Osburn,now its an ash question

[dolores57]

Thankyou to those who answered my fan question. The fan came on when the fire got hot .
I am not sure how often I should clean ashes out and as I said before the manual with this stove is a joke.
It did get cold enough to have a small fire last night. I really do love this stove. Its got a personality. I wish I could have gotten it at the beginning of winter before I spent $400 for one month of heat.
The fire was pretty short and not very hot so I imagine its ok to let ashes stay in.
So its the wee hours here and I am up ready to take the chill off with my new Osburn......life is good.
If I can figure out how to do it I will post a picture because you folks helped so much this past year I want you to see the fruits of your labor........but ofcourse I would also like to show off my new Osburn 1800. d

 

[wg_bent]

I empty some ashes once a day. I push the burning coals to the back and shovel out what's in front. I could be picky about trying to burn every last peice of black charcoal left but it's not worth it. Once I take out a couple shovels full, I pull the coals to the front. I've been experimenting with a pattern I call the log home pattern. I put the coals in a pile that's a front to back pile instead of all at the front. Then I put a split or roughly 4" log on either side of the pile loaded front to back. Then put two more splits on top loaded side ways. The action of the air getting pulled across the pile of coals in between the first two logs causes the coals to burn very completely and I get a nice hot fire with just a couple logs quickly. Air should be wide open for this.

 

[the_guad]

Clean out the ash when it starts getting in the way or when you're not going to be burning for a while. If it's been a day or two since your last fire go ahead and clean it out so you don't have to worry about it the next time you want to light it up. It's been said that an inch of ash is good for a fire but I've had much more than an inch and I just push it out of the way when I want to light up another fire. I clean mine out when it starts getting in the way.