My first not so negative post about wood burning...today I had to clean out the stove. I have found the ash pan to be just ok. We have been burning alot and the stove had a big bed of coals in it that needed to be removed cause it was causing us to load less wood. It was not particularly difficult but pretty messy. The biggest downer was that I had to rebuild a fire instead of just tossing a few splits on and letting the coals do the rest. Still way better than propane though