wsherrick wrote:Has any one ever considered that opening the ash pit door like that might just be an overall bad practice to begin with? Is it really necessary to do that on a regular basis? I'm not trying to be a smart here, I think some discussion on why it is done and should it be a part of a proper stove tending method would be helpful. Helpful especially for new comers.
I have to agree with you on this Will - Opening the ash pit to facilitate refreshing a hand fed coal stove could be a very bad practice. However, I have thought and thought about it and I can't come up with any different way to accomplish the task within an acceptable length of time. The first step in refreshing a stove is to clear the ash but you never want to shake the stove unless the blue ladies are dancing feverishly. That won't happen if you depend on the air intake valve alone; the air intake valve would have to be so wide open that you may as well have the ash door open. The second step is to add more coal but again you don't want to do that unless the blue ladies are dancing. The way to get the blue ladies dancing again is to open the ash door and allow the draft to find new paths through the coal bed. If you waited for the airflow to take care of business with the air intake valve set at normal it would take F..O..R..E..V..E..R.. Who has the time to do that while trying to get out of the house in the morning or getting the kids off to school. Yes, you could just wait to service the stove in the evening but then you are tired and dealing with family and dinner now you've added bringing an idling stove up to normal operating temperatures; even with the ashpan door open that's going to take time. By this time the ash is going to be so thick that tons will come down and with it a heck of a lot of the fire's coals. Again, depending in the air intake valve alone to refresh the stove will take forever. I've found it easier to service the stove twice a day when idling - I only empty the ash pan once, though.
This isn't all that much of an issue during the coldest months - the blue ladies dance most of the time - but in the fall and spring when we are idling our stoves for most of the day it's a different story. An idling fire is by definition is one burning so low that you can look at it and think it dead. The question becomes how do you revive the fire quickly in order to increase the heat output. Of course the answer is introduce huge amounts of airflow through the coal bed. The means opening the ash pan door to introduce the needed increase in air flow. To make this safer the answer for me has been a timer that I can put around my neck or clip on my collar. Using that I can allow the stove to refresh while multi-tasking things like breakfast, getting everyone out the door or to bed on time or whatever. The timer is not a guarantee of safety by any means but it works for me.
I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about this practice. Lisa