We often burn our Mansfield more like a fireplace with continuous feed of wood rather than cycling as it's out in a huge space and we run the HVAC circulation blower to heat the house with it. This means dealing with the build-up of coals.
I have experimented with pulling coals forward then loading wood behind them, and also pushing coals backward then loading wood in front of them.
Either way works but both ways have their drawbacks and benefits. Coals raked to the front will reduce the coal pile a bit faster, however, wood piled behind it may not burn through efficiently or as cleanly, requiring more adjustments. Raking coals to the back, and placing the fuel in front, results in a cleaner burn of the wood gases from the fresh fuel, but slightly less aggressive coal reduction.
The important thing for continuous feed, is to stir the coals to shake off the ash and pile them up to maximize air penetration through them. You should experiment with where that pile goes and where the new fuel goes in your stove with your wood and see what you like! I don't know if there's a "best" answer to this.
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I forgot to mention... one advantage to pushing coals to the back while feeding logs to the front, is that you are building up a huge reserve of coals that will burn down slowly after logs in front have burned down, these coals can later be raked out and re-excited by fast air from an open door, and used to light off future fires more easily/conveniently. There may be merit to pushing coals back on a load before bed, vs pulling them forward when you plan to load more fuel in the near future.
