Okay, I get it. I think the folks who only empty once a month or so have ginormous ash pans, kind of like those dryers whose lint filters only have to be done once a year.
And I suppose if you had that system, you could keep a fire going non-stop. With the soapstone, I have more of a cyclic thing going, where the house temps are pretty stable even after the fire has burned down. If the ashpan is a dealbreaker, you don't want the Hearthstone--at least not a Heritage. The system is workable, and in theory, I could empty the ash pan mid-burn, but it would let in so much oxygen in the process that my fire would be hoppin', and it's fussy--open door, fit a weird wire handle around a metal tab, shake tab back and forth to drop ash, pull out an ash pan that has no back to it, kind of like a dustpan, and dump that into your ash can with airborne ash swirling aloft unless you're very slow and careful. I did that about four times before the light dawned.
I, too, empty daily, but have a routine down that has made it pretty painless. Instead of scooping ashes out of the stove into a container, I take a brush (a wallpaper-paste brush, shaped like a standard paintbrush, but stiffer and wider, is just the right size and stiffness for this) and sweep the ash over to one side of the stove, and clear out the air circulation channels, and then scoop them with a soft rubbermaid dustpan, using the brush to help sweep them into the dustpan. I take a retired turkey roaster (shallow, oval pan) and put it IN the stove, and dump the ashes into it. Pull the roaster out, brush the remaining ashes back into a pile, sweep them into the dustpan, roaster goes back IN the burnbox, ashes are dumped again, and I toss the tools into their box on my way out the back door with the turkey-roaster-ash-pan. Dump them in the galvanized trash can on the back porch, flip the turkey roaster over so it doesn't get snow in it, and I'm good for another day. It takes me about three minutes. Thus when I read about people pulling the ash out, and moving in slowmo as they dump the ashes carefully, I wonder why--the slap-and-slam method works well for me, perhaps because the door is big enough to allow me to insert the roaster and work in their with both hands, and my draft is sufficient that any airborne ash inside the stove is sucked up the chimney. Oh. So even though my system works well for me, it might not necessarily work well for others. Thus emptying ash becomes a PITA. Got it.
So thank you for that explanation--a bit of enlightenment.
So I have to go back and look at my other recommends, and see how they manage the ash question. Mostly I recommend those because I enjoy re-visiting those sites. I think they're cuter than heck--the Marine stoves, in my mind, completely rationalize the purchase of a boat (as if you need a reason).
