Best way to remove ash from active stove?

I'll take a stab at it.

Turn off all fans, blowers, and send the wife, dog and kids outside, you want as little movement as possible around the stove front.

With the stove at the end of its "burn cycle" I rake all the ashes towards the front of the stove, i use a "kol keeper" shovel to shovel a scoop from the left side (door hinge is on the right) and gently sift the ashes in the back right corner of the stove. then place the "keeper" coals in the back left corner. repeat,

as the ash pile builds in the back right, i sift by letting the bottom of the "kol keeper" rest near or just on the top of the ash pile in the back right, limiting the amt of fine ash that escapes.

Once completed, there is a pile of ash with small coals in the back right, bigger keeper coals and a small amt of ash in the back left of the stove box. Now, with my five gal bucket resting on the front bottom left edge of the stove, i use the stove shovel and slide the shovel into the existing ash in the bucket. I never completely empty my ash bucket, as the first shovel of ash into an empty bucket will often create a cloud of ash. The trick is to slide the partially full shovel of ash from the stove into the existing ash in the bucket while the top of the bucket is as close to or within the opening of the stove. Stove should be warm, not hot or not cold to limit the ash scatter.

Lid of the bucket is on top of the stove, when completed with the shoveling, i try to replace the lid of the bucket before moving the bucket from the front of the stove, and definitely before walking the bucket out the door.

Hope it makes sense,

I tend to push ashes to the back until, well until there's not enough room.
Then I'll scoop some out slowly with four or five one pound coffee cans.
Cans go on the canvas log tote or a bunch of newspapers and are carried outside and left on the concrete for a couple days, then disposed of.
No shoveling for me. Too messy. A couple scoops is good enough.

If I get a lot of oak coal/clunkers I also have a garden rake with no handle that I'll snap a vice grips on one end and use like a comb to try to slowly do a little separating.

I have a set of fireplace tools in the garage that are just plain too messy to bother using. Only thing still in the house is the poker.





Luckily I have a bunch of old coffee cans.
The metal ones.
These new plastic ones and the chipboard and mylar or whatever they're made of are useless for any reuse I can think of.

During coldest part of the winter this is the most challenging as I try to use the stove as our exclusive heat...

I wait until the stove is in the coolest part of the burn, then let the coals burn down a bit more This means it is a morning job. Then I use my poker to shift all coals to the back of the stove (I have a side door so I move them to the right) and carefully scoop the ash out from the front. Hot coals will be on top of the ash - I simple take large scoops and then tilt them toward the back of the stove so the hot top with coals slides off onto the coals pile in back of the stove (on the left). Then I carefully (slowly) pull the scoop out and put in the bucket (sliding the ashes off, not dumping). Everything is done slowly and with gloves on. My 'shovel/scoop' is one of those cheap sets from Lowes - I needed one in a hurry when I got my first stove and I haven't replaced it... anyway, on really hot stove cleanings the shovel smokes a bit which really stinks.

The ash that gets airborne (as well as most of the shovel stink) gets sucked back into the stove and up the flue so this really turns out to be a pretty clean job. I use a 'normal' ash can with lid, nothing too fancy. I have to tilt it to put the shovel in and when I'm done the ash is all piled on one side. I have learned to put the lid on the can before I stand the can back up as the 'dust slide' in the can really can kick up some mess.

Anyway - once all the ash is out from the front (this is where the bulk of it is as I rake coals to front prior to each reload), I am done for that time. I then level off what is left and shuffle the coals to get the ash to settle under the coals, then rake the coals back to a pile in the front of the stove, load and get on with the burn/day.

Cooler stove cleanings go much the same but fewer/no coals to deal with and I may then get to dust off the glass which is the one thing I don't like about the FV. To clean the glass I have to reach all the way in - hot stove this is tough to do. On the bright side it doesn't get all that dirty, but somehow it gets a dusting of ash and such that I like to take off every couple weeks to restore it to 'crystal clear' viewing. That just isn't likely to happen in January.

My first stove had an ash pan. I used it and thought it was really nifty all in all, but I would hate to try and empty it with a hot stove as opening that ash pan door would turn the coals into a furnace. I didn't have to worry much about that as I never had much in the way of coals left in the morning unless I got up to feed in the middle of the night. Of course I had to empty that thing about every day (two at most) which now that I only empty ashes once a week (or less) I realize was a bit of a pain.

Why don't u just use the ash pan....dump it when the stove has cooled some in the am...that's what it is there for.

ChillyGator said:

Why don't u just use the ash pan....dump it when the stove has cooled some in the am...that's what it is there for.

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+1

I'm a dedicated ash pan user on our Oslo, and was also on our old VC. I do almost no raking at all, and just empty what falls naturally into the pan.

This is what we use for the ashes.

For cleaning the ashes, we just let the stove burn down to coals and then clean out. But watch the fire. Just before the stove is down to all coals, we turn the draft open full and leave it there. The coals burn down pretty fast and you don't have to go long periods with only a little heat. For emptying the ashes, like most folks, we use the poker and slide the coals to one side, scoop out the ashes (not all) then slide the coals the other way and clean that side. Job done. Take ashes outdoors and sit on CEMENT. Reload stove. Relax.

rake the big coals to one side, shovel the ash and small stuff into a covered metal bucket. Once a week.

