Weekly tip #1 Cleaning out your stove

If you have a multi-fuel stove and are planning to burn, or do burn coal then you must keep the ash pan in the bottom of the stove empty at all times. We suggest clearing it out once every few days when the stove is completely cold. The reasoning behind keeping it empty is to allow oxygen to be able to circulate over a greater surface area, giving you a better and hotter burn. This is why a multi-fuel stove will have a grate, to allow an air gap underneath.

However if you have a wood-burner, then you won't actually have a grate or an ash pan in the bottom of the stove. This is because when burning wood, you want the wood to sit on a bed of ash as this helps to act as an insulator, therefor directing heat upwards into the wood being burned. This means you never need to clean a wood-burning stove out as you simply only need to reduce the ash. Bearing this in mind, if you have a multi-fuel stove but wish to just burn wood, then you can do so, as long as you keep a nice bed of ash in the bottom which means allowing the ash to build up in the ash pan as well as over the grate.