Various usages of wood ashes

Whether you have a wood stove, an open fireplace or even a pellet stove; you will have to regularly remove the ash. One of the big complaints home owners have about heating with wood is the mess that can be generated - bark and dirt brought in on the fire wood or ash from clearing up. Is this also your complaint for your wood stove?

Modern stoves are usually designed with ingenious moving grates and trays to make ash clearing easier and some simple tools can help keep the place tidy. Do you know that even the wood ash? It also can make a huge difference. Today, I will introduce some main usages of wood ashes.

Fertilizer. If you have a garden, you can take your wood ashes and spread them on the garden before you till up your garden. Ash contains potash (potassium carbonate), phosphate, iron, manganese, boron, copper and zinc and can be quite beneficial as a natural fertilizer... sometimes. Ash of multi fuel stoves increases the PH or alkalinity of soil, so use sparingly. Ashes have a special element in them, lye. Some soils need added lye for better harvests. Lye is good for crops like potatoes. Healthy potatoes need lye in the soil.

Fire helper. Left over charcoal (the black chunks, not the grey/white ash) can be reused for your next fire building. Moreover, you also can use it in the summer barbecue.

Pest deterrent. Sprinkle the ash around the border of garden beds to repel snails and slugs. This will need to be applied after rain.

Ice. Wood ash can be used as an anti/de-icing agent - a little more environmentally friendly than salt or other chemicals used these days

Cleaning. Dip a damp rag into ash and use to clean silverware, brass and glass. Ash added to a scourer can also give your scouring a bit more oomph.

Know of any other uses for ashes of log burning stoves? Please share your ideas below. In addition, you can read these wonderful posts about stoves:

Main Wood Stove Parts

Catalytic Wood Stoves And Non Catalytic Wood Stoves

This is my first time to hear of the catalytic wood stove. What is the catalytic wood stove? Versus the catalytic wood stove, there is the non catalytic wood stove. So what is the so-called catalytic wood stove and non catalytic wood stove, two major types of technology that are being used in the new Certified EPA standards stoves.

As we all know that, nowadays, more and more people are returning to the wood stove to heat their home or cooking the food. With all the advanced technology and science available on wood burning stoves, wood heat has become ever more affordable source of heat.

For the two types of stoves, catalytic wood stove and non catalytic wood stove, the two major methods used are the secondary combustion method and the catalytic converter method. Each technology has advantages and disadvantages. The basic premise is that smoke is nothing but unburned gases and particles, which these gases and particles have been proven to be harmful to human kind’s health.

A type of wood stove in which the smoky exhaust is passed through a coated ceramic honeycomb inside the stove where the smoke gases and particles ignite and burn. Catalytic stoves were introduced to comply with a 1988 EPA regulation that set mandatory smoke emission limits for wood stoves of 4.1 grams of smoke per hour for catalytic stoves and 7.5 grams per hour for non-catalytic stoves. Catalytic stoves are able to produce long, even heat output.

While non catalytic stoves, we can call it for short, non-cats can't match the even heat output of catalytic stoves, their owners can enjoy watching the beautiful fire they create. The baffle and some other internal parts of a non-catalytic stove will need replacement from time to time as they deteriorate with the high heat of efficient combustion.

Therefore, the goal of the clean air act is to remove these gases and particles from wood burning stoves and other solid fuel burning appliances before they are spewed into the atmosphere in the form of smoke. The concept of the new high tech log burning stoves incorporate is to burn these pollutants before they leave the stove.

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