Coals burn down

Does anyone have a pic of an empty NC-30 or can measure the depth?

 

I might add is I have the ash rake tool that I use to push the ash and coals back to the back of the stove then pull the coals forward, what we say rake your coals forward.

But that has a second purpose. When you push that ash back to the back wall you push the air out of the ash and too me it seems the ash then is about 1/2 of what is was.
So makes for alot less taking the ash out if you do this every time.

 

Thanks, I get it.

 

The distance from the bottom to just under the tubes is 12.75".
It does have a bit of a belly, but the pics I've seen of BKs shows they have bellies that are deeper.
The split on top of coals is something I've been doing for several years now. It works.
As has been said, when you need more heat, that's only a short term solution. I've shovelled out a lot of coals during real cold spells.

 

It would be great to attach a blower to the intake to get rid of those coals. I've burned lots of slash and setting a blower to blast air into that coal pile blast furnace style makes coals white hot and you can even watch them shrink.

 

+1
Emptied last week, lots of charcoal. The build up pretty fast with cold temps.

Up to 29°, will be able to burn down coals good tomorrow & empty tomorrow night or next day

 

Burning hotter & needing good heat output I get a lot of coals.

Good time to bump this one
See if it work for others

 

Works good too

 

Great advice BD...

I do the same thing. Have a pile of coals in the AM, rake forward, add a couple of small splits of the softest wood I have (usually aspen), open the air a bit and get the stove super hot.

I find it the most efficient way to burn down coals and produce a bunch of heat without it going up the stack.

 

Had a huge bunch of leftover coals in the stove this am, and it's taken me until noon-ish to burn most of it down (insomnia got me up about 4:30am).

 

I learned a lot from some of those guys over there ​

 

So when you toss a split in there and open up the air, does your cat still burn up the smoke or does some of it get past the cat due to not enough "residence" time? Seems I can blow smoke past the cat on my Keystone if the air is open much past 1, but I'll have to experiment more with it to find out for sure. Usually, I'm burning below 1 and that's enough heat, and she's burning clean...

 

The idea is to bring in enough dry fuel in small splits to get the off gassing necessary to light off the cat. Your right, just throwing a split on coals in the morning may not be enough. Try a bunch of very, very small, dry soft woods in the am directly on the raked forward coals and leave them loosely cross stacked. Turn up the air a lot for a while to get a good flame going and then when you know the stove is back up to temp to light off the cat, engage the cat and lower the air, keeping the stove really hot to help burn off the coals as well as warm the house in the AM on a cold morning. Try it and let us know if it works for your situation and stove.

In my case, with 4 or 5 really small splits of dry Aspen or pine or something simular along with a few pieces of bark or sticks, I can have a blazing fire, be back up to temp to engage the cat in 10 minutes and the max the stove temp out quickly as I reduce the air little by little until it settles in at the max temp.

Gets a really hot stove in short order using just a little wood and helps to burn the coals down in an efficient manner. Just my 2 cents and that's all it's worth. Using softwoods for this, helps reduce further coaling as they don't coal nearly as much as good hardwood. My old non EPA stove did not require this effort since the majority of the air fed up through the bottom of the stove taking care of any coaling build up.

 

My old Nashua did not do this at all, still using it in the shop, my lord does that stove put out the heat compared to my Drolet, you can load it up full (4 cu ft firebox) with Oak and it will burn it up with no coaling issues. I really miss having that stove in the house.

 

Buy a bag of pellets and toss some on the coals. It works pretty well.

 

Yep, bottom draft stoves burn all the coals without any trouble. As they usually have a grate, the ash falls through too making them very suitable for 24/7 burning- just keep adding wood and occasionally empty the ash pan with no scraping, sifting or any need for any attention inside the firebox. These new- fangled stoves are more efficient and squeeze more heat out of a load of splits but take more effort too.

Brian

 

My Nashua did not have a grate, just firebrick and 2 air intakes in the front door.
Sometimes I think the people who think the old stoves were "smoke dragons" did not burn them correctly using wet wood ("it will burn anything") or smoldered the stove or possibly had a cheap stove. After reading hundreds of posts about the subject that point is obvious.

 

my BK really rocks around 2.5, MONSTER heat

 

Burning down about 5 inches of coals right now

 

My 30 builds a lot of coals, this trick done 2-3 times will take care of it. I need to get a rake, I have been using the ash shovel, and it is starting to get old.