Of all the different stoves, what are some of the most common ways they have to clean ashes out?

BigBadJohn86 said:

My Summers heat 50-sfp12lc has a maybe 2" or 3" square piece of steel with a loop of round stock welded on top so you can pick it up with a poker. I guess youre supposed to scrape all the ashes into this tiny hole so they fall into an ash pan that is about the same dimensions as a 9x13 cookie baking pan. There has to be better features on other stoves and with bigger ash pans. I dont even know if I want to attempt to clean ashes out of my stove with coals/fire in it, but once I get a fire going I dont like to let it completely go out

Are there any stoves that are easy to clean ashes out and if so what models?

Click to expand...

I run three stoves:

Vigilant: No ash pan
Heritage: Ash pan
Encore: Ash pan

The Encores ash pan works pretty well. The Heritage's does not. I actually shovel out ash from all three stoves. I just find it quicker and easier. I usually do it in the morning when I reload the stove. I shovel and sift out the coals so they stay in the firebox.

Our BK has a pretty decent ash pan, but I still use a shovel and bucket. I just find it easier.

BigBadJohn86 said:

My girlfriend among her many other problems has asthma. I feel like it's going to make her flare up every time I shovel ashes. All of the fines just go everywhere. I just didnt know if there was an easy effective way to clean ashes out other than shoveling. Is it common practice to basically pick around the coals and try and shovel out only the ashes? I had been last year letting the fire die for like a half a day then shoveling everything out and restarting the fire from scratch. Im good for maybe 2 to 3 days again before I cant burn anymore without cleaning it out

Click to expand...

I have asthma and allergies. Every one is different in terms of what sets them off and the degree in which their asthma and allergies affect them. The ash/shoveling does not cause me any problems, but everyone is a little different.

Yes, sifting out the coals is common. No reason to let the stove die down that long, though. Morning reloads is the easiest time to clean out the ashes.

I use a shovel and pail with one extra twist. I take a shop vac with a fine (drywall) dust filter installed. As I drop each shovel load slowly and carefully into the ash bucket, I hold the nozzle about 6 to 8 inches above the top of the can and suck up all the fine dust rising out of the can. No muss, no fuss, keeps it a very clean operation. Been doing that for the last 5 years with great results. I also rake my coals to one side of the stove before cleaning the accumulated ash from the other side. Whole operation takes about 5 minutes, then reload and refire.

Be a lot like Christmas when I was 16 years ago and my dad bought me a Chevelle...a Chevy Chevelle...no a snow shovell. Or in this case an ash shovel. (wasn't very funny then either)

KodiakII said:

...my dad bought me a Chevelle...a Chevy Chevelle...no a snow shovell...

Click to expand...

That joke does not come across as well in written form and is better spoken with a French Canadian accent.

A lot of people that do have ash pans never use them. Some replace the cover with some firebrick or simply flip it over so the loop is out of the way.

I use a shovel and pail to remove ashes.

Ash pan here.

I might rake ashes down during a daily burn but I only dump the ash pan about every 3rd or 4th day. Because I rake during the day but only dump at the beginning of the day I can be fairly sure there are no hot coals in the ash pan because I it's normally been at least 8 hrs. after the last rake. I never remove coals. Ash pan is carried outside, dumped into a securely covered bucket until that smaller bucket is filled (takes about 3 weeks to fill) then the little bucket is dumped into a large galvanized garbage can and then those contents are posted on Craig's List and there is always a taker. Recycling in a major way!

BigBadJohn86 said:

My girlfriend among her many other problems has asthma. I feel like it's going to make her flare up every time I shovel ashes. All of the fines just go everywhere. I just didnt know if there was an easy effective way to clean ashes out other than shoveling. Is it common practice to basically pick around the coals and try and shovel out only the ashes? I had been last year letting the fire die for like a half a day then shoveling everything out and restarting the fire from scratch. Im good for maybe 2 to 3 days again before I cant burn anymore without cleaning it out

Click to expand...

I'll ask the regulars to please bear with me one more time as I've posted this many times in the past. First, there is no reason to get ash dust; none. I learned really fast when I was a young lad how to handle the ashes. Being a young lad and getting my first chore with the stove, that first chore was to empty ashes from 2 heating stoves and one cooking stove. I was happy and really tackled the task with vigor and was so proud....until mother then handed me my next job. That was to dust the entire house because ash dust was all over the place.

Needless to say, I learned really fast how to empty ashes after that. It really is easy and no, you do not have to wait for a cold stove. Simply put, we use a poker and sort of slide the coals to one side and scoop out the ashes with a small ash shovel. Then we move the coals back and scoop out the ashes from that side. We also try to keep 1-2" of ashes in the bottom of the stove. But there is one little trick to doing this and not causing dust.

