sugar said:
BrotherBart said:
What I have done with every stove I have ever had is let that ash drawer fill up with ashes and never touch it again. Scooping out a few shovels of ashes just ain't that hard and not as messy as ash drawers.
good advice! lock the ash drawer and forget it...maggie :kiss:
I feel like a lonely voice in the wilderness when it comes to ash pan opinions. I've had very well designed ash pans on both stoves I've used during the last 24 years. Zero mess when emptying ashes. Empty them whenever I want, at any point in the burn. During 24/7 burning, I've needed to deal with ashes once per week or maybe every 10 days. If the firebox floor has the right slot configuration, and you don't get carried away raking the ask around, you get a nice layer of insulating ash that says a relatively constant thickness. Just enough drops through each day to keep it that way most of the time. Occasionally I'll have to do just a touch of raking to keep it from building up too thick. I wish the stove had a large enough ash pan so I could go a month between worrying about ashes.
So far, I've never had an air leak around an ash pan door. Though I suppose there's always a first time.
The key things are a well designed ash system and using it the proper way. The mistake most people make is causing too much of the ash to fall through, and losing the insulating layer.
The large ash pan and well-designed door and grating were key selling points that drew me toward the Oslo.
A fire should never be coaxed with an open ash door. Too risky, if you forget to close it up. In 24 years of burning, I've never used the ash door for that purpose. On the old VC, I had to leave the front doors cracked open to get it going. On the new Oslo, I don't need to leaving anything open but the main air inlet. I consider that a blessing, as I don't have to worry about leaving a door open and forgetting about it.