Cleaning out ash - how often?

[Hills Hoard]

hi guys...how often should i clean out the ash from my insert?...i only burn wood on the weekends and at the moment i clean it out once every 3-4 weeks at this stage..does a cleaner insert improve performance?..cheers

 

[Beer Belly]

My understanding, a good bed of ash is best for producing heat, but I can't say for sure from experience, Wife pretty much cleans the stove every time I turn my back

 

[Hills Hoard]

My understanding, a good bed of ash is best for producing heat, but I can't say for sure from experience, Wife pretty much cleans the stove every time I turn my back

cheers...i thought that might be the case....but after a few weeks it builds up too much and starts to take up room in the insert......maybe because im doing stop start burning...?...

 

[David.Ervin]

During heating season, I *nearly* empty the ash out of mine about once every 5 days or so, depending on how much it's building up. A bed of ash and coals on the bottom seems to help get the next load going, and maybe spreads out the incoming air so it burns more evenly. For this reason, I'll leave anything that looks like it's still black coal chunks in the stove and scrape out the white / grey ash.

 

[bholler]

take out a few shovels fulls a day to maintain a nice ash bed it will work better

 

[BCC_Burner]

The lodgepole pine and subalpine fir I burn a lot of out here produces basically no ash. I burned between 1.5 and 2 cords of it without cleaning out the ashes in my NC-30 and they were never more than 2 inches deep. It's pretty impressive, but I bet I cleaned the ashes out of my stove about 6 times in my 8 month heating season.

 

[Bluezx636]

I burned 2.5 cords of wood last winter and only clean out ash 4-5 times. Thats 20-25 gallons of ash for the season.