Keep it in barrels and throw it on your driveway when it gets icy. Your neighbors may want it for the same reason.

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Put it in your compost, with some nitrogen amendments.

Are there any greenhouse/nurseries nearby? They might be able to use it. They probably can't pay much, if anything, but at least you might be able to get rid of it and it would be put to good use.

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> We fill a 20-gallon metal can with ash and charcoal every 7-10 days

That's a remarkable amount of ash for 10 days! I might generate that much ash in an entire year, burning 4 cord. I can't imagine how you'd be generating so much.

Make soap. Throw on driveway for traction. Throw in woods. Its acidic so not great for gardens.

Edit: its basic....still not good in large quantities for anything. Also-Great stove made in Morrisville. I hope you never have to move it!😁

Dumps (or whatever they're called these days) will take it.

I’ve never found it to be a problem.

Wet wood will do it.

Alkaline actually (like lye), that's why you can make soap. It can actually be used like lime for gardens.

Excellent to till into garden!

If it's acidic, my whole MS thesis is a sham lol. It provides critical nutrients to a soil profile that actually buffers acidity.

No worse than the salt / sand / whatever the hell people use. Get a good mat for your front door and wipe your feet well.

This is the way

It's Potash not lime...great for gardening but you can over do it! Depending on your soil... 1/4 to 1/3 pound of potassium sulfate or potassium chloride per 100 square feet. 

not 20 gallons a week worth!

Interesting… I have a few thoughts. Sounds like you have experience with wood heat- I would wonder what kind of stove you previously used. Modern stoves rely on dryer wood than we used to get away with. Strong suggestion to get on the 3 year plan. After that if you’re burning around the clock, at the tail end of the burn cycle see if you can toss in some pine (pallets work good) to “burn down the ash” sometimes there’s usable material left in there that otherwise gets scooped out.

We spread ours around our cedar trees in the spring.

Maybe he meant 2gallons? 20 gallons seems impossible, no? That's A LOT of ash.

This!

Its sounds high, but when you consider OP is using it as their primary heating, not just a Woodstove to supplement other heat it seems realistic to me.

Plus a 3000 sq ft 1850s house... probably burns a lot of wood.

Didn’t suggest all into theirs…

Could bring to local compost facility

Good point. It's hard to fathom when I look at my five gallon bucket haha. It's just so much ash.

Silly science, what did you ever do for us? /s

Bingo. We've been using that to de-ice our driveway for decades

Its either acidic or base. My grandmother was french Canadian in Northern Maine and they would save their wood ashes and leech water through them and combine the liquid with tallow to make soap.

All I know is having helped her it is caustic.Burned the shit out of my hands. Fine in small quantities but if you live in New England and run 2 stoves all winter you really don't want all that ash in your garden. Better to use as ice melt.

But Im no expert-I bet in some cases it would work great. I used ashes in my raised beds and nothing would grow. Not even weeds, but I didn't write my ms thesis on the affect of wood ash in gardens. Was your minor interpretive dance?

Researched: you are right. 5-10 pounds is good for soil amendment. The hell with you do with the 4-5 hundred pounds that burning a few cords produce unless you have a farm. Anything over 5-10 lbs in a 100 square feet is not good and will kill what you are putting it on. I've got 2 Defiant stoves and burn 5-8 cords a winter living in Jeff's. That's a bit of ash.

Well, it’s that much between ash and charcoal. Not sure of an efficient way to sift the charcoal out for further burning, so that combination adds up pretty quickly. And I did overestimate a bit, but not much…we fill that can every 14 days.

How are you generating so little ash?! Our stove is marketed as one of the most efficient ones on the market. Maybe we’re not burning our fires hot enough? I see that someone else said wet wood…the wood is seasoned but has only been stacked for a month, so it may still be a bit damp.

It’s seasoned but yep, it may still be a bit damp! Only been stacked properly for a month.

