The Natural Philosopher wrote: >
There is something seriously flawed with your stove or more likely the way you use it. Mine has a plastic shopping bag full of ash which will have become almost rigid and that is about once a month with a fire on day and night. Perhaps you are burning fresh timber or more likely you have a grate. Its best to burn the fire on the floor of the stove with no grate. That way you always have a hot bed of ash under it.
you use the traditional fireplace for your living room so perhaps you should not talk so knowledgably about wood burning stoves when you clearly have limited experience of them. That scenario would be much improved if you installed a wood burning stove in your living room. You could get 10 kw and lose very little up the chimney if you did what I said earlier. You would probably burn much less timber in the stove and get far better heat output and therefore put less of those pollutants you refer to into the atmosphere. You dont know what you are missing.