Coal Ash as Insulation?

There has been no snow down here for about 3 weeks now. For the past 2 weeks daytime temps have been in the 50's and 60's. Today was a bright and sunny mid 70 degree day, it actualy felt hot to me. So I ran the gas out of the snow blower and put it in the basement, fired up the tiller to see if it still ran and got ready to pull the plow off of the tractor.
Since it was a harsh winter, I have collected a LOT of coal ash. There was so much snow this winter that part of the time I could not get to my normal ash dumping hill, so I started a new one at the edge of the driveway. This pile got to about 4 1/2 feet tall.
Before taking the plow off of the tractor I like to plow down the ash hill and the one by the driveway I was just going to level out next to the burn pile.
You can imagine my suprize when I hit the smaller ash pile the first time and saw this!
Here I am sweat'in by be-hind off, haven't even thought about snow for over 2 weeks, and under this ash pile is a sizable amount of SNOW!

I guess coal ash makes good insulation!

-Don

Go Figure ! You never know what you're going to learn!

My ash pile is the same way, full of snow and ice. Under the ash there is snow, and where the big snow piles just melted there is green grass.

Yeah man!! That is a good demonstration of why it is so important not to let fly ash collect on the interior walls of your fire box, baffles and fire brick. Ash will cut down on heat transfer big time!

I'm pretty anal about keeping all that stuff clean in an attempt to keep the best heat transfer that I can. I use a wire brush at every shake and load to keep the water coils clean and also run it across parts of the fire box wall. Nothin too enduring, just a minute or so of scouring..

Same here raking my ask piles and finding frost, and pretty deep as well. We also have had some rain so ash seem to ether insulate or absorb the moisture from the rain

Can add some ash during warm days to insulate part [1/2] of the coal bed when burning output needs reduced...works on insulating heat just as well as cold...just shake out that added ash for more output over the night time.

With having a direct vent I determine when I need to do a quick clean on my vent pipe by simply feeling the temp difference between top & bottom. If I can hold my bare hand on the bottom & then slowly work my way up the sides I can just about tell how deep the ash is getting. Can't hold my hand on top for long at all, I just take the T off outside & have a long piece of all thread with a half moon piece of tin bolted on, I slide it in rounded side up turn it & pull out ash a little at a time until I hit the inside vertical. Go in the house & feel it & if hot on the bottom I'm good to go. Got to be able to stand back far enough because the fan pushes out pretty good but the heavy ash just drops into a bucket.

I just burn my ash ... lol

No, just goes in the trash.