Retaining Ash Bed & Embers in a Jotul F3CB

[davemill]

A Jotul F3CB stove came with our new house. Aside from the lack of a smoke outlet and the flue pipes installed crimp-end up instead of crimp-end down, it heats our great room nicely. But the bottom grill design allows all the ash and embers to fall into the ash drawer, so we don't get a nice glowing ember bed and the stove requires frequent attention.

I solved this by cutting down an unused stainless BBQ tray to cover the bottom grill. The slots in this tray are a lot smaller than the slots in the stove, so the ashes and embers stay in place. The stove works a lot better now!

This is the tray before cutting it to size:

This is the tray cut to size. Notice the difference in the size of the holes, compared to the woodstove grill behind it.

The new grill in place.

The start of an ember bed!

Suggestions welcome.

 

[begreen]

I just let the ash pan fill up with ash on ours. It definitely held a coal bed better then.

 

[Max W]

Our last Waterford Stanley cookstove had grates that held coals better than our newer one. The spaces on this one are pretty wide. It’s not a real problem but nice to have a bed that keeps longer. Thought about adding some kind of filler grates with smaller holes over the existing ones. Cutting down grill grates looks like a workable idea. Just recently the ashes built up when I hadn’t emptied them and we had a great bed of coals. So when I last had to empty the ashes I added a few shovels full on to the grates which helped some.

One question I had with adding something on the grates was could that create excess concentrated heat? Doesn’t seem too likely. More danger from overfiring but the insane cost and availability of gates and liners for the Stanley makes me hesitate.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

I just let the ash pan fill up with ash on ours. It definitely held a coal bed better then.

@Max W ^^^^ what begreen said.