How do you manage the build up of coals ?

[bsruther]

It does take a while though.

Yes it does, but it's only an issue on really cold days. I figure that I've still got 3/4 tank of oil left from last fall's fill and it's just silly to not use it for an hour or so once in a while.
When the morning temps are above 25 heavy coals are actually a good thing for me, I can get a lot of useful heat out of them.

 

[Jo191145]

Not to steal the thread but I had a crazy thought the other day about excess coals.

Is there a way to take out all these surplus red hot coals and safely store them in a large pot without taking them outside? I was thinking of a stainless pressure cooker. Well contained but capable of releasing pressure if need be.

No idea if it's possible but it would be a great way of adding heat to the envelope. No heat loss up the chimney.

 

[HotCoals]

I use pellets now, Ive used about 1 bag this year. Rake forward then sprinkle the pellets on top of the coal pile. They light up quick and then proceed to increase my stack temp and thus increasing draft. Works very well for me.

I use to do this when needed. It works!
Now I been doing the same thing with the bigger bricks...that really works!

 

[Oldman47]

I was just thinking yesterday a machete would be a perfect fireplace tool to add to my bespoke set for raking coals around. Would double as a good tool for batoning splits into kindling as well.

If you like a machete you will love a corn knife. It has the same long sharp edge but has a square blunt tip instead of the curved tip of a machete. For raking inside your stove it will be easier to use.

 

[gyrfalcon]

I've gotten to the point where I just let the coals burn down. Sometimes I'll rake them forward and put a small split of wood behind them.

You can get away with that in Kentucky, but not in the now officially Frozen North.

 

[nyny]

shovel and bucket. coals don't heat the house. yeah yeah yeah. let the stove go full cycle then reload while shivering in blanket.
when coals are up to the burn tubes, it dont take no half hour to burn them down, try 7 hours.

 

[velvetfoot]

If you like a machete you will love a corn knife. It has the same long sharp edge but has a square blunt tip instead of the curved tip of a machete. For raking inside your stove it will be easier to use.

I'll have to check that out, thanks!

 

[bsruther]

You can get away with that in Kentucky, but not in the now officially Frozen North.

Did it this morning when it was -6, I'll do it again tomorrow when it's supposed to be -12. When it's this cold, I'd rather run the the furnace for an hour than pile wood on a heap of coals. If I didn't have a furnace, I'd use space heaters while the coals burned down. I gave up trying to convince myself that I can heat exclusively with a stove, but I can come awfully close.
I will say that if we had sustained sub-zero temps, it would be much more difficult to control the coal bed. 3 days of this stuff is a lot different than having it for 10 days. Found that out last year. The best thing about our climate is that spring is just around the corner.

 

[BrotherBart]

Not to steal the thread but I had a crazy thought the other day about excess coals.

Is there a way to take out all these surplus red hot coals and safely store them in a large pot without taking them outside? I was thinking of a stainless pressure cooker. Well contained but capable of releasing pressure if need be.

No idea if it's possible but it would be a great way of adding heat to the envelope. No heat loss up the chimney.

No. No. And if I haven't mentioned it, no. You would be making a carbon monoxide pump in your house.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Did it this morning when it was -6, I'll do it again tomorrow when it's supposed to be -12. When it's this cold, I'd rather run the the furnace for an hour than pile wood on a heap of coals. If I didn't have a furnace, I'd use space heaters while the coals burned down. I gave up trying to convince myself that I can heat exclusively with a stove, but I can come awfully close.
I will say that if we had sustained sub-zero temps, it would be much more difficult to control the coal bed. 3 days of this stuff is a lot different than having it for 10 days. Found that out last year. The best thing about our climate is that spring is just around the corner.

Yeah, having central heat or a lot of electric space heaters takes care of the problem, but I'd frankly rather not spend that kind of money just to deal with charcoal. I don't get big pieces of charcoal, but lots of small ones mixed in with the ash. I take a couple shovels full of the mixture out in the morning and stash them in an airtight metal ash/coal bin on my hearth that completely stifles the live ones in an hour or so. When it's full, I take it outside and throw it around on my steep and often slippery drive. Good thing about snow cover is it makes it a lot easier to dispose of ashes that may still have a few live coals in them. lol.

And you are so totally right that extended extreme cold causes just all kinds of problems you don't get from the same number of days spread out over a couple of months. My state is fast creeping up on a record February for cold, and the plumbers are wishing they could clone themselves so they can get some rest from the emergency calls-- one of which was me when I woke up to discover no water at any tap (or toilet!). Turns out my water meter itself had frozen. Plumber says he's got customers wailing that they've never had a frozen pipe before in 40 years where they live. But when the structure and the ground itself gets so deeply and solidly frozen, it makes everything much worse.

Spring? What's that? It was 28 yesterday here, and it felt like a heat wave.

 

[gyrfalcon]

No. No. And if I haven't mentioned it, no. You would be making a carbon monoxide pump in your house.

Could you explain this to me? Because I don't get it. People with open fireplaces would all die overnight if this was such a big problem, wouldn't they? (I don't mean the poster's idea of a coal heater, but just the general paranoia about CO here.)

