Ideal steel/cat wood stove…?

The ash pans. Anything short of giant is too small. I believe Harmon had some big ash pans, as does Regency and Drolet pedestal stoves and some of those aren’t big enough really. The one on my Hitzer 354 coal stove is big and it’s too small. Have to have an ash pan with coal because of the shaker grates and the way coal burns from the bottom of the fuel load up. I take ash out twice a day…

…that’s why I like a deep wood stove like a BK. Even BK’s pedestal stove ash pan is too tiny for what it could be. Easier to let it get full and shovel it out.

So to me, anything short of giant is too small, especially since the majority of wood stove fire boxes are not deep by any stretch of the imagination. BK is the deepest I know of.

Ash pans should be at least 3/4 the size of the fire box floor and 6” deep, minimum, to make them more user friendly…one pan, two, or three, doesn’t matter to me…still needs to be huge. No one says you have to wait until it’s full before you empty. Bigger gives the consumer more options.

Take ash out twice daily and you’ll soon understand why I feel like I do.

Just another gasket to maintain, bearings and slides to maintain if the stove has them, and just another place to leak air and worry about over-firing.

Don’t mean to sound like I hate them because that isn’t the case. Most seem like an afterthought with little real time use consideration and design put into them. Most are designed as an afterthought and an “add-on” feature after the initial stove was designed. Most stoves are too low to the ground for a well designed and deep ash pan. Most wood stoves are too low anyway as far as I’m concerned. Usually there are no retired people working in those factories so most of them have a healthy back and have no concept of what it is like to get old and have to bend over to load a stove. That’s why Vermont Castings and Harmon’s top loading stoves were so popular for so long. They work great for the older retired folks. Don’t have to bend to fill them. My Lopi Liberty is right on the dang ground.

 

This is a real man’s ash pan. LOL!



Seriously though, something like this for wood would be great. The Gibraltor above eats wood for dinner. Literally!

 

I take out ash twice a day. Sometimes 3 on the few coldest days of winter.

Come and see me when you join the one match club from October into May. I’ll throw you a party.

One match…even, consistent heat 24/7 from start to shut down and the room only varies 2 degrees the entire time. Gotta love them black rocks! (At least until I can find me a used King or IS).

I’m cheating.

 

I love my ash pans in my IS. It is one of the main reasons I went with the IS. The length between changes varies with the type of wood. With oak, I might not change them for 10-20 days. With other wood it might be twice a week.

 

I guess you better get an IS then. Because I've never emptied my ash pan more than once in a 2 day period. And when I'm burning all oak, it can be 4 days.
Cherry makes the most ash of any wood I've burned, and i still go 2 days without emptying the ash pan.

 

For me its just easier to scoop into an ash pail, i still have to empty the ash pan once a week from what falls through the grate. I emptied it every couple of days last winter until i got tired of it.

 

Any problem with simply leaving the ash pan full? No muss, no fuss. Clean it at the end of the year perhaps?

 

Good point, makes a little mess when its plum full but no biggie once a year in spring. I wll probably start doing just that.

 

Hey guy from Ohio; I am in the 1 match club! The IS will still have enough coals 36 hours later to catch dry wood. Come spring load stove at nite if it gets too hot open bedroom windows.

 

Yeah I personally really like the ash pan on my IS. I probably empty it every 4-7 days. To me it’s sized just right. I can’t imagine having to scoop ash out of the firebox… seems like that would be a big pain in the @ss

 

I've had stoves both ways...scooping ashes out is no big deal...as a matter of a fact, on the stoves that have an ash plug, instead of a grate, its way easier to scoop ashes out than to putz around with chasing ashes down the lil ash hole...but on stoves with a grate, that works pretty sweet.

 

It is… you always get cold coals instead of just ashes

 

Plugs are PITA a good grate system

 

I agree been scooping ashes out of stoves for over 40 years, easier then pulling that ash pan out.

 

I have a Woodstock Absolute Steel with an ashpan and also a Woodstock Fireview which has no ashpan. Believe me when I say having the ashpan is better. But it's not the end of the world to not have one. The Fireview isn't the monster heater the AS is (It really isn't much of a step down from the IS really 3.2cu.ft box, vs 2.45cu. ft. box) The AS easily burns nicely for 12 hours and doesn't need tending if I don't get around to it, for another 4 after that. This is pretty much what I do frequently, as the AS has more than enough capacity and BTUs to keep my family room toasty. I will keep the upstairs door open and let it add to the heat the Fv is pushing out upstairs.

Back to the original topic, I spend quite a bit more time clearing the ash in the Fv, it's a smaller box, no ashpan. I have a nice small square-headed shovel, $20 bucks on Amazon, I rake the hot coals to the back, and the ashes to the front, which takes 20 seconds, then using the shovel, 1 big scoop into a 5-gallon bucket. Then rake the hot coals forward, reload for all morning and these days till 4 PM, then another load till 11 PMish, till the morning and I do it all over again.

I still wouldn't trade the Fv for anything, it is such a work of art. Easy to use great heat and a light show every day.

 

I like hearing that about the IS. Tells me my list of choices has been spot on. That’s a pretty good burn.

 

That’s on ash and tulip poplar; even better on Sugar maple; I don’t have lot of oak, beech or locust

 

How do you burn to get that result, no way in hell i could get coals after 36 hours.

 

I had to empty mine every 2 to 3 days.

 

Yeah I’ve had them both ways too. As a kid we scooped ash out of the firebox on a large smoke dragon. then the wood furnace upgrade had grates and a pan. I prefer sifting the ash through the grate. Even the ash plug on the Drolet was better. Super easy to separate the coals from the ash. It’s also just so easy to pop the ash pan out and take it outside to dump in a metal trash can and pop it back in. Heck it’s even on the way to the wood pile.

That’s too bad 4-7 days here.