england nc30 new user with couple ?S

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wlf89

Member
Oct 16, 2010
22
middle TN
so far im liking the heater pretty good. i wish the firebox was alittle taller makes it a pain filling it up for the night without hitting the tubes up top. but i have a couple of questions to ask mainly about cleaning out the ashes.

1. do yall shovel or use the pan? i have done both and the pan usually takes atleast 2 dumpings to clean it out, but when shoveling everything gets covered in ash dust and makes a mess. which do yall prefer?

2.every morning when i wake up the heater is filled about half way with coals, and it seems they dont burn down to ash so i can clean them out. the other day it had to be cleaned so i didnt put no wood in there, to let the coals burn down and cool off, i raked the coals around every 30mins to a hour and it was around 3pm before i could clean it out and i still had to dump alot of coals out, and the house had got very cold by this point. ive been burning mostly hickory so that might expain the amount of coals but still looks like they should burn down pretty quickly?

3. at night i close the air control all the way, should i be leaving it open alittle,and maybe that would help alittle bit with the coal problems in the morning?
 
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I made one of these for the ash, they are also available online. Mine is stainless steel should last forever. No mess, no dust but it does get warm if the ash has some coals. Try to open the air all the way at the end of the burn and rake coals forward.

fd70352cc51b49334947c8a82aa0ebd4.jpg adb50daf15b5e67acc9ef9ce8df2e421.jpg
 
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My stoves ash pan work a bit different than an NC30, I use my ash pan and do clean outs in the AM.

Try not packing it so much.
After getting the fire settled in, If you open the air control a bit (1/4 inch or so) from closed does your stack temp stay in the safe zone?
if so leave the air open a bit over nite.

We sometimes have heavy coaling and burn 24/7. The key is to burn in cycles, 8am, Burn down when we get home bout 4-5 then (smaller hot fire) and 10 ish pm (over nite).

so 3 loads daily.

Bill
 
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I shovel ash from the nc30. The ash pan is just too small. By the time it needs to be emptied there is about 3” of ash and that’s almost 5 gallons. You don’t want to keep it empty, an inch to 3 inches is good.
 
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I have that stove and I shovel the ash, I've found the ash pan to be pretty useless. Burning lots of hardwood will build up coals, especially with a deep layer of ash at the bottom to insulate those coals. I find I need to partially shovel out once per week, and I load three times per day as someone mentioned below, 6am, 6pm, and 9:30pm. The 6am and 9:30pm fires are full fireboxes, but with my particular set-up I do not turn the air all the way down, I get way too much coaling if I do that. "Cruising" set up for me is leaving the end of the air control knob about 1/2" in from the lip of the ash catcher. With that setting, the stove seems to cruise along for a while at 550 degrees or so, but every install will differ a bit. The 6pm fire is a smaller one, only to last a few hours until bedtime reload.
 
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You can really coal up an nc30 if you're burning it hard. Even with softwoods!
 

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I use a campfire style popcorn popper to empty my ash. Every other day, I take one scoop out to the ash barrel. I never need to shut my stove down for a clean out using this method.
 
I burn hardwood - mostly oak. Results with other wood fuels are beyond my ken.

I shovel. Sweeping into that little opening it too tedious. And shoveling is messy. Fortunately, mine is in my shop. If it was in the house I'd have to have some kind of enclosed shovel as referenced above.

The stove builds up a substantial amount of charcoal in the ash. It does reach some sort of equilibirum - subsequent loads burn some and leave some so that on balance the number of unburned coals stays about the same.

If the stove was taller I"d try and put more wood in and still hit the the tubes. Probably even if it was six feet high.

On a 24/7 burn it takes about five days for me to feel it necessary to clean out the ash.
 
A simple way to burn coals down well is to get a small garden rake and rake the coals forward and up, then pushing the ash to the back of the firebox, bringing the coals forward allows more direct dog house air, through a little kindling on top and they'll burn down pretty fast.
 
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kennyp2339 said:
A simple way to burn coals down well is to get a small garden rake and rake the coals forward and up, then pushing the ash to the back of the firebox, bringing the coals forward allows more direct dog house air, through a little kindling on top and they'll burn down pretty fast.
Click to expand...


Same way I do it with my 30 nc. I rake the coals towards the front and open up the air for a bit. It all turns to tiny ash pretty quick. Much easier to dump the ashes that way. I go maybe 3 weeks or so before I have to do any cleaning but I am burning all softwood that burns pretty clean.
 
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Vigorous stirring with the poker brought the charcoal to the top and let the ash drop. I'd find myself removing 6 gallons of ash at a time.

Try not closing the air down as much. Leave it open 1/4" and see what the results are.
 
It compacts down fairly tight in the stove. Id clean it out when I found I couldn't put as many rows of splits in as I wanted.

I was shocked the first time the 6 gallon can was filled, but I did it repeatably.
 
One other thing, NC30's have long fire boxes, when using the hand rake method wear a pair of welders gloves or risk getting sergeant stripes on your forearms.
 
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Highbeam said:
You can really coal up an nc30 if you're burning it hard. Even with softwoods!
Click to expand...

That's some serious coaling alright. Throwing any heat? I would think so but maybe not enough in a barn.
 
jatoxico said:
That's some serious coaling alright. Throwing any heat? I would think so but maybe not enough in a barn.
Click to expand...

Sure it’s too hot to touch and perfect for cooking but much cooler than when she’s rocking with fresh fuel. Open door for some nice radiant heat.

This is the struggle for anyone with an undersized wood burner. The nc30 is undersized for my application but it’s also about the biggest stove out there so we make the best of it.

Too bad the wood furnace market can’t make anything clean enough for Washington. That’s what I really need.
 
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I have NEVER used the ash pan on my 30 NC. I have a small child's garden rake that I ues to rake the coals forward each morning (or B4 a new fire) and open the air full throttle to let them burn brighter. This makes it easy to just add new wood right on top of the coals and go for the next burn cycle.

Actually I have been meaning to take out the metal ash hole plug and cut/grind off the little "handle" (or whatever that is sticking up) from the top of the plug. It is just a pain when shoveling ash. My shovel always seems to snag on that thing.

It is best to KEEP a nice thick layer of ash in the 30NC. I find I only clean ash out about ONCE per month. (if that).;)
 
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Highbeam said:
Sure it’s too hot to touch and perfect for cooking but much cooler than when she’s rocking with fresh fuel. Open door for some nice radiant heat.

This is the struggle for anyone with an undersized wood burner. The nc30 is undersized for my application but it’s also about the biggest stove out there so we make the best of it.

Too bad the wood furnace market can’t make anything clean enough for Washington. That’s what I really need.
Click to expand...

That's a helluva coal pile. You should get an NC13 and install it next to the NC30... shovel the coal out of the 30 and burn it down in the 13. ;)

Maybe also get an airtight garbage can and fill it with big chunks... that would be a whole summer's worth of charcoal for me.
 
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jetsam said:
That's a helluva coal pile. You should get an NC13 and install it next to the NC30... shovel the coal out of the 30 and burn it down in the 13. ;)

Maybe also get an airtight garbage can and fill it with big chunks... that would be a whole summer's worth of charcoal for me.
Click to expand...

That pic was from 5 years ago, the first year I think I had the nc30. It’s held up very well to the hard use.

After you get a half inch of ash in there, you can’t even see the little loop in the ash plug. You’re going to want to leave ash in there anyways after each cleaning so I don’t see removal of that loop as critical. Spend that effort on fitting a huge blower and convection deck!
 
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