gareth96 said:

What's the logic behind raking the coals forward vs making a level bed? Is it so it burns front to back?

Asking for a BK Princess..

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Loading a load of dry wood on level bed of hot coals can easily lead to an overfire in many stoves due to rapid outgassing of the volatile components. You have way more control over the burn when raking all the coals towards the door and adjusting with the air control the burn rate.

Good to know, i thought it was a tube stove thing. My PE would go nuke if you didn't rake. I have not been raking my coals forward on the BK. On mine you would have to forget it on 3 for awile for it to get too hot. Last night i threw 4 decent size splits on a red hot 6" coal bed. It lite right up, i had it on Cat and turned down for the night in 10 minutes.

I will try it though, i like the idea of having a short split E/W behind the coals and then stack em all N/S.

Level bed of coals In my Princess. Sometimes I rake them forward a little to create a reward slope so I can load NS & EW rounds without the fear of a glass impact. I do break them down and level them as much as possible. This all depends of the wave of heat that rolls out at the time.

Never had it near an over fire. Leave it on 3 with the current -23C weather and it would pool on the floor.

I've never noticed a difference in overfire if I loaded on a spread out coal bed. As long as I turn down the air in time all it helps is to get it going more quickly. My firebox isn't very deep so there isnt much raking forward to be had anyhow. The lowered main burn area behind the little stubby andirons is, I dunno, maybe 8-10" deep? Then there is another maybe 3 inches raised up sill by the door, for 13-14" total front to back. I don't like to pull them up to close to the door anyhow and take a chance of them spilling out (yet it still seems to happen a lot). If I have a lot of chunky coals and not enough time to burn them down, I may rake them to one end.

How far down do most of you let the coal bed burn down before you rake and reload? Sometimes I will have a good amount of coals and often too many coals to rack forward without the coal heap being too high.

Am I reloading too soon?

What's the temp of your stove when you rake the coals? I determine the need for a reload by the temp of my insert. Usually at about 350 F when there is maybe a 2" layer of coals in the bottom. If I need more heat I may rake them earlier and burn them down a bit before a reload.

Grisu said:

What's the temp of your stove when you rake the coals? I determine the need for a reload by the temp of my insert. Usually at about 350 F when there is maybe a 2" layer of coals in the bottom. If I need more heat I may rake them earlier and burn them down a bit before a reload.

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The same as you... 300-350. I guess you have a point, I could rake them forward and let them burn down.

Also - I forgot that my issue with raking too much forward might be because of too much ash in the stove.