STOP Wasting your FireWood ASH! LEARN what we use it for...

welcome to Homestead how we're excited for today's episode 45 days ago we lit one match and we started one fire in our outdoor wood burner that fire has been burning ever since and there's still hot coals in there going now today we're gonna clean the ash out of the wood-burning stove we've done this a couple times already of the season but we didn't get any of it on video the cool part that I think you guys are going to be interested in is learning all of the amazing things that you can do with the ash from your wood burner things that you wouldn't even imagine we're going to show you in today's episode so let's get started so we're at a hundred and sixty seven degrees there's a couple of hot coals left in there but it's mostly ash we've cleaned this out a couple times now but we let it go way too far there's way too much ash in there so we got to clean the whole thing out now we're going to move the hot coals to the back and then we're gonna shovel out the ash into a metal can and then we're going to show you some really cool things you can do with that ash if you get an outdoor wood burner like one of these they usually come with two tools a rake and this thing which I guess is kind of like a hoe and you can use this to scrape the creosote and the crumb off the side of your wood burner we're going to use the rake the rake is nice because if you can get some of the larger coals and you can isolate those away from the ash we're going to try to separate some of those coals so that we can just shovel out the ash we don't want to shovel out the hot coals we can still use those for Heat see the rank is kind of nice because the small ash stays behind and then you punch the larger coals forward trying to save these coals so I'm going to push all the calls to the back of the fire look how hot this thing is during the summer I want to build our woodshed out more ideally if we had the budget I'd love to build it so that there's actually a roof going over this part so that you can fill it up and you're not in the elements or in the snow so I just raked a bunch of the coals I've got some good separation now where the hot coals are in the back find our ashes in the front now I'm going to use this tool to scrape off some of the creosote it's built up on the sides you can kind of see that really good right here on this edge let you do that around the door especially so that we get a nice good seal and then after I get the door I'll go all the way along the side of the firebox [Music] another sort of maintenance issue with these things are I need to find like a brush or something but the vent door is down here there's an electronic damper that opens and closes to regulate the heat so if the water hits 180 degrees this closes it doesn't let any more air in if the water temperatures at say 160 degrees which it is now this is open it's wide open right now to let air in and make the fire get hotter and then make the water get hotter well this gets screwed all over it and sometimes that door sticks on the other side it's actually pretty clean right now this wire goes to that electronic damper and it's good to take this off an oil it every now and then and I've done that a few times a regular maintenance saying is to check the water level I checked this thing all the time you just turn this little lever here and it's got to be up to this mark and it's right there it's perfect besides checking the water level when you close this the water drips out and you can test the pH level of it they sell a kit for it I'm not doing that today but I have done that in the past all right so I used the rake and I've separated a lot of the coals it's impossible to get them all separated I don't want to waste those coals but I've got some good fine ash it's important to use a metal pan obviously you're dealing with some hot coals and some hot ash here and you don't want to put too much in there that you can't move it kind of goes without saying but it is it can get pretty heavy pretty quickly so we would start emptying some of the finer ash out now the trick is to not put your head over the garbage can because you can get all that fine fine dust smoke coming up in your face and if you I have some funny like that last thing you always want to have the hot coals at the front of the fire so that when the door opens the electronic damper opens and closes that air hits those engine reignite them all right so we got a nice bucketful ash here and there's lots of things we can do with it but first it's important that we let it cool down so we're going to let it cool down and we're going to come back in a couple days and show you what we can do with this ash all right another really good use for your wood ash is to clean your wood-burning stove door they get these stains out and they're really hard to get up you have the ash right here and what you do is mix a little bit of ash with a little bit of water and make sort of a paste abrasive cleaner to clean your door off with [Music] coming right off this is working really really well you can feel how abrasive it is it's just lightly scratching the surface but it got that big stain off no problem and I'm just gonna wipe it off with a wet washcloth look how much cleaner that is it looks like a brand new window so some of these things when you look up online all the things you can do with ash some of them are kind of weird like I would never do like brush your teeth but this works surprisingly well it was really easy in it I think we've tried other cleaners on the door and that just took that big black mark off in no time and now we just rinse it off and now look how clear that window is you could see it perfectly as you can use this for is to clean up spills in your garage like oil let that soak in just like you would maybe with cat litter and it'll sweep right up and it'll clean the oil up off the ground let's see how well it worked another thing you can use your old ash for is fixing ruts in your driveway I actually learned this from an old keeping up with Dutch video I just watched and he uses all of his old firewood ash to fill in holes in his driveway and he says that it actually dries almost as hard as cement obviously our driveway is full of snow and ice here but we do have this little rut from our car tire going in and out of the garage wit you know the garage door so I'm gonna put some in here and per duchess channel he said that dries like almost like cement and actually watched a couple other YouTube videos where they were making cement out of old ash so that's the second thing you can use your old ash for is patching and filling in some holes in your driveway let's go look at number three next another really good use for your old ash is eliminating odors in your refrigerator another really good use of ash is for melting snow and ice true you could use salt for that but it's expensive the salt can hurt your dog's feet or your animals if they're walking through it and salt can also destroy grass if it's nearby we have ash it's free it's right here and it does a great job this is the entrance to our Airbnb rental Gus walk through here they park the cars right here and we always get some ice right in this corner here so it's going to sprinkle some ash here and then I'll be able to sweep it right into the driveway afterwards so ash is really good replacement for using salt to get rid of ice and snow all right so one of the number one things you can use with your ash is for fertilizing your garden and keeping pests down in your garden you can also use it to fertilize your trees you can mix the ash in with some water and they call it a tea that you can make that you can then spray on your flowers and plants one of the biggest things is using it in your garden and using it for fertilizer for that reason we're gonna end up having a couple of these cans that fill up throughout the winter that we're gonna save for summertime but even though it is winter and there's snow on the ground I don't have enough kin so I'm gonna take this ash now and I'm gonna dump it right over the snow in the garden and that will absorb down and it's not going to be as effective as if the garden was in the middle of summertime right now but we're gonna end up with so much ash that I'll have plenty to use more on it later [Music] all right so we're going to take this ash and we're gonna put it in our garden and we did this last year and we actually we got a ton of pumpkins it definitely seems like it helped I'm gonna take this bucket I'm gonna put it off to the right side of the garden that way when I do the next load I'll know that that was my first one and then the second load I can put it in the center and then the third load eventually when we get another garbage can full of ash we'll go on the left side of the garden [Music] so again this is kind of stupid why are we doing this over the snow we're gonna have so much ash we're not going to know what to do with it so rather than buying like six garbage cans and storing the ash until summertime we're going to dump some of it now another great use of ass another great use of ass chicken dust that another great use for your used ash is for chicken dust baths you can put a container out with the ash in it you can even put some of it on the ground obviously make sure that it's all cool when you do that and the chickens can give themselves a dust bath just like they would in summertime in the dirt and dust don't even think about it in conclusion don't just throw out your ash it's a valuable resource that can be used for many useful things on your homestead in particular I was impressed how well it cleaned the glass on our wood-burning stove really abrasive people actually brushed their teeth with this which i think is insane but I understand it more now that I cleaned that glass off it was really abrasive and did a nice job cleaning it that and then the garden I think is really the big one for most homesteaders but the fact that you can also patch holes in your driveway with it and it dries as hard as cement per Duchess video I think that's pretty cool too so lots of uses for ash and that's one thing with being a homesteader it's about reusing recycling and not just throwing stuff out and being wasteful so keep that in mind when you're emptying out the ash tray of your wood-burning stove thanks for watching

Channel: undefined

Views: 2,145,853

Rating: 4.7845831 out of 5

Keywords: wood ash, uses for wood ash, ash uses, firewood, homestead, homesteading

Id: 1M8kAHcB9x8

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Kv603]

Galvanized trash can isn't the best choice.

While ash makes a good supplement to mix in with salt to melt driveway ice, I wouldn't put it where people walk and would track it inside.

When burning shipping pallets (HT only!), you'll want to use a magnet to pull put staples, nails before dumping ash anywhere.

[u/DrPeterThePainter]

it goes in my garden. plant a garden

[u/TituspulloXIII]

I use it on the driveway if it's icey.

I put some in the compost pile.

Most of it I bring up to my friends house as fill for a hole he's trying to fill in.