I don’t have any pine or cottonwood in my stacks sooo, I’ve got boat loads of coals. I’ve been burning ash, honeylocust, and mulberry. The weather is suppose to warm tomorrow so the problem should correct itself. Just a reminder to me, cut some pine this winter.
That struggle is real! I usually rake the coals then leave the door cracked for an hour or so to speed up the burn down.
I scooped out my mountain of coals yesterday (my wife is pretty dang good at building them up when I'm at work) and I was reminded of my least favorite part of owning a wood stove. Cleaning out ashes is fine when they are mostly cold and settled. Once you start scooping out hot stuff, it seems like the dust flies all over the place and makes a mess. It's pretty much the only time I utilize my ash pan, to try and eliminate that issue. Then I'm burning my fingers on the ash pan because my gloves are shot. By the time I was done I was sweating and it was 0 degrees outside.
I have a lot of coals to deal with. My wife makes coal mountains!! I’m off work till Monday so I’ll have time to get them takin care of. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Why not let the coals burn down farther before reloading the stove? Is this a trait of cat stoves or what? 99 is one of those that if there is room in the stove for wood, it means its time to throw wood in. I've got to keep my eye on her! Remember, the stove doesn't care; it'll burn as much wood as you put in it.
Take the coals, put them in a metal bucket with a tight fitting lid, and let cool. Voila, you have charcoal for BBQ. It's how I build up my charcoal supply for cooking. Take a shovel out of the wood boiler when there is a good load of coals in there.
Wife is also excellent at building up coals. When I try to let them burn down, she complains that it’s getting cold. If the living drops below 72 she seems to be freezing. Luckily though she hasn’t forgotten that before the stove we kept the thermostat set in the low 60s. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Lol my wife is freezing when it is 72 also and i say how come you like the a/c blasting in our house to the point where you can see your breath. She yells “ its not the same”
Sounds like all of our wives need to "see" the heat, AKA a live fire and not just hot coals. Maybe if I made her clean out hot coals she would change her burning methods.......
Learning how to burn down coals seems to be a problem for many. I never had that problem until I got our last stove. But, it is not much different from any other stove. First thing is to learn to open the draft....before it starts to feel cool. We open the draft just about the time wood gets to the coaling stage or in this cold of weather we've been having, I open the draft (full open) quite a bit before the wood gets burned down to coals. Once it is all coals, then I will open the door and rake through the coals to loosen them which causes them to burn faster and thereby holding a good temperature. It works.
Thats what I was thinking. I have never scooped out coals in my 7 years of burning. I just incinerate them. I usually empty my ash bin Monday and then again Thursday...Thats it...Nothing else to do. What am I missing???
I love the coal stage of a good hardwood fire. My wife sees that there is no flame, says she is cold and requires me to load the stove. I hold off as long as possible before real trouble sets in She needs to see those flames. I thought men were the more visual creatures.
The IS is burning down coals right now. I'll crack but prop "closed" the ashpan door, open cat and primary air, then let her run em down. STT in the 450 range, and in another 20 minutes or so I'll load her up again for the overnight run.
At the moment have two splits of hemlock on top of a deep bed of coals hoping to knock it down before the last stuffing of the night and keep the stove temp up. Some Hemlock I split late this afternoon. A yard "specimen" tree - so it is quite full of huge knots. Nasty splitting, by hand too. The tiny bit in the foreground stack. It is testing at 17% so it should be good to go. We're gonna need it if this cold keeps up.
Nice! I’d also put said container outside on non combustible surface. It’s common sense, but wanted throw that out there anyway.
The door prop thing works pretty well on the boiler too. I pull the diverter baffle out & open the door for an hour, water temp stays up decent. Shovel out the ash & re load. No big deal & no real loss of good heat. By then my face doesn't melt either.
I let it burn down but my stove top temps take a dive. They go from 450* to 250* and with 0* temps outside the house temperatures start taking a dive next. If I throw more hard wood in, the coal mountain continues to grow. Throw a soft wood like pine in and it keeps the stove top temps up while burning the coals down. We don’t normally have this issue because it doesn’t stay this cold for long around here. My stove is an old smoke dragon but it does a great job of keeping this house warm and electric bills low.