Never, never overfill the shovel. Handle the ashes as if it were the finest china dishes or fragile eggs. Make your movements super slow and lower the shovel into the ash bucket. Never, never, never dump the ashes from the shovel. Gently place the shovel at the bottom and then gently slide the shovel out from under the ashes. There is a big difference between putting the ashes off the shovel vs. sliding the shovel out from under the ashes. Again. Do the sliding gently and you will not get any ash dust.

Okay, end of lesson for today in emptying ashes 101.


EDIT: Our present stove is our first one that has not had an ash pan. We were a little afraid of how it would be to empty the ashes. Now that we've had the stove for a while we like it much better than having an ash pan.

We have a Harmon with a huge ash pan that lets us go 2+ weeks of continuous burning before emptying. It's a nice solid pan with a good solid handle. In the a.m. we use a shovel or poker to slide coals around, the ash falls into the pan through the grate, we reload the stove, we're done. If the pan gets full, we haul it out, dump it into a metal trash can, replace it, reload the stove, we're done. We've never had a problem with ashes with this stove.

Made sense to me but I grew up a stone throw from New Brunswick and french was my first language.

LLigetfa said:

KodiakII said:

...my dad bought me a Chevelle...a Chevy Chevelle...no a snow shovell...

Click to expand...

That joke does not come across as well in written form and is better spoken with a French Canadian accent.

A lot of people that do have ash pans never use them. Some replace the cover with some firebrick or simply flip it over so the loop is out of the way.

I use a shovel and pail to remove ashes.

Click to expand...

Most of the Harman stoves we looked at had a grate as well as a couple of the Vermont Casting wood stoves. You just stir the as into the bottom every day then take the pan out when its full. They do make ash vacuums as well you move the hot ash to the side and suck the cool out. I don't think they work as well as a careful shoveling job though.

Pete

Slow and steady with the shovel gently slide ashes into bottom of metal bucket, no dust. Also learned here about raking coals to middle front so inlet air will burn'm up and light off fresh load of fuel. I'm still looking for the perfect method to sort/sift/separate coals from ash before the shovel goes in the stove, ideas?

My stove has no ash pan. I push the ashes to one side and put a small baking pan inside the stove, shovel the ashes into the pan, cover the pan while still inside the stove the remove pan and bring it outside and put in metal ash bucket. Works for me.

Once a week push ashes through opening into ash pan which has a lid that fits real tight so ashes or fines don't scatter during transport. In my opinion the King ashpan works well and holds quite a bit,glad I got it.

Slow and steady has always worked for me as well... never have had an airborne ash problem.

BigBadJohn86 said:

A guy at work has a wonderwood or the ashley version maybe. Im not sure. But he was telling me that he just rakes the ashes over the grate and they fall into the pan and then he empties the pan out. I was curious if there were things like this on some wood stove models. The wonderwood is too big of a stove for my house and I dont like the back flu. I want a more typical wood stove. Black with a front glass and top flu

Click to expand...

My little Woodstock Keystone has a great ash pan system just like the one you describe. The bottom of the fire box has a slotted grate and raking the coals before reloads forces the fine ash to fall down into the ash pan. I empty the pan every other day or so and never have to worry about being extra careful with a shovel and bucket because eventually you will make a mess no matter how careful you are.

My Enerzone leaves the coals in the back of the stove. When I get up, I take three shovelfulls of ash out of the front of the stove before I pull the coals forward. Small shovelfulls. My stove has an ash pan, but I don't care for it.

I really like the trap door on the Pacific Energy Super 27. The ash pan is 8x12 and 4.5 inches deep.

aroth said:

I really like the trap door on the Pacific Energy Super 27. The ash pan is 8x12 and 4.5 inches deep.

Click to expand...

Same here. I've done it both ways with my stove and IMO I think it's much faster and cleaner to use the ash pan. No fiddling around with a pail, shovel and the slow movements so as to not stir up any dust. I do agree the slow and steady method works well but it's so much easier to use the ash pan! I do it in the morning when the coals are in the back and I just scrape the front ash into the pan, then close the flap and rake coals forward to relight.

I usually shovel out the stove every second day and dump the ash pan maybe twice a week, but then I have a small stove. I did try to let the pan fill up and not empty it out at all, but I found that I then had to clean out the stove more often. Using the pan, I seemed to have less ash to shovel out, between pan dumpings, if that's possible.

Of our five (5) previous stoves, three (3) did have ash trays, two (2) did not.
Looking back in perspective, the units with trays made as much mess, if not
more, than the units that had none. Our current stove is without, so I kinda have
the ash disposal down to an science to minimize the mess, yet make use of
the unburt coals.

No ash pan on my stove. I scoop out all the ash and coals and place them carefully in the bucket as Backwood Savage describes. It works pretty well - my wife is very picky about dust and she generally can't tell when I've emptied the ashes. I sift the ash from the coal outside. Ashed get spread across the property (it is a lot easier when we have snow so i don't worry about fires) and coals go in the garden. I guess I could out the coals back in the stove but charcoal is supposed to be great for the soil. I haven't really added enough to the garden to know yet.