Can you throw fireplace ash away?
For fire lovers, whether you’re burning in a traditional fireplace, a wood burning stove, an outdoor fire pit or something completely different, this can be a common question.
Luckily the short answer is that yes, you can throw fireplace ash away. But you don’t have to and there can be good alternative uses for what might otherwise be considered “waste”.
Below we’ll cover how to safely dispose of fireplace ash, other uses for ash, and why you shouldn’t always jump straight to disposing of it.
Table of Contents
What is Ash?
Firstly though, what is ash? It’s important to consider the waste material left behind after a fire.
Although wood is combustible (burnable), some parts of it will never get hot enough to burn or melt away, at least in a conventional fireplace, stove or fire pit.
For example, compounds containing calcium. Because these compounds do not burn, they are left behind. All the combustible parts of the wood have been turned into gas and escaped through the chimney.
Can You Throw Fireplace Ash Away?
Fireplace Ash Disposal Safety
Now that we know what’s left behind and why, if you do throw fireplace ash away, safety is paramount. Before we talk about how to throw fireplace ash away, we should first talk about how to make sure it’s safe to do so!
The first thing to remember is that you should only ever throw away fireplace ash when you’re 100% certain it has cooled down entirely.
If you put hot ash into a regular trash can or garbage bin, the heat can cause plastics to melt and the overall temperature of the bin to rise. This is particularly dangerous if you have aerosols in the bin too.
But, even without areoles, melting plastic can create toxic fumes that can spread throughout your home.
To make sure it has completely cooled, we recommend leaving it in the unused fireplace or keeping it in a metal container for at least four days before putting it into your regular waste.
Another essential safety tip is not to breathe it in. So make sure you don’t get too close, wear a mask or cover your mouth if you can, and always scoop slowly to prevent any ash clouds. This is particularly important for people with breathing problems such as asthma.
How to Dispose of Fireplace Ash
The first step in disposing of fireplace ash is scoping it into a metal bucket. To do this, use a metal ash scooper. Don’t touch ash with your bare hands, as this can cause severe burns if it hasn’t completely cooled.
Please remember that this metal bucket should be a bucket made explicitly for ash disposal. These buckets come with a double bottom and tight-fitting metal lid so no oxygen can go into them.
As mentioned before, leave it in the metal bucket for a few days. That will be enough time for it to cool entirely. If you’re not 100% certain that the ash is cool enough, you could use water to make sure the heat has been wholly eliminated.
Once it’s cool, place the ash into a plastic bag. Make sure to seal this bag tightly to avoid spillages or dust leaks.
And then, put your bag with dust into the regular waste or trash.
Other Uses for Fireplace Ash
If you don’t want to throw away your fireplace ash, there are plenty of useful things you can do with it instead.
Uses for fireplace ash:
- Add it to garden compost
- Place it on icey driveways to melt the ice
- Add it to garden soil
- Place it at the bottom of your fridge to remove foul odours
- Rub it into oil stains on concrete to get rid of said stains
- Sprinkle around plants to kill and deter slugs
- Mix it with some form of fat to create soap
- Rub it on metal to use as a polish
- Put it in your pond to slow algae growth
- Keep a bucket of it by your fireplace to put out future fires
Don’t Dispose of ALL your Fireplace Ash
Even if you do decide to get rid of your fireplace ash, it’s wise not to get rid of all of it.
Whenever you start any fire, it’s helpful to have a thin layer of ash on the inner hearth.
Heat expands in all directions, so some of that heat is lost below when you have a fire. But, a thin layer of fireplace ash helps create insulation, so more heat is kept inside the fireplace and transferred into the room, thus increasing the performance and efficiency of your fire!
Don’t Let your Ash Build Up
Finally, it may go without saying but you also shouldn’t allow your ash to build up to a unnessecary level.
Ash, despite not being burnable, is a great conductor of heat. If your fireplace has too much ash from previous fires the heat energy that should be going towards heating the logs will instead go towards heating the ash.
Make sure to clean it out when it becomes more than half an inch thick.
–
As you can see, ash can be used for a whole host of activities which always surprises inexperienced fireplace users.
We hope this helps, and for everything else home heating stick with CosyWarmer.com