wkpoor said:Well Tony here is how I do it in a nutshell. I load my stove whenever I need to for many reasons none having anything to do with coal base. If in the morning I wake up and want to load the stove and the coal base is rather thick I simply shovel them out into a 20gal covered metal trash can till I have the room I want for the next load. Later after the can cools down (or I wait till its full) I take it out to the garden. Or sometimes with my wedling gloves on I take it straight out and throw the hot coals over the ground. Basically I make the stove fit my schedule, not the other way around.fire_man said:wkpoor said:I reload whenever I decide regardless of top temps. Maybe I just happen to be near the stove and feel like adding a few more or maybe I'm going to be out for a while. What all this jargon about not reloading till temps are down to a certain #. Heck its not uncommon for me to reload at 500 degrees just because I feel like it. The more I read the more this whole cat thing doesn't sound like fun.Backwoods Savage said:Dennis, when you reload at 350 stovetop temp, don't you still have a ton of hot coals taking up space? If I reload at 350 I can't get nearly a full load - maybe its your bone dry magic wood?
WKpoor: What the heck does a cat have to do with reloading when there are still lots of coals? The question would apply equally to a non-cat stove. The point is that reloading too often when there are too many coals just causes an even bigger coal base to build up and takes up room for new fresh wood. This becomes a problem especially when its very cold out and you need lots of heat, coals don't make the high heat. There a lots of threads on this point of view.
Wkpoor, isn't your coal disposal method sort of like coal-abuse or something? I must admit I have been tempted to do exactly what you describe, but now I try to time the burns better so that I get maximum heat out of the stove without dumping coals. Two great points that Dennis has often made 1. Open the draft when the stove temp drops 2.Dry wood makes less coals.
THe old smoke dragons were not as bad at making coals. I had an old VC Resolute and Coaling was much less of a problem but that may partially be because it had an automatic thermostat which opened the draft as the stove cooled.Boy do I miss that automatic draft control. BK owners are lucky dogs. If they put one on the next Woodstock stove they will really have a winner.