Ash Dump in hearth - good idea?

[mchristo]

We are having a new home constructed and the fireplace has an ash dump installed right in the center of the firebox. I asked the builder what it was and he explained that you open the door and dump the ashes into the hole, then clean it out from a clean out door in the basement below.

that means we will have to have a cleanout door open in the room below vs closing it in with framing and sheetrock. its a finished basement.

what are the advantages and dissadvantages of having an ash dump like this installed in the fireplace? he offered to take it out and close it in with a firebrick, so I'd never know it was there.

someone from Massachuesetts told me its code to have one on new costruction fireplaces there, so I'm thinking it must be some kind of a safety thing? We are in CT so it may or may not be code in my area. Must not be if he's offereing to remove it.

thanks!

 

[begreen]

Sounds like a convenience feature more than anything else.

 

[fossil]

Very typical of traditional masonry chimney structures. Ashes fall down into the hollow cavity of the masonry chimney foundation, and a cleanout is provided. Both the houses my family lived in while I was growing up had that sort of setup. One of my chores was to clean out the ashes from time to time. One house had an exterior chimney, and so the cleanout door was outside. The other house had an interior chimney, and the cleanout was in the (unfinished) basement. There's no reason I can think of that you have to have it, it will just mean that the only way to remove ashes from your fireplace will be to shovel them out the front, and you'll need to pay attention to how/when you do that. With the door in the floor, hot embers or whatever are no problem, because all the stuff just falls down into a masonry cavity. You can't be so nonchalant about it if you're shoveling out the front of the firebox in the living space. No biggie, zillions of us do it with our woodstoves & inserts, just takes a bit of thought and the right equipment. Rick

 

[Ashful]

I've owned two houses with this sort of rig, but can say 100% I would not want this if the basement was finished, particularly carpeted.

In one case, I had the clean-out door in an unfinished (flagstone on dirt floor) basement, and it was a total non-issue with hot embers, dust, etc. In the other case, it was a 1950's house with pine paneling in a finished basement, but a non-combustable tile floor, and so we were a little more careful with dust, but still no great fire concern. However, if your basement is carpeted like many finished basements today, a clean-out in the basement would scare the hell out of me.

On the flip side, I've also owned a half dozen fireplaces with no clean-out. This is the way to go, IMO. You just bring a metal pail into the house once a week, and shovel the ashes into it, carrying the mess outside. No embers outside the hearth, and a fairly quick/easy job.

 

[Applesister]

We had an Ash cleanout in our fireplace at our summer home. My father built the camp and fireplace. The basement was a crawl space of cinderblock construction. The Ash cleanout trap door opened to the outdoors. It was below the fireplace interior opening into the camp. Sometimes it got used and sometimes it didnt, it was just as easy to remove the ashes with an ash pail.

 

[bholler]

Most of them we see have never been cleaned out they just keep dumping ashes in eventually it fills up and then they want us to clean it out. We have done a few but now we usually say no thanks it is a real pain.