I keep a “log book” (a record of how many logs we burn, hehe), and we’ve averaged 12-15 22” long logs per day on days when the temperature stays below 40. It’s a hungry house, heat-wise. But it still seems like a helluvah lot of ash/charcoal!

We’re definitely doing this! Hadn’t thought about the neighbors maybe wanting some as well, though. Good call!

Previously had an old Jotul wood stove, heating a smaller house, with more land to spread ash around.

Hearthstone specifically recommended seasoned wood and they were adamant about NOT using kiln-dried wood in this particular stove, for whatever reason.

What’s the “3 year plan”?

By “burn down the ash”, do you mean get a super-hot fire going to burn the charcoal and larger bits down into more compact ash?

Great idea! There’s wayyyy too much for us to use on our own for soil amendment but we’d be happy to have someone cart it off if it’s useful to them!

If you're generating that much, something is very wrong. And you certainly are not burning as efficiently as you think you are. I'm concerned that whatever you're doing is creating a lot of creosote buildup in your chimney. This is the cause of a lot of chimney fires.

95% of what you scoop out of your stove should be very fine ash dust. There should be very little charcoal.

Charcoal is simply wood that hasn't burned completely.

What is the moisture content of your wood? It should be below 20%. You can buy a moisture meter or you can borrow them from many local Vermont libraries.

Perhaps you're not burning hot enough. It's hard to know. I'd definitely find a knowledgeable friend or neighbor who can come to your place and see what you're doing in person.

20 gallons of ash and charcoal every 14 days is really concerning.

> we’ve averaged 12-15 22” long logs per day

How many cord to you burn in a year? How many cord do you have stacked?

What varieties of wood are you burning? If you're burning spruce or something like that ... that could be part of the problem.

Jotul makes an attractive stove for sure. A buddy has one and to me it looks like a piece of art compared to some stoves out there.

• 3 year plan means you’ve got wood you’re burning this year, wood set away for next year, and wood stacked and ready for the following year. The idea is to be burning wood that’s been cut / split / stacked for 3 years so the moisture is low. I have a Woodstock stove- one with a catalyst. Certainly use caution but I use compressed wood bricks with the cordwood I have. I find it to burn clean and produce much less ash. Cost is a little higher but then wood usage is a bit lower. Kind of a personal preference thing. Last- the idea behind the couple pieces of pine is essentially that it gets a hot/fast fire going and burns down the coals / winds up creating less ash. Why? Honestly I don’t know, but the old timers were talking about it a few years ago so I gave it a whirl, and they were right. Good luck burning!

My minor was not interpretive dance (shocking I know). There are no minors in graduate education, but you probably wouldn’t know about that bud. You likely have enough information to find out who I am, just keyword my research above. Hope you learn a thing or two upon reading my work!

Unfortunately, July and August are when you get most of the drying done. A month at this time of year is minimally effective at best. You may have to buy some kiln dried wood, which will burn like a torch. Mix that with what you have and you should be okay. What you don’t want is to try to heat your house with wet wood when subzero temps arrive. The stove will never get hot enough.

P.s. it’s never acidic ;)

I edited it. I just know it burned making soap with my great grandmother on the dairy farm they owned. You are definitely right though.

You sound like you went to Johnson state. Ill bet we know each other. 😁

You really need drier wood, or you will build up a layer of creosote inside your chimney that will eventually catch on fire, and either burn your house down or scare you shitless, depending on how quickly you can choke the air flow...

Your ash production is insanely high, and that almost certainly means wet wood.

Excellent. Just curious, how long have you lived here?

Anyone with chickens would take it for their dust baths

I have the same stove, just one step down size wise. I also generate tons of ash, and I have minimal creosote buildup. I mean, these stoves reburn all the smoke produced to the point there’s 0 smoke coming out the chimney.

Kiln dried wood will overfire your stove if you fill the firebox. I have the GM 60 and this thing gets HOT.

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