Burning, realoading, and ash pan door

[HouseCrusher]

This is goin to be my first winter buring the new Oslo. Would like to keep the stove going as close to 24/7 as best i can. Just one thing ive got a question about. The manual says not to open the asp pan door with a fire going. So the plan would be to come down in the morning with some coals left. Throw some wood on and get the stove up to temp again. When it comes time to dump the ash pan there is still goin to be some coals left in there. Hopefully enough to light off the splits i just put in. Will the heat from the coals do anything to my ash grate? Or are they talking about opening the pan door up when its a raging fire? Maybe just be quick with opening the ash door in the morning when there is less heat. I will figure it out but i just wanted to hear from some other people. Dont want to screw up my investment i just made.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

When the stove is cool in the morning, rake all live coals to one side. Open ash grate and drop ash into pan. Leave enough ash to cover the grate and any air holes around plug. Close grate and rake coals over. Add splits.


Matt

 

[SolarAndWood]

No harm in opening the ash door or any door for that matter at the coaling stage of the burn. You may find it helpful to rake the coals and then let them burn down a bit before reloading if they start to build up.

 

[Corey]

Usually - on the few days I burn 24/7 - I get up in the morning rake ash into the pan / separate the coals into a pile. Put in a few new splits in and either crack the ash pan door to get some air under the coals (fastest way to get restarted) or use this time to empty out the ash pan itself. Having a good draft through the stove is almost like a small vacuum cleaner when the ash pan door is opened...any fly ash gets sucked back in the stove, so less in the room. The few minutes the pan is out for dumping never seems to hurt anything.

The flip side is - if you crack open the ash pan or door, you're bound to get busy doing something else and forget at least once. This can lead to a big pucker factor, though probably not much damage if the stove is installed and maintained correctly.

 

[begreen]

And be sure to clean ash accumulation behind the ash pan before putting the pan back in. Otherwise the ashpan door won't close tightly.

 

[fraxinus]

I found it very helpful to have two ash pans (and a lid) for my F600. Sliding out the full pan and replacing it with the empty one can be done very quickly. The cover goes over the full tray for carrying it outside. You can buy a second pan from Jotul, but a sheet metal shop made me both the second pan and cover for considerably less than just the Jotul pan.

In regard to BeGreen's comment about ashes overflowing the pan and preventing door closure: prevention is much better than cure, IMHO. You don't want to be reaching into the pan area attempting to remove spilled ashes with a hot stove and the ash pan door wide open. Much better to frequently - daily for me in cold weather - empty the pan. Two pans makes this much easier.

 

[grommal]

Burned our new Oslo 24/7 last season. For me, the ash pan needed to be emptied every 5-7 days to avoid overflow and spillage. As long as you don't let it get too full, you should get very little ash behind the pan. I did not have to clean that area out until spring cleaning after shutdown for the year. I think the best operation of this stove involves VERY LITTLE raking of the coals. The more you rake, the more you cause very small coals to drop into the ash pan and basically stop burning as they get smothered in the ash. This wastes fuel and fills up the ash pan MUCH more quickly. I raked in the morning just enough to move the ash away from the doors, and some mornings didn't even require that - just toss in the next load. Aside from that, the coal/ash bed burned fully and dropped the ash into the pan pretty much automatically. I only ever raked more than that if the coal/ash bed was building up too high, which was very rare. For a while, I'd pull the ash pan to see how full it was every day, but it only needed to be emptied once or twice a week. The key is minimal raking.

 

[firefighterjake]

24/7 burner with the Oslo now for two years . . .

The ash pan is great -- one of the best features in this stove. Using hardwood in the dead of winter I only have to dump my ash pan once to twice a week . . . I prefer to do it twice a week to keep the ashes from over-filling the pan and getting behind the pan . . . like Grommal by doing this I get very few ashes dropping behind the pan . . . but being the guy I am I always take the time to shovel out whatever ash does spill into the ash pan box.

I generally dump my ashes in the morning . . . like Grommal I do just a bit of raking . . . I rake up some of the ash if it has built up relatively high, but I try to keep most of the live coals and a layer of ash about 1-2 inches in the firebox. After raking things up I often clean the glass from any smudges, fly ash, etc. and then dump the ashes. Since the stove is relatively cool, it's not a big deal to open the ash door and remove the pan, put the ash pan down on the hearth and then shut the ash pan door . . . and then it's a short trip to outside where I dump the ashes into a 10 gallon covered metal bucket to cool before the ashes go into the woods, garden or driveway.

The short time that the ash pan door is open during this time frame of burning is not an issue . . . as you alluded to the real concern are folks using the ash pan door to get the fire started . . . I started making that mistake my first year until I realized how easy it is to damage the stove . . . do a search and you'll find actual Oslo users who learned this the hard way. Keeping the side door ajar is OK to get the fire going . . . but forget about using the ash pan door . . . and as another member mentioned when you leave the door ajar you really want to stay in the area.

 

[Wood Heat Stoves]

they need to put that disclaimer in the book to prevent overfiring.
tons of people use the ash pan door to help get a quick start-up, but leaving it open with a load of wood is bad

 

[summit]

the reason for the issue using an ash pan door o start up is this: It is NOT usually because the cast gets too hot and makes a crack happen (in fact, the stove hardly gets to any kind of operating temp if you are standing by w/ the ash door open). It IS because the cast heats up quickly in ONE spot and not all at once. One area of cast (around the ashpan) is going blazes, while the rest stays relatively) at room temp. This uneven distribution of heat across the base plate creates the cracks.

 

[grommal]

the reason for the issue using an ash pan door o start up is this: It is NOT usually because the cast gets too hot and makes a crack happen (in fact, the stove hardly gets to any kind of operating temp if you are standing by w/ the ash door open). It IS because the cast heats up quickly in ONE spot and not all at once. One area of cast (around the ashpan) is going blazes, while the rest stays relatively) at room temp. This uneven distribution of heat across the base plate creates the cracks.

And the grate under the white hot coals can even get local melting if left in this "blast furnace" condition too long. And since the pathway up the flue is unrestricted, the flue temperatures can get hot enough to ignite any creosote and result in a chimney fire.

Using the ash pan door for any purpose other than emptying the ash pan with a relatively cool stove is just a really bad idea.