Do You Save Your Coals?

I save the small coals for my forge.

I empty the ashes in my Fisher every 4-5 days. It's almost impossible to leave the coals without making a huge mess. I place all in a metal bucket and set on the concrete driveway with a lid to kill the burn. I made a sifter from 1/4" hardware mesh cloth and sift it before the next clean out. I actually have 3 mesh sizes and have been saving the charcoal dust to make briquettes some day.

Sounds like a lot of dirty work for a few blackened coals. Id rather spend that time picking up kindling the start the next fire. The general rule I told my wife to follow is twice and much kindling as she would think to start a fire and a handful of sticks to get it going again if it's been sitting a little longer than usual. If youre going to use it for the grill, that's one thing, but spend an extra hour before the snow starts to stick and collect kindling rather than sifting through your ash...

I leave the coals in to start the next load of splits, however when its really cold the coals can pile up and you need that valuable space in the stove for more wood so live coals must be shoveled out so there will be room for splits for more heat.

Constrictor, rather than wasting the coals like that, you just need to adjust how you are burning the stove. Start opening that draft to full open sooner and the problem will be gone.

I agree with Mr. Savage...

In general, at the end of my burn cycle I open the air to half on my insert for about a half hour, rake the coals forward and open the air to full for a half hour. I get a lot of heat out of the stove during this part of the burn cycle and it is a very clean part of the burn. You really shouldn't have coals left over at all... My goal is to have enough just enough coals to start a handful of kindling placed under the next load.

If your burn time is 12 hours (that's a long time for a lot of the stoves on here) and you reload before you've burned the coals through, you're losing an hour on each burn cycle. That's 2 hours a day and an extra full load at least once a week.

Depending on how your stove burns, the coals are probably in one general location and not all over mixed with ash. I would gently push the top layer, coals and all, into a good location on the firebox and then shovel out the ash - only. You do not need to get every bit of ash out of the firebox, so leave a little bit with the coals.

Backwoods Savage said:

Constrictor, rather than wasting the coals like that, you just need to adjust how you are burning the stove. Start opening that draft to full open sooner and the problem will be gone.

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I dont think you understand, sure if it let em burn longer they burn down to nothing, but on the really cold days I need all the room i can in the stove and some half burned coals gotta go. same thing if the stove were just half full of burning wood, if its really cold out you need all the wood i can in there burning.

Constrictor said:

Backwoods Savage said:

Constrictor, rather than wasting the coals like that, you just need to adjust how you are burning the stove. Start opening that draft to full open sooner and the problem will be gone.

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I dont think you understand, sure if it let em burn longer they burn down to nothing, but on the really cold days I need all the room i can in the stove and some half burned coals gotta go. same thing if the stove were just half full of burning wood, if its really cold out you need all the wood i can in there burning.

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Even if you want to load the fire box more often, at least open the air earlier so you get all the heat out of the coals that are left. With the air open more there wont be half burned coals that need to get shoveled out for space

I understand what your saying but i don't think you understand what i'm saying. ok lets say the stove is putting out 75,000 btu's an hour. lets say i need 65,000 btu's to heat properly, when the stove drops down to just coals lets say its putting out 25,000 btu's, the longer i let the coals give up their 25,000 btu's, the colder my house gets. So i can wait another couple of hours to get every bit out of the coals, meanwhile the house is down to 62 degrees, sure i have used up all the energy in the coals but the wife is now complaining about being cold. Or i can shovel out the live coals, leaving just enough to start the next fire, and keep the house and a nice 84 degrees.

x2. Use as much of the coals as you can earlier. If you aren't extending your burn time, you might as well get as much heat out of the cycle before you reload the firebox.

I think you are underestimating the btu output of just the coals. If I completely load my stove and get a really good burn going, my stove cranks out heat. When I am down to coals the btu output drops noticeable from the blower. When I open the air up and the coals all get red my heat output goes back up considerably.

Constrictor said:

I understand what your saying but i don't think you understand what i'm saying. ok lets say the stove is putting out 75,000 btu's an hour. lets say i need 65,000 btu's to heat properly, when the stove drops down to just coals lets say its putting out 25,000 btu's, the longer i let the coals give up their 25,000 btu's, the colder my house gets. So i can wait another couple of hours to get every bit out of the coals, meanwhile the house is down to 62 degrees, sure i have used up all the energy in the coals but the wife is now complaining about being cold. Or i can shovel out the live coals, leaving just enough to start the next fire, and keep the house and a nice 84 degrees.

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Constrictor, contrary to what you believe, I do understand entirely what you mean. We went through the very same thing here!

All I am saying is to open that draft a lot sooner than you have been. However, you are only giving a 10,000 btu difference in output which is not a lot! On our stove, let's say we are burning at 600 degree stove top temperature. When the temperature drops to around 450, we simply open up the draft and it will hold at that temperature for a long time. That is enough so the house does not get cold.

In the very coldest part of winter it definitely is a bit more difficult and that is when we will add a small split or 2 to the top of the coals to keep the temperature up until the coals burn down. I like to use our soft maple for this but pine will work great too or any hot and fast burning wood. The key is to try to maintain the temperature while at the same time burning down the coals and it does work. At least I can tell you that it does work with good dry wood. If your wood is maybe not quite as dry as it could or should be then that is a different problem and I will agree that could be more difficult.....but it still could be done.