River19 said:

As for just using the ash pan..........

A. It holds maybe 1/3 of what I want to remove
B. Opening the door as you know causes the fire to flare from the serious increase in draft which makes cleaning the other 2/3 of ash more sketchy

I'm not adverse to using the pan, there is just more to be done than just using that little pan.

I was curious as to what everyone else was doing.

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I know it's a different stove and different sized ash pan . . . but one of the best features about the Jotul Oslo is the functional ash pan. I'm not sure about your stove . . . but on my stove, depending on how hard I am running the stove, I only dump the pan once or twice a week and that's going 24/7 in the winter . . . you want to keep some ash in your firebox as you no doubt know . . . but even if you have to remove the ash pan more often I can only imagine it would be easier than some other techniques.

As for opening the door . . . I tend to dump my ashes before reloading after a long burn . . . the short time the ash pan door is open to remove the pan and then closed is a very short time . . . door is opened, pan is removed, door is shut, ashes are taken out and dumped, door is opened, pan is placed back inside and door is shut . . . there is little to no mess with ashes dropping down into the ash pan area . . . again . . . this is the case with the Oslo . . . it could very well be a different story with your model.

I also have the 3cb. The ash pan on this stove is much better than on my other stove the Heritage. I use ash pan when I need to clean out the ashes on the Jotul. I like that the ash falls through the grate while the coals stay up in the firebox. On my Heritage I rake all the coals forward, open up the primary air, and let them burn down a bit. I scoop the ash from the back of the firebox and let the coals burn in the front.

River19 said:

Koal Saver has been ordered just for giggles as a Christmas present to me.........what the heck....it can't hurt to try it.......

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Watch the paint fumes with the first use of the "kol keeper", they are quite nasty when the paint first burns off!

In the morning I move aside hot coals, take 2 or 3 scoops of ash out, then redistribute the ash and center the hot coals. Does the trick for me.

Admittedly, sometimes go two days without clearing ash, but that is a rare occasion.

Using a metal can with cover to hold the ashes.

I have a 20gal trash can with locking lid. I simply posistion it close to the stove. One hand on the lid, one on the scooper. Get a scoop of what ever, ashes coals or wood pieces I don't care, and carefully quickly open trash lid pour in and close. Can holds about 2 weeks worth. Throw out on the garden at my convenience.

;-P Personally,

I wait for the stove to cool before unloading the ash. Man what I would give for an ash pan
I say this becuase using the fossil fuel, while waiting for the stove to cool, is MUCH cheaper than the divorce caused by fly ash in the living room.

I'd like to relay a story a friend told me yesterday and it is something I never thought of. He got up in the morning and cleaned some ashes out of his stove and threw a couple of small splits on it then went upstairs to the bathroom and did his daily routine. His wife said she smelled something so he went downstairs . He could smell it too but everything was ok with his stove. He had a small fire going and the smell wasn't coming from that. He started back upstairs and decided to fill up the stove. He put on his glove and felt something hot. He threw the glove off and realized that when he cleaned the stove somehow a small ember ended up on his glove and it had been smoldering and burned through the glove. I never have worried about such a thing. It was a freak thing but freak things burn down houses. This morning when I cleaned my ashes I did what I always do and took my gloves off and put them on top of the next load of wood. All of a sudden I thought of my friend and I will never do that again, I put them on the cement floor away from combustibles.

We have a large deep firebox on our furnace. It has a ash pan, but I don't use it often because it can be a pita. Every morning when we wake up, we will have hot live glowing coals in the rear of the firebox farthest away from the primary air. Everything in front will have burnt down to ash over the night. I will remove a few shovels of ash every morning, then rake whats in the rear to the front closest to the air and reload.

About every 8- 10 days, I turn the stove on high at the end of a burn cycle.
I burn down to a few hot coals, move to one side, shovel ashes into the coal bucket
move coals to the other side, shovel out the ashes there.
Empty bucket quickly into the snow bank somewhere where I want to kill weeds.
reload stove.

I have the BK with bottom plug/trap door into an ash pan, never used it yet,
maybe I should try it & see how well it works.
The pan just looks to be more difficult to carry out & dump than a bucket but
maybe I'll get less dust. (with a shovel & bucket, most of the dust gets sucked into the stove door, most of the time)

River19 said:

I'll try just the ashpan for a little while; with the F3 the ash pan is maybe 8" x8" (total estimate on my part) and about 2-3" deep. It works, no doubt, when I pull it out and dumpt it I then have to clean the pan box out with a few shovel-fulls as ash keeps falling into the box which won't allow the pan to slide back in to the point where the door will close........so I end up with ash box door open longer.

Overall I was just checking out how people handle it to see if I was really missing something. I figured I would aslo order up one of those koal saver shovels just for giggles to have more options depending on the mess I create.

Thanks for the help guys.

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My ash pan also allows some ash to fall behind . . . especially when the ash pan is full and over flowing . . . before putting the ash pan back I simply take a few seconds to scoop out the over-flow ash and drop it back into the ash pan . . . the short time you have the ash pan door open to do this is minimal and should not be any cause for alarm.