OWB coal bed

[ktm250rider]

How big are your coal beds in your owbs? I have been burning mostly pine and hemlock since lighting it in november. The past couple weeks Ive switched over to the hardwoods. I think since november, I pulled the ash out 1 or maybe 2 times a total of about 3 shovel fulls. Since using the hardwoods, Ive pulled out a couple 5 gal bucket fulls and Im gonna need to empty it again.
Should I be letting the coals that are there burn down by adding less wood? It seemed to be working great with the pine. I filled it twice a day and never had to pull any ash out. What came out was very fine too.

 

[rx7145]

I burn alot of mixed wood. (pallets) I let the coal bed get as big as it wants then at the end of the week stop putting in wood and rake the coals to the door were the fan burns them off. I keep doing this untill the coals are almost gone. Then shovel out the ashes and refill with wood.

 

[ktm250rider]

good deal. I guess ill try that this weekend. Still learning with this thing.

 

[cedarfarms]

i let the fire burn down some, then rake unburned wood and some coals to the back of the owb, shovel out the ashes then rake the wood and coals to the front, then start feeding the wood. no need to restart a fire.
i fire my owb from sept. to may, and only start a fire once.

 

[Blazin]

I burn mostly hardwood in my CB (with no fan), and I'll let the coals build up about a foot and a half before I clean it out. I us a big tined rake to stir them up good and pull the coals to the front before I load it. Once a month I let it burn down and push the hot stuff to the back and shovel out the fine ash from the front and from under the bottom of the coal bed, rake the hot stuff forward and load er up. Last spring I did find out a little trick of burning the big coal bed down with some pine logs, Being as the pine does'nt make big coals it burns down the hardwood coals to dust in no time at all plus you get all the btu's out of the coal bed.

 

[oneoldbanjo]

I have a Woodmaster and there are no grates. I never load the furnace up full unless I am going to be away for a few days - I add wood all week long with a minimum of effort - on warmer days wood just in the evening and on cold days morning and evening. I may rake the coals around just a bit - but only enough to move the remaining wood close together before I add more.

The coal bed can be 4-5 inches thick by the weekend. On Saturday morning I start raking the coal bed and let the coals heat as long as possible and about every hour or so I go out and rake again to bring the bigger pieces up to the front near the blower. The volume/thickness of the ash decreases dramatically and pretty soon all that is left is a very heavy layer of very fine ash - no lumpy coals at all. I only remove the ash about every 2-3 weeks using this method and I get about half a garbage can of ash that is very dense and heavy.

For my Woodmaster - the ash bed is not fed air from underneath and the only way to get the coals burned up is to rake to bring them up to the surface where they can get air. If you add wood before the coals are burned away it seems that the new wood gets the combustion air and the coals do not burn away and just get buried. A little bit of raking sure cuts down on the amount of ash to be carried away - and I can usually get a hole days worth of very clean heat from the built up ashes.

 

[gtstang462002]

If you are trying to burn down a bed of coals a trick that I learned to do so is just throw one log on the fire and let it burn full throttle for about a half an hr or so depending on the size of the coal bed. One log will typically reduce the coal bed by about 1/2.