If a housewife tries to build a fresh fire in a stove with a full ash pan, she will have to wait for the ashes to become heated thru before she can get satisfactory use of the oven. She will be unable to regulate the temperature of the oven if it becomes too hot. It is a great waste of fuel to heat a large pan full of ashes. [Illustration: FIG. 3. Ash chute.] =8. Ash Chutes.= In some modern houses, there are ash chutes which carry the ashes directly from the kitchen stove to a receptacle in the basement (Fig. 3). These have to be installed with care. If there is a draft of air which cannot be regulated from the basement up thru the fire box, the fire will burn too fast. There should be a damper to regulate drafts here. An ash chute saves much dirt in the kitchen. CHAPTER II GAS STOVES The gas stove is the simplest stove made. It consists of a burner or burners of different shapes mounted on a suitable frame. The best example of a gas burner is a pipe with holes punched in it, where the gas flows out and is set on fire. This pipe may be coiled into a circle and make a round burner, or the holes may all come at the end, which is arranged to spread the gas into a disc shape. =9. Burners.= Stoves are usually made with different sizes of burners. One manufacturer states that the gas stoves made by his firm consume per top burner per hour fourteen to eighteen feet of gas, and the oven burners consume eighteen to twenty feet when the gas is turned on full. Simmerers consume much less than this. =10. Simmerers.= Every gas range should have a simmerer on it. This is a small burner, usually about an inch in diameter. After a large kettle full of food has been heated to boiling, this burner may keep it simmering for hours, using very little gas. This burner will keep small kettles of food boiling. =11. Air Mixer.= Gas escaping from any pipe will burