I often chime in on this subject .... I live on alkaline soils, the pH varies from 7.2 to 7.8. I burn 6-8 cords of wood a year, as did the owner before me, so figure 50 years of every winter week, throwing 3 gallons of wood ash around the place. When there's snow on the ground, I just heave it out widely over the snowy lawn so that any coals go out quickly. When there's no snow, I dump it in a pit, which is 5 feet from an oak tree. In the spring, the first grass to 'green up' is where I've thrown the ash. The oak tree pit gets flooded / seeps out, flooded/ seeps out etc. with irrigation water over the course of the summer, and the ash gets washed on down the slope. Where the grass grows much better, deeper green, thicker, than anywhere else on the lawn. The only times I've had problems are when I throw a 4-6" thick clump of ash on soils that are only a few inches deep, with sandstone underneath. That will kill the grass. But even then, by the end of the summer, the dead patch is covered by the grasses encroaching from around. I throw ash in my snow-covered flower beds all the time. I've stopped throwing ash in the vegetable gardens because I pile up grass clippings and chopped leaves all over the beds in the fall, and I'd likely set that on fire. I've also gardened on acid soils for years when I lived overseas, and we often burned charcoal for cooking, and used the ash constantly. The benefits were pretty dramatic. Of course, your milage may vary. I'd suggest starting off by dumping the ash in some out-of-the-way place and see what effect you find.

4-5 days seems a little much. At burning over a bag/day I can usually go for over 3 weeks with my Harman Accentra - but then that is using the premium pellets. My ash pan might hold 2 to 3 gallons. You didn't say what grade of pellets you were burning. Also with a higher ash content - do you have excessive clinkering problems in your burnpot ?

Well, Sparky, if you use the first contractor, be sure your fire insurance is paid up. Sounds like he wants to learn the trade. If you use the second contractor, he'll probably do the job right. If you do the job, you should probably plan to do it over a time or two and hope to get it right. Again, be sure the fire insurance is paid up --- but better check to be sure they'll pay off if you do the job wrong and cause a fire. I'm a little disappointed that you ask if this is a diy job. I'm sure you've seen a LOT of variability in DIY work in your trade. The same range tends to apply to diy stove installation. Furthermore, if you were going to diy in a competent manner, you should have already read and understood your stove's installation manual. That you haven't done so does lend support to the idea that you should do this yourself. The short answer is that if you can read and follow the directions provided in the installation manual, that lends support to the idea that you can do it yourself. Ther can be problems which require judgement or experience to solve though --- hope you don't confront any of those. Also, as in most DIY jobs, plan on taking 2-3 times as many hours as an experienced installer would spend doing the job, and doing it over 1-2 times to get it right. So---- how busy are you? If you are being kept busy in your trade, it's probably worth spending the $1000. If you are laid off for lack of work or have lots of extra time, read above to decide if this diy project is for you.

Naomi, Just to be clear, the heat shields on the stove and pipes are metal and purchased from the manufacturer. I would say they stand about 1 3/4" to 2" away from the back of the metal parts of the stove. The heat shield on the wall behind the stove is cement board. It is held about 1 1/2" off the wall by long screws that go through those porcelain electric fence post insulators between the back of the board and the wall. The insulators are there so the screws can be snugged up and not bend the cement board which always seems fairly fragile even though I've been using it for more than two decades, with plenty of chances to accidentally break it. When we first designed this set-up we didn't plan on using the insulators, but had trouble getting the board to stand off properly and we came up with the idea of using them . They did the trick, and have the advantage of being cheap and readily accessible. Along the base the bottom edge of the heat shield is supported by 3 or 4 angle brackets. The stove heat shields buy you some reduced clearances and the additional heat shield on the combustible wall buys you some more. But the back of our stove is still probably 20 or 21" away from the vertical plane of the heat shield on the wall. Our installation does not look like a fireplace with stove insert. It looks like a big stove sticking out into the room. And as such is actually quite historically-accurate as big old coal and wood stoves were parked right out there in the room. (I have pictures of my house interiors c 1875 and the these ornate behemoths were standing proudly in most of the rooms. The really shocking part is how long the horizontal runs of stove pipe ran before they entered the chimney. Some of mine were 15 feet or more. It's astounding any of these houses survived.) But the stove standing the middle of the room reality flies in the face of the modern colonial-esque aesthetic with wood-burning appliances tucked discretely into former fireplaces, surrounded by lovely paneling and mantles. And yes, our wall heat shield is painted with ordinary latex paint. I have repainted it a couple of times when we moved or changed decorating schemes. The screws are countersunk into the cement board, but because it is not very thick there is a limit on how concealed they can be. Around the hole where the chimney pipe goes into the chimney we have cut the cement board back and covered the the area with one of those round panels. The hold up on the tiling is that it would be fairly permanent and you would have to destroy it to take down the cement board because the screw holes would be concealed by the tiles. I have never worked out a solution to this although I'm sure there is one. It is also a place that is hard to clean behind. I finally settled on using one of those wands intended for cleaning under a refrigerator. Are you thinking of having a mantle and surrounding supports? I have some rudimentary ideas about that, though haven't worked out all the details, yet. Molly~