Burn pot mods for ash buildup?

[Mr4btTahoe]

Hey guys...

So I'm running this little TSC special Ashley mini stove. After getting the over-feed issue corrected, it's been great for what we use it for.

Problem I'm having now is (which I'm sure is somewhat normal).. after a 18-24hr burn period on low, the burn pot is full to the brim of ash. That means before I leave for work, I have to pull the burn pot (still hot), dump it and get it back going.. otherwise it'll overflow.

Is there anything I can do to help prevent this? Any modifications that can be made to the burn pot or how I'm running the stove?

My big stove in the shop doesn't do this. I can run it for hours and several hoppers before needing to clean it out.. this little stove is every 18-24 hours.

The problem seems to be that the stuff in the bottom of the pot turns hard and blocks the holes... then the ash just piles up.

I don't mind tinkering. I can get another burn pot just to toy with.

Thoughts?

 

[Ssyko]

Your gonna have to scrape the pot at least once a day. If your pellets burn kinda dirty and a lot more ash then you’ll need to do it more often. I haven’t heard of any mods for ashley stoves, that doesn’t mean ther is none but none i have seen

 

[tlc1976]

Is this for the 5710 stove? I see it has the same control board part numbers as mine. So it likely runs pretty similar.

What kind of pellets are you burning? Mine would do this with the Kirtland pellets which were a hardwood/softwood blend. I'd get 1 day, 2 days if I was lucky, before the burn pot would fill up like that. If I gave it more air the fire would go out. Sometimes the fire still did go out.

What helped just enough, was to wire the exhaust fan to switch, bypassing the control board, to force it on full speed from a power outlet. Then use the damper to control the air. It also helped to suck out the smoke if the fire went out, and to keep the dust out when cleaning.

But what really solved it was switching to the Pro Pellets, which are full hardwood. Now I can go for a week or more, and the pot never builds up, and the fire never goes out, and the whole thing runs cleaner. Others have said to use full hardwood pellets in these stoves. I think it's because softwood burns quicker, and sometimes burns out between pellet loads. And with these stoves you are stuck with the factory programming.

I still run the bypass switch because it gives it a little better burn, but it still burns fine without it.