Too Much Charcoal Building Up in a Wood Stove

Most of us appreciate wood that makes a nice bed of coals when it burns. But sometimes you can get too much of a good thing. I once had an EPA certified wood stove with a small firebox that had this problem. Sometimes a bed of slowly smoldering charcoal would build up so much that there wasn’t much room to put enough wood in to make a hot fire.

This was especially a problem during cold weather when I was going through a lot of wood 24 hours a day. The more wood I burned, the more charcoal would build up. This was also a bigger problem in cold weather because that is when I wanted to be able to put more wood in for a hotter fire. But with all the coals in the way, I had a problem and I didn’t want to let the fire die down enough to scoop the coals out because the house would get cold if I did.

EPA certified stoves are more likely to have this problem. This is because of the higher temperatures inside the firebox. This causes the more volatile and faster burning compounds to burn off quickly leaving more of the slower burning coals.

What I learned to do is to move the coals around so they would be right next to the air inlets inside the firebox. This stove had the airwash system that blew air over the door glass to keep it clean. So I would pull the coals up front as close to the door opening and piled as high as I could without the coals spilling out. Then put some small split pieces of softwood on top of the coals.

With the air blowing down on the coals and the fast burning wood on top, the coals would flare up and burn up. At least those in the direct airstream would. As they burned away I would keep pulling more into the airstream and repeating the process until the charcoal was down to a more acceptable level.

7 thoughts on “Too Much Charcoal Building Up in a Wood Stove”

  1. I think maybe burning even more softwoods might be a good answer for you.

    I personally enjoy a good bed of coals. I have a heat controlled blower on my stove and when there is a big bed of coals it just seems to go forever.

    I live in Portland, Oregon so we never really get below freezing but I do use firewood as my only heat source. I absolutely love it and have been using a combination of fruit orchard wood, juniper, and oak to stay warm. Whenever I use an alder or fir I can watch the fireplace eat the wood and leave almost know coals at all.

  2. I have to agree with Stephen as I have found that dry balsam fir works good and for me dry aspen works even better for eliminating excess charcoal in a firebox.

  3. Sounds like you had a Morse 1410…same as mine! And same problem!
    I think the front air intake on this stove is too small.

    Could wet wood (18%ish) also cause this problem?

  4. Hello, I just burnt through 5 cords of good hard maple with no issues of coals building up , the Maple burnt down to ashes no problem . Now I switched my trailer loads and I’m now burning Ash , afrer 1 day of burning my stove was extremely full of coals . Im thinking it’s possibly the type if wood I’m burning my stove is a pacific energy.
    And last night it dropped to minus 32 degrees .
    Oh ya I’m from Ottawa Ontario Canada 🇨🇦

  5. I’ve been stirring the coals and spreading them out between adding wood and it seems to help. My rational is by knocking the ash off the coals, the coals burn up faster and more complete. I have also noticed there is less unburnt wood when I scoop it out cold the next day.

  6. I come up with the following technique that let me keep good fire and heat none stop… due to “recycling” left and right side of the fire box. I divide coals on left and right side, add wood on right side and let left side burn to ash. Then remove ash from left and place portion of coals there from right, add firewood on left, etc.

  7. I also find ash seems to leave a lot of coals in my stove. It’s an old Firelite. I think adding the soft woods seems to help. Either that, or a really long session of stirring the coals regularly to continually knock the ash off.

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