Wood fire and wood ash

-taff

First part - Just after any ideas of how to use up the wood ash.
Last year I put it on the front garden and in the compost. It hasn't affected the plants except for the sunflowers which I planted this year [ they're shorter but lots more flower heads] or the compost significantly.


I also have a builders bag of the tree bits that have fallen off the massive fir tree at the bottom of the garden and am going to put some in there this year to balance the acidity of that.


Just wndering if there's any other used for it that I'm missing.


Second part - It's getting chillier and I have some wood that I'm not planning on using for regular burning in the stove. I do want to slightly heat the room up though before it's necessary to use it every day, but as I've only had the stove for a year [ and we used it constantly over the winter, it was definitely the best house purchase we've made so far barring the electric blanket] I'm not sure how much of fire I need to make, whether I need to burn fast and hot for a little bit or burn a little fire a few times. I will probably experiment a bit but if anyone has any helpful pointers, I'm nore than willing to learn

suki1964

With a stove you really should be burning it hot. A clean burn keeps your flue clean, letting wood just smoulder causes not only your glass to turn black but causes soot and tar up the flue

I lit my stove there the other night with a huge pile of kindling, then two or three bigger bit of old wood and then I used the grand total of 4 logs for the afternoon/evening - 3 till 9pm. That was good dry hard wood logs. If I was using pine, Id need more. Its rare that I get good wood as its all shipped in and prohibitively expensive unless someone has had a tree fall, so wood here is forestry pine and is wet for years

Once one log has broken down and is bright red embers I add the next. It keeps the heat high enough to keep everything clean without blasting us out of the room with heat. With pine I just have to keep feeding before it becomes embers else the stove cools

You can use the ash as a good feed for tomatoes, just add direct to the hole when you plant. You can also use it as a deicer on icy patios/paths without damaging them ( although its not pretty ) and you can even mix it with a drop of water to make a paste to clean silver and even make soap if you so wish . I myself chuck it in the rubbish bin for the council to collect as you soon get fed up of trying to find uses for it, esp on windy days