The shop owner showed me the little ash chute in the bottom of one of his floor model stoves and explained that you have to rake the ashes back and forth over that tiny hole to drop them into the pan. That looked tedious to me, when I can remove ashes by the shovel full and dump them in a bucket.
Easy ash-handling is high on my list, especially since I have a smaller stove and need an easy way to get ash out of the box to make maximum room if I need it. It doesn't get any easier than swirling a poker through the ash a couple times and letting it drop into the pan..done. By the time you get out the vacuum and set it up, I've already taken the pan out, dumped it, replaced it, and I'm back loafing on the internet.
I'll admit, it's not a big deal..even with my little stove, I only swirl the poker every day or two, pull the ash pan every 3-4 days. And you aren't removing ash all that often either, I don't think.
The Buck 91 had a real good ash dump, 3.5 x 5.5" with a hinged lid. It was in the left side of the floor so it was easy to put the coals over on the right side, if you needed to get ash out when the stove was running. The belly on that stove isn't deep so you need to manage ash pretty closely. The great ash dump made that pretty easy. I had to pull the pan every three days since the pan had no all on the back. It made dumping the pan easy but you had to pull it before it got too full and started coming out the back of the pan.
couldn't see fiddling with the hot plug....emptying the ashes ....and then taking/leaving the ash pan outside in the snow overnight to let it cool before dumping it into the very same bucket I usually use for the task. I simply want to perform the task and be done with it
Sure, you can try to
imagine how it will work without ever trying it, but once you actually try it you figure out how to do it efficiently.
What I do is dump the ash into the pan, then let the pan sit in the stove for a day or two...or more with a deep-bellied stove.
Then you pull the pan after any coals in it have burned down, when it's pretty cool. Then take it outside and dump it into the can, bring pan back to the stove. I have a 10-gallon can outside, and a 6-gallon backup. With the grate, only small coals can ever get into the pan, so they are mostly out when I pull the pan, even if it's only a day later. I still need a glove but it's not very hot.
Lets not forget, for some, they get turned on with a good ash grate design over performance.
Aw man, you just
had to stir the pot, didn't ya?
Maybe you are one of those "trolls" that have been posted about in this thread?
What is this "performance" of which you speak? A long burn? I loaded 12+ hrs. ago. It was right at 32* out overnight, with light breeze..now it's at 26 and falling, breeze is picking up as the cold front comes through. The stove top is down to 170 now but it's still 74 in this somewhat leaky house with un-insulated walls and I'm in a tee shirt (that's on top, yes I still have pants on.)
When it gets warmer out, shoulder season, the house will hold temp even longer, and if the stove eventually burns totally out, no coals after 24 hrs, I don't care..I've perfected a method of easily getting a new fire going.
So I've got the "long burn" covered to my satisfaction.. with a 1.5 cu.ft. box.
The bottom line is that no matter the stove we may have, we have generally found something that works for us, whatever the brand.
What other "performance" numbers can we consider? Let's take high output. My little Keystone is only beaten by the King, and about equal to the Princess, according to the EPA test numbers. The rest of the BK line, the inserts and the 20/20.1 and 30/30.1 boxes, have high-end output at or lower than my Dutchwest Small Convection 2460. That BK may work fine where you are, in "Sunny New Mexico," but here where it gets cold and
stays cold on occasion, we need to kick the stove in the butt once in a while and get some output.
It's hard to get big heat out of the BKs since they have shielding sheet metal inside the firebox..the same type of shielding you would put on a combustible wall to reduce clearances.
That brings up a related question; What goes on behind those shields? What happens if you don't burn the stove wide open for a half hour on each reload? Would the gooey creo build up behind the shields on the walls of the stove that even less heat would be transmitted through them, leaving only the front and top of the stove to transfer heat? If you run the stove wide open on each reload, what is behind the shields, a big pile of crusty creo? These are questions I have, and I'll wait for the usual response on this thread...crickets.
As I said above, few of these "performance" differences make a hill of beans difference; We've (mostly) been able to find a stove that works well enough for us. If that's a BK for you, great. Just understand that it's not going to be the same for everyone else.
What
I also look at, which others may not, is the engineering, execution and quality of the design and build. Here's just one recent example of what I'm talking about.
I was beyond frustrated with the original ash pan setup on my Ashfords. But BK fixed it in my second year with these stoves
What? The ashes don't land in the pan, and instead end up in the ash pan housing? How does a flaw like that ever get as far as the production phase? Not an isolated case of something they have to go back and fix later. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, for me anyway. At least they make an effort to address these issues.
I looked at a new ashford the other day at the dealer. i was impressed by the quality ash pan rails that it slides in and out on.
The Buck and the Keystone pans just lie on the floor of the ash pan housing and slide out, and back in. Can you describe these "rails" and what impressed you about them?
This was a pool and spa place that didn't seem to have interest in selling stoves. They didn't know much about them and couldn't answer questions. On top of that they didn't do the install or service
Hmmm. At least you have BKVP to apply the heat in such cases...
Like I said before, who gives a carp about any of this? Everybody's got a stove that more or less works..we're not freezing. Just trying to counter some of the "fake news" and keep it real, here in Koolaid Land.
No. Pizza requires high temp to bake properly.
Not much heat down there with a double layer of bricks..
I never thought I will be successful on my purpose. BUT I WAS