 

[BrotherBart]

Open fireplaces do a good job of sucking the stuff up the chimney. Heck three or four years ago I banked the coals in my wood stove and was cooking with the range hood fan going a good while. And registered a fairly high reading on the downstairs smoke detector for the first time ever. The fan was back drafting the chimney with that pile of banked coals in the stove.

The general paranoia comes from the fact that burning wood creates a lot of CO. And CO is deadly stuff.

 

[tarzan]

Yeah, having central heat or a lot of electric space heaters takes care of the problem, but I'd frankly rather not spend that kind of money just to deal with charcoal. I don't get big pieces of charcoal, but lots of small ones mixed in with the ash. I take a couple shovels full of the mixture out in the morning and stash them in an airtight metal ash/coal bin on my hearth that completely stifles the live ones in an hour or so. When it's full, I take it outside and throw it around on my steep and often slippery drive. Good thing about snow cover is it makes it a lot easier to dispose of ashes that may still have a few live coals in them. lol.

And you are so totally right that extended extreme cold causes just all kinds of problems you don't get from the same number of days spread out over a couple of months. My state is fast creeping up on a record February for cold, and the plumbers are wishing they could clone themselves so they can get some rest from the emergency calls-- one of which was me when I woke up to discover no water at any tap (or toilet!). Turns out my water meter itself had frozen. Plumber says he's got customers wailing that they've never had a frozen pipe before in 40 years where they live. But when the structure and the ground itself gets so deeply and solidly frozen, it makes everything much worse.

Spring? What's that? It was 28 yesterday here, and it felt like a heat wave.

We used those coals in my driveway also. It's on a grade so they did more good there than setting in the stove when our heating needs were more than they could give. I never have had to take coals out of our current stove but there was always 8 or 10 days a year that stoves we had in the past just wouldn't keep up so I culled the coals. To each there own but it's a lot of work heating with wood. If on the rare occasion (a handful of times in the last 6 years) my furnace kicks on I feel defeated.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Ah. The chimney draft was the part I wasn't thinking of. Duh. Thank you.

Do we actually know what level of CO, say, an open bucket with a handful or two of still live coals in it generates? I'm all in favor of paranoia about practices we actually know for sure can hurt or kill you because it happens, like a low outdoor furnace vent that can get buried in snow, running an oil heater in the same chimney as a woodstove, etc. I'm just curious about this idea of coals in a bucket.

 

[BrotherBart]

Don't know how the level of a particular bucket full would be measured. But the banked pile of coals covered in ash in my stove that day would have just about filled my ash can.

 

[gyrfalcon]

We used those coals in my driveway also. It's on a grade so they did more good there than setting in the stove when our heating needs were more than they could give. I never have had to take coals out of our current stove but there was always 8 or 10 days a year that stoves we had in the past just wouldn't keep up so I culled the coals. To each there own but it's a lot of work heating with wood. If on the rare occasion (a handful of times in the last 6 years) my furnace kicks on I feel defeated.

It is a lot of work, and by this time of year, I'm beginning to get really tired of it, especially trying to keep the heat up in these gawdawful temperatures. Neither my boiler nor my stove can cope when it's double-digit below zero, as it has been all too often at night these last few weeks, so I have to run both -- cursing and swearing -- to keep the indoor temp from dropping and dropping and dropping.

 

[tarzan]

Don't know how the level of a particular bucket full would be measured. But the banked pile of coals covered in ash in my stove that day would have just about filled my ash can.

Banking coals is almost like a lost art. Haven't even heard of anyone else doing it for a while. I can remember my Grandpa and Dad banking warm morning coal stoves. They could revive them a couple days later.

 

[BrotherBart]

Yep. With our up and down weather here I banked the morning fire and loaded on the coals from it for the night fire for years. Until that Saturday... No more.

Always had a warm stove all day.

 

[BrotherBart]

Hogwildz once said "Managing the coal bed is the art of wood burning.".

 

[TheRambler]

Keeping any hot coals/warm ash inside the living space, be it in a sealed container or not is a very bad idea. CO poisoning waiting to happen, not to mention a fire hazard.

 

[nyny]

Banking coals is almost like a lost art. Haven't even heard of anyone else doing it for a while. I can remember my Grandpa and Dad banking warm morning coal stoves. They could revive them a couple days later.

it would be nice to be able to play with a pile of coals and make it art. they don't heat a large house. if you have a 1200 sq ft house you can probably wait till they're ash. if you have 3000+ and 210 yrs old, you need constant fire.

 

[drz1050]

If they get too much, you can also dump them in an airtight bucket, seal it up to suffocate them then use them in the summer for BBQ'ing.
At least that's my plan

 

[tarzan]

it would be nice to be able to play with a pile of coals and make it art. they don't heat a large house. if you have a 1200 sq ft house you can probably wait till they're ash. if you have 3000+ and 210 yrs old, you need constant fire.

Do what you got to do! What we were talking about "banking the fire" is more of a shoulder season thing.

 

[bobdog2o02]

If they get too much, you can also dump them in an airtight bucket, seal it up to suffocate them then use them in the summer for BBQ'ing.
At least that's my plan

Or put them in a metal bucket and take the garden hose to them, let sit for 10 min submerged then drain. Lay them on a bed of newspaper to dry. The water gives me peace of mind that they're out.

 

[Bigsby]

Still a newbie but thinking it's a good time to let the blower rip when burning down a large coal bed. Agree?