Ash drawers and hot embers

I use my ash drawer and like it. Occasionally I empty it with hot embers. The ash goes into a metal can that sits on a stone slab in the yard. My ash pile, out back in the woods is 20 years old, about 5 ft high. The pile looks wet, and most of the time covered with snow when I dump new ash.

My stove has an ash drawer and I like it. It keeps the dust down from shoveling out ashes. I personally keep a galvanized 33 gallon trash can with lid on the back porch. I empty my ashes into that trash can and they can sit there for weeks and cool. I normally fill that can up twice per season. It's easy enough to run my hands through the top few inches feeling for warm spots, so that's what I do. Since my back porch is wood, I leave two or three insulating inches of ashes in the bottom of the can when I empty it. I spread the ashes around the yard, fill in holes, around fruit trees, in the compost pile, just where ever I feel like it at the time. I avoid concentrating all my ashes in one spot.

When the ash pan is full, I wait for a day without adding any more ash before I pull it out, then it is pretty cool. I dump it outside it a big galvanized bucket, which is set on a non-flammable surface. Before I dump that bucket, I wait for several days. But since my stove has a grated ash-handling system, no big coals go into the pan or bucket..most everything is burned out when I dump the bucket. But I still keep an eye on it for several hours. I usually dump it on the garden or compost heap.
Other ash systems besides a grated system will vary in their ease of use. The Buck 91 had a flip-up lid on the ash dump, which was about a 3.5 x 5.5" opening. It was pretty easy to use; Sweep the big coals to one side with the shovel, then scrap the ash down the dump hole (which was off to the other side) with the side of the shovel. If a stove has a plug in the hole, or some other system, it may be harder to use. If you can look in person at the stove models you are interested in, it will help you figure out whether an ash system might be usable.
The nice thing about an ash pan is that you get less ash dust floating around the house. But I have had to shovel the ash out, and dust can be kept to a minimum if you are careful. I used a long, shallow pan, held it directly under the door, then gingerly slid the ash off the shovel into the bottom of the pan. Do that when it is cold out, and you have good draft pulling any escaping dust back into the stove. In the attached pic, I have the pan on a box to take the pic but when actually shoveling ashes out, I held it there with my other hand.
The BBQ tongs are great for moving around coal chunks when structuring a re-load in a small fire box.

adrianrog said:

33 gallon trash can with lid on the back porch...I normally fill that can up twice per season.

Click to expand...

You burn that much wood in GA? You must have a bigger house to heat. I fill a EDIT: 10 gal. bucket, maybe three times. Our place is small but with minimal insulation and some air leaks, probably equivalent to heating a 1500+ sq.ft. house.
I guess it also depends on what kind of wood you burn..how ashy it is.

I just sprinkle it on snow pile. Problem solved. Works every time. Of course we get 4-8f of it every year.

Dataman said:

I just sprinkle it on snow pile. Problem solved. Works every time. Of course we get 4-8f of it every year.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you get winter there..unlike the coast.

Last Feb 19, 2018. About 1/2 had melted. Finding place for ashes is not hard. We get down to -20f sometimes. Some snow. Never seen more than 20" overnight.

I fined i get less ash flying around with the ash pan vs scooping and dumping. Ash goes right from the pan into an ash bucket for it to sit for weeks.. ash bucket gets dumped into garden.. or farm field

Made me think of the Stamford, CT Christmas house fire several years ago that killed several. Warm ashes placed in a paper bag in a mudroom.

https://www.theatlantic.com/nationa...etails-christmas-day-fire-connecticut/333803/

https://www.google.com/search?sourc...s-wiz.....0..0i131j0i3j0i22i10i30.PYh_tgKrFRc

For be people who have and don't use the ash pan, would it make sense to eventually just brick over the ash chute hole?

As for ashes, my stove usually has a long enough break from use frequently enough that the ashes are cold so can run a latex gloved hand through the ashes that have been shoveled into a metal pan. Small chunks go back into the stove, and the fine ash goes onto my soggy lawn in a failing attempt to keep the moss at bay. (I admit this sorting ashes practice is probably odd and unusual.) My property is damp from the first winter rains, when indoor fire season starts, until after it's warm enough to not need a fire.

I had an ash pan on my Hearthstone Mansfield. Never used it. I briefly had a Oslo, used the ash pan once as it dropped ashes behind the drawer and wouldn't go back in. Quickly replaced that Oslo with a Progress, no ash pan just a nice long shovel. From my first hand experience, dumping hot coals in snow can be a problem as it can catch the dry leaves underneath the snow and lead to an under the snow fire. It's an interesting sight to watch multiple smoke vents rising through the snow.

There are two questions here: What to do about hot ash and do we empty the ash pan or shovel?

First, the hot ashes. Use a two-can system. Get two galvanized ash cans with lids large enough to hold at least a month's worth of ashes. For me that takes 20 gallon cans. Fill one, then set it aside and start using the second. When the second is full you can safely dump the first and start over. Live embers can easily remain buried in ashes for three days, and I suspect that they can go twice that at times

Second, ash pan or shovel? I use the ash pan on my Oslo, shovel on my Englander.

