RTFM

The last few days, I’ve had a heck of a time getting the fire to burn in the stove. Mostly the wood sat in the firebox and glowed until it turned to ash. Very little flame. At first I thought the wood might have absorbed a lot of moisture from sitting in the woodpile during the snowstorm. But when I threw on one of the logs from my small [treasured] stack of wood that summered over in the rack beside the stove, it did the same thing. Then, I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with my stove.

I got out the stove’s manual and turned to the trouble shooting section. It told me that I had too much ash in the stove. More than an inch of ash in the bottom of the stove has about the same effect as shutting down the damper. It’s great for keeping coals live for a long time, but really poor for a hot crackling fire. It’s been rather chilly in here for the last couple of days no matter how much wood I’ve shoved in there.

So, I ran out and got a stainless steel ash bucket, with lid, and shoveled out all the ash. Right down to bare firebrick. Then restarted the fire. Whoa. Inferno in no time.

Heh. Learn something new every day. How much aggravation I could have avoided last year if only I’d read the manual.