One thing I give soapstone credit for is holding the heat from coals. Sheesh.. the Fv will set at a stove top temp of ~250'F FAEVAHHH when I'm burning down the coals. If I really want to get them to disappear I just open it up full draft and bypasss the cat but of course then I'm letting heat out too, so I don't do that unless she already is down to the VSwear.
Need heat when doing your coal burn down; Rake forward place a split on top, set on high ;;; if you have lots of coals, may take 2 or 3 times.
I have only wanted my coals to cool a couple of times. Just open the stove door all the way. I usually am trying to figure out how to keep those hot coals.
Backwoods and Bogy, I'll take your advice and see what happens, guess I have been waiting a bit long on that. Could be the result of my shoulder season habits. damm, it gets warm in here when this thing is running anyplace past 450'. So, in shoulder season that a lot of times has been coinciding with a warmer part of the day as well. Like early mid afternoon.. so I prolly get in this habit of just letting the stove get too cool before I start paying attention to the coaling. I'll let you know how I make out. Bogy I just threw a real dry split into the top of the coals to heat her up.
For sure no coaling problems in shoulder season. It is when it is cold outdoors where people run into problems. Today I had an appointment in town and we needed to empty ashes and also burn down some coals. So, we did put one split on the coals and got that going nicely. Went to town. When we came back the coals were far enough down to remove some ash. Then we put in 4 good splits and it is still going well.
My stove is allowed to die out twice a week and the ashes are completely cleaned out at that time. Just works out that way with my schedule. Wouldn't try to do that normally.
The only time you should completely remove all the ash is when you are done burning in the spring. Best to leave 1-2" of ash in the bottom.
I usually end up with ashes in the corner and a thin film, but much of the ash is taken out. Otherwise, I run too full and lose capacity. I'm only starting with 2 cubic feet. I need every square inch of my firebox.
I like to stuff as much wood in as I can get...especially overnight burns. If I were to clean out between shutdowns, I could allow more ash at all times, but I usually only clean when it's completely cooled off.