The Oslo is no fuss, and very clean if you empty the pan before it overflows. The ash falls down through the grate and accumulates in the pan. If allowed to become too full, the ashes will be scraped off when you pull the pan out and those ashes will then get shoved to the back when you insert the pan back into place. This will prevent the door from closing. When this occurs it takes perhaps 30 seconds to shovel out the loose ash and any dust rising is pulled up into the stove.

The Englander has an ash pan, but you have to sweep the ash through a little plug down into the pan. This means you can shovel the ash out more quickly than you can sweep it into the pan. So I shovel it out. With every shovel full a fine cloud of ash rises into the air and distributes itself around the building. Fortunately this is a shop building so I can deal with it. I would not care to have this in my house, however.

I rarely use my ash drawer. It is far less mess just to scoop out the ash from the stove than it is to deal with the ash pan. Every time I use the pan I have dust and ashes spilled all around.

If you are concerned about possible hot ashes, dump some water on them.

Seems as though most folks' opinion of ash drawers depends on their first experience with them and a stove . . . and if the ash drawer design was good or not. My first few stoves had ash drawers and they worked well . . . and I'm happy to say the ash drawer in my present stove does as well.

As for the safety aspect . . . the convenience of the ash drawer is being able to just rake the coals around in the firebox and then pull out the ash drawer with little to no shoveling. Again, some folks love it . . . some don't. From there the ash drawer is hauled outside to my 5 gallon covered, metal pail where the ashes will sit typically for 3-5 weeks before I dump them. By then any coals are typically long dead . . . but just to be sure I only dump the ashes on a wet day when I use my ash pile . . . or I dump them on my snow/ice covered driveway.

firefighterjake said:

Seems as though most folks' opinion of ash drawers depends on their first experience with them and a stove . . . and if the ash drawer design was good or not. My first few stoves had ash drawers and they worked well

Click to expand...

And grate vs. no grate since no grate could be a pain. Like I said, the Buck was about as good as I've seen for non-grate, with the flip-up lid and large opening that was off to one side so you could shove the live coals to the other side, out of the way. If you had to pull a plug, then try to shove the ash down a tiny hole in the center, with no place to stash live coals, shoveling would be easier.

My old stove had an ash drawer under a grate. The tray and drawer were all one piece, and it was easy to pull the tray out completely in one motion. My habit was to empty the tray each morning, first thing, into an extra wide metal can. At this point the ashes were mostly cool enough to touch with a bare hand and had few if any red embers. If there were red embers, they were usually on the top of the pile in the tray and could be scooped back into the coals before dumping the tray.
Then, after replacing the tray, I’d stir up the coals in the firebox, knocking the prior day’s ashes into the tray to cool for 24 hours before I empty that tray the next day. Because the grate didn’t let any real coals through, only tiny embers, 24 hours was usually enough.
Living in Maine makes disposing of ashes in winter less dangerous (although not fool-proof). I generally spread the ashes across the driveway when it’s icey. This happens here enough that sometimes I wish I had more ashes stored up.

Jdenman6 said:

My old stove had an ash drawer under a grate. The tray and drawer were all one piece, and it was easy to pull the tray out completely in one motion. My habit was to empty the tray each morning, first thing, into an extra wide metal can. At this point the ashes were mostly cool enough to touch with a bare hand and had few if any red embers. If there were red embers, they were usually on the top of the pile in the tray and could be scooped back into the coals before dumping the tray.
Then, after replacing the tray, I’d stir up the coals in the firebox, knocking the prior day’s ashes into the tray to cool for 24 hours before I empty that tray the next day. Because the grate didn’t let any real coals through, only tiny embers, 24 hours was usually enough.
Living in Maine makes disposing of ashes in winter less dangerous (although not fool-proof). I generally spread the ashes across the driveway when it’s icey. This happens here enough that sometimes I wish I had more ashes stored up.

Click to expand...

That's a dang good idea, spreading ashes on the icy driveway. Ineed to start doing that; I've had 2 nasty falls on the icy driveway this year. First time I bruised some ribs, 2nd time I re-bruised the ribs and gave myself a mild concussion after bouncing me head off the ice as well.... Damn....

Jdenman6 said:

My old stove had an ash drawer under a grate. The tray and drawer were all one piece, and it was easy to pull the tray out completely in one motion. My habit was to empty the tray each morning, first thing, into an extra wide metal can. At this point the ashes were mostly cool enough to touch with a bare hand and had few if any red embers. If there were red embers, they were usually on the top of the pile in the tray and could be scooped back into the coals before dumping the tray.
Then, after replacing the tray, I’d stir up the coals in the firebox, knocking the prior day’s ashes into the tray to cool for 24 hours before I empty that tray the next day. Because the grate didn’t let any real coals through, only tiny embers, 24 hours was usually enough.
Living in Maine makes disposing of ashes in winter less dangerous (although not fool-proof). I generally spread the ashes across the driveway when it’s icey. This happens here enough that sometimes I wish I had more ashes stored up.

Click to expand...

Seems like a) I wait to spread the ashes on my icy driveway and go for weeks without any icing and end up with a bucket full of ash (like now) or b) I am like you in wishing I had more ashes to spread as I throw down ashes one day and then it snows or ices up the next.