Wood ashes, pellets of logs, are not a good addition to compost, even in small amounts. Wood Ashes should not be spread around the garden unless a good, reliable soil test is done before any application takes place because of the high pH. You can find a lot of information that does say you can add wood ash to compost by people that have not studied this but from people that have looked closely at the composting process you will be told do not put that wood ash in your compost.

Because the element is raised up off the stove about 1-2 inches, the red hot heat radiated out the SIDES of the burner can scorch most stoves. Mine is only 3 years old now, and when I didn't use the raised canning burner, the stove was so badly burned around the reflector ring that I had to use mild abrasives (Soft Scrub and elbow grease) to remove all the blackened stuff. It didn't mater how clean the stove was before I started either. The reflectors on my regular burners that were used with the canner have rusted badly now, and need replacement. I also use those disposable aluminium 'burner bibs', but they tend to vaporize after only one canning session. Because the canner is a LOT bigger than the 8 inch burner, there is a need to keep heat concentrated inside the burner area, as opposed to allowing the heat to project out and against that stove top. After all, you do not have any reflector bowl surrounding the burner anymore, as the burner is raised up well above the reflector bowl. As to the sockets, they should always be inspected and replaced if the burner has problems turning red (control set on high). I have already had to do that with the single burner I used prior to switching to the cannning burner. Once you remove/unplug the burner from its socket and it looks like its gray and oxidized, it should be wired brushed and the socket should be replaced. Unplug or shut off the stive breaker, unscrew the single screw that holds the socket in place, and remove the socket a little. It will be wired to to other wires using 'wire nuts'. These simply get unscrewed, and you untwist the wires. Reverse this process when replacing the socket and your good to go for a while. The socket are made of metal and Bakelite, which is somewat heat resistant to a point. Essentially, what your wanting to do is to raise the electric element high enough off the stove so it doesn't damage the stove surface, as well as helps to keeping the metal bruner support struts from softening and sagging when they also become red hot from all that continous heat. Consider this- have you ever brought something to a boil and allowed that hard boiling to continue for an hour or more? I doubt that anything other than a canner would need all that time and heat at the same time I agree that gas is a better way to go for home canning, but if its not piped onto your street, and your only option is propane, I would rather deal with the electric burners. I do miss my gas stove in the old rental apartment, as it was also great for getting a wok for stir frys nice and hot .

Don't do that!!! PG will NOT change its color depending on acidity of the soil. It will be white in bloom and change to a pink in a fall in any acidic or even slightly alcaline soil. Slightly is a key word. If soil is too sweet it could kill or at least severly damage paniculatas. The same applicable to oakleaf hydrangeas. Arborescens ('Annabelle' as a most common example) on another side could take a lot of sweet without the ill effect, but neutral to acidic soil still would be the best for them beside the point that extra alcalinity(sp?) will do nothing to it in terms of color. Macrophyllas and to some extent serratas are the only hydrangeas that could tolerate pH in 7.5 range for more or less prolonged period of time. Again, what I did was an experiment with a single plant with a local application of natural 'sweetener' and I didn't apply ashes to the same plant this winter. Before I proceed any further I'd like to know how healthy it will be in 2006 and what color it will bloom. I'm saving my winter ashes for spring and will treat few of the Nikko(blue) and Hamburg(pink) budded seedlings that will serve as a guinea pigs and see how it works.

I know this is three years after the initial post but I am hoping this will help someone in the future. We put in a Europa 75 two years ago. Our first winter in our 100+ year old farm house we went through $1700 (USD) in LP. Our stove didn't get put in until part way through the heating season the next year, late November, so I don't know if I got an accurate read on how it operated. This year I had 300 gallons (I think that is how the measure LP) delivered in early November and 2 tons of pellets about the same time, we had about 500 lbs from the year before. We heated our house through this very cold winter of 2010 - 2011 exclusively on pellets, accept for the time I forgot to fill the hopper and the furnace kicked on for about two hours one morning. It is now early March and i just had to order another ton of pellets. I won't need that much for the rest of the year but I have plenty of dry storage space. So i figure I will have spent about $500 total in heating this season, and I am erring on the high side. And we still have 30% of LP left. It does take some maintenance, the stove that is. Cleaning and dumping of the ashes, which are really few. But this is better than a wood stove, fewer ashes, cleaner, no chopping (kinda miss that tho'!) and much more efficient. All in all I think it was a great investment and buy the end of the next heating season it will have paid for itself in savings over LP. That is two years ahead of what I thought. Oh, I have never seen any smoke coming from the chimney. I don't know if this is an indication of how well it is preforming but it is nice not to smoke up the farm like some of those outdoor furnaces.