Ash pans, not sure I like the idea anymore.

[My Oslo heats my home]

I have the Oslo F500 and it came with an ash pan. I think initially I liked the idea of it but I now have doubts. I have found myself, last year and so far this season, to be letting the ash pan fill and leaving it there. I am having better luck with the ash in the stove than when it falls into the pan. I can better control how much I remove when I'm cleaning.

So, having said that, I'm actually considering removing the grate and placing a piece of flatstock steel or cast iron in it's place.

Has anyone else ever done anything like this? Any thoughts from non ash pan owners? Or ash pan owners that have an opinion about it??
thanks...

 

[canoe2]

I agree that ash pans are something of a mixed blessing. For the first few years I loved the one on my VC Defiant. Then the gasket needed replacing, again, and again. If the gasket isn't perfect, the stove pulls air through it and tends to run hotter than I like.
Now I have a Quad Isle Royale and I have trouble getting the ashes to fall through the grate. I've started to just shovel the ashes out of the IR.
Some of the knowlegable folks on this forum will give opinions if blocking off the grate is a good idea. I think I'll just keep the shovel handy.

 

[Huntindog1]

I am wondering if these grates your talking about is for ash and not really to let hot coals fall thru. It must be the larger stuff thats not falling thru. I think most would agree your want only the fine stuff to fall thru as hot coals are usually kept to start the next load of wood. Try raking the larger hot coals forward or out of the way and only try to get the finer ash to fall thru the grate. Once you rake the larger coals forward and the air gets to them they will heat up and should glow red for you. If they have been buried in ash alot of times coals look like their finished but a little air fires them up.

 

[logger]

People have done it, not sure if its needed though. We dont have much trouble cleaning the pan just once at the end of the season.

 

[Jags]

If you want to omit ash pan use, just allow it to fill up. And it will have an insulating value to the floor of the stove.

 

[toddnic]

Personally, I like the ash pan. When I'm starting the woodstove and it is cold, it is nice to be able to open the door on the ash pan to allow more air into the stove to get it going. Also it is nice not having to deal with an ash bucket. I did that for years having to shovel ash and it is nice not having to do that anymore.

 

[wenger7446]

I think it's a personal preference. Personally I don’t use mine.

 

[Jags]

Personally, I like the ash pan. When I'm starting the woodstove and it is cold, it is nice to be able to open the door on the ash pan to allow more air into the stove to get it going.

If you ever apply any one thing that I say - please make it this...at one point early on, I used the ashpan door to help get a fire going as you stated. Then the explosion that followed convinced me not to do that anymore. After I changed into some clean clothes, I stopped for a moment and had an epiphany:
Using the ash pan door was creating a forge like air induction to the stove. When the fire was "hot" I shut the door. The resulting off gassing of the wood was too great to simply be clamped down in the manner that I did and caused a HUGE flashback by pulling combustion air (oxygen) down the stack. I thought I was going to blow my stove into the basement. And I thank whatever was watching over me that day that I had 3 screws in every pipe seam.

Please, PLEASE, PLEASE don't use your ashpan door for startup. Don't be a Jags.
You will never forget it if it happens to you.

 

[Dakotas Dad]

No doubt that it is purely a personal choice.We used ours a couple times, decided since we front load it was easier and less mess to just shovel what we wanted out. I don't know about building a filler piece.. we just let the ash pan fill up. Left it like that.

 

[begreen]

If you want to omit ash pan use, just allow it to fill up. And it will have an insulating value to the floor of the stove.

That's how we ran the Castine. It seemed to burn better with the deep ash bed.

 

[jotul8e2]

Personally, I like the ash pan. When I'm starting the woodstove and it is cold, it is nice to be able to open the door on the ash pan to allow more air into the stove to get it going.

Never, never, never do this. It is the way a blast furnace works and neither your stove nor your flue is constructed for the temperatures that can result. You can rotate the latch on the loading door to keep it open against the frame. This will provide all the air you need to kindle a fire, and this procedure is actually suggested in the user's manual.

 

[begreen]

toddnic have you missed the posts here on cracked Jotul stove bases and grates? Using the ash pan door for air violates the warranty and can lead to a very expensive repair job. DDT.

 

[toddnic]

WOW.... I had no idea that 5 to 10 minutes initially in a cold stove would cause such an issue. It definitely makes it easier getting the fire going initially. Thanks all!

 

[begreen]

It's the extreme difference in temps between the cold iron and the forge like temps under the grate that can cause this to happen. Just leave the stove door ajar to start a fire.

 

[Jags]

And I can now qualify my term - "my stove is bomb proof". Seriously - it was no joke. It was violent enough that I was scrambling into the attic to confirm that my stove pipe had not been breached.

 

[bag of hammers]

At first when I saw this thread I was thinking "the ash pan thread - again..?". Like so many topics, this has been discussed here before, etc.... Then - enter Jags with the exploding stove story - wow - I don't recall ever reading about anything like that. That bit of advice is a keeper. Guess it's not such a bad thing, kicking around the same topics each year...? I feel like a schmuck now...

 

[begreen]

This is why there must be 3 screws per pipe joint.

 

[Jags]

Then - enter Jags with the exploding stove story -

I don't even want to venture a guess at how many times I have recited that story. And I will do it again and again if it will stop one person from experiencing what I did.

I do believe that begreen has his own story of such a thing happening (maybe on a lesser scale).

 

[Highbeam]

While I think that most ash pans are quite stupid and simply a marketing item that adds complexity and failure points to a stove, I don't like the idea of modifying a stove to eliminate it. Just don't use it and monitor the system for leakage.

 

[Todd]

I've played around with my ash pan grate. Took it out and laid some firebrick down along with a slab of soapstone. It gave me a little bigger fire box and longer burns but I decided the ash pan was a better option than the old shovel and bucket.

 

[begreen]

Yes I had a pretty so bad puffback with the Castine early in the season as I was learning the stove. This was entirely my fault for feeding bottom air into a smoldering stove full of smoke. Needless to say lesson learned and not repeated.

 

[Woody Stover]

I decided the ash pan was a better option than the old shovel and bucket.

In the dead of winter, my arms will be tired from shoveling snow. The last thing I will want to do is more shoveling.

 

[My Oslo heats my home]

I appreciate all the responses, and sorry for the repost of a overly talked about subject. I'm going to hang out with the 'let the ash pan fill' idea and go from there. It's something I have been doing lately anyways. My thoughts were also on useable space too, the grate is arched and if I removed it and went with something flat I would gain a little more space.

 

[bag of hammers]

The 2200 has a nice large ash pan but the small square ash plug is pretty much a PITA so I just resort to shovel and bucket. The plug gets practically stuck tight from the ashes that work their way into any gaps after a few burns, so after removing it once to clean / inspect at the beginning of the season, I just leave it alone. I suppose other stoves / systems (e.g. those with a grate) might be more workable. The system with ash plugs are not much value IMHO.

 

[bag of hammers]

sorry for the repost of a overly talked about subject

You may have (indirectly) saved someone from a real problem by bringing this up again. I almost lost sight of the value of repeating topics - its all good.