I'm confused. You very clearly said that you have to : That is way different than saying that you can: No I have not used an IS and I was hoping that somebody had made a better mousetrap. Raking crap back and forth over the slots to coax them to fall through is not easy or simple.
Yep, the slots in the grate of an I.S. are too small IMO. Other stoves I have used, with larger grate openings do not require the agitation of the ash / coal in the stove to allow the ash to fall out. Still, I find raking the coals back and forth easier than raking them, separating the ash, and then shoveling the ash into a container external to the stove. A classic case of YMMV. Brian
Ryan, The nice thing about the Drolet Myriad is it has a extra large ash drawer. When its time to empty ash. When I get home from work and the coals are burnt down, I rake the finer stuff into the hole in the floor of the stove. The draw of the flue acts like a vacuum and any dust in the stove gets sucked up the flue, keeping it out of the house. I leave a small amount of ash and coals to help the next load as the left over ash helps insulate the bottom of the stove and seems to help the firebox to heatup. Then put on a my tillman 1050-18 welders gloves and pull the ash drawer from the stove and empty it. I put it back into the stove and put wood in the stove and relight the stove.
It's not as good as the grated systems on my Keystone and Dutchwest, but I find the ash system on the Buck 91 to be useable. It has a decent-sized dump with a flip-up lid. (I'll measure the opening next time I go over there; Got my SIL loading it tonight.) The ash dump is to the left side, giving me plenty of room to work. From what I gather, the BKs have a smaller dump, and it's in the middle. I flip up the lid, then start running the shovel on the floor of the stove, rolling the bigger coals off the top and dumping the remaining ash. My MIL also has an L-shaped poker that works well for distributing the ash around the pan, away from the hole. Because the 91 doesn't have the deep belly of the BKs, I dump ash every other load, and pull the pan every 2-3 days. I always leave the pan alone for a day without adding any more coals before I pull and dump it. At that point I've scavenged most of the coal heat, and the pan isn't very hot. I do it before a re-load, so no "waiting for the fire to die," and dump it directly into a 10-gallon steel bucket outside. The Buck pan is gasketed, no locking door, so you have to make sure you do a good job re-gasketing, with OEM gasket or equivalent or you will have too much air leaking in. To me, trying to position the receptacle just right so the ash gets sucked back in the door is more of a PIA than even fooling with a dump. If you have a grated system, it's just so much easier that it's, well....ridiculous. The hassle of shoveling was somewhat minimized on the Fireview when I started using a long, shallow pan, which aided in sliding the ashes off the shovel instead of dumping them into a bucket, with the resulting ash cloud that might not all get sucked in the door. I despise shoveling out ashes, to the point that the lack of a grated ash system is gonna pretty much kill the deal for me. I got the Buck for my MIL because at 1/3 the price of a new one I couldn't pass it up, in spite of the ash dump. My next stove will probably be a Woodstock 211, which looks like it'll have pretty much all the attributes I'm looking for...including superior ash-handling.
I gave up on the ash pan. I clean the stove when it is down to ash and some coals but still warm. I push all the coals and ash to the back and put a kitchen pan in the front of stove off to one side. I put on my welders gloves and sift the ash into the pan, save the coals up front. Then move the pan to the clean area and finish sifting the coals that were behind the pan. The pan is well inside the stove and the stove is still hot so it draws any dust up the chimney. By the time I'm done I've got a line of pretty hot coals across the front for the restart. I put the lid on the pan in the stove and take it outside. Don't try to put the lid on after you take the pan out of the stove: it sets up little air currents as you put it on and makes a mess.
Ditto for me. I ran a Fireview for 4 years and a Progress for 2 years with NO ashpan. This year I installed an ashpan in the Progress and replaced the Fireview for a Palladian with an ashpan. I will never own another stove without a good ashpan system
The spring ash door in my T5 got a leak in it and was cleaned and a square of Roxul is on top of it now. The door opening is 16 1/2in and this grain shovel is 14in wide. Once a week i'll grab about a half scoop, shake in the stove then slowly take it out back to the steel garbage can.
The main trick with this way of doing it is making dang sure all the dogs are outside before i make the 'slow' walk. Buddy likes to stay close to peoples feet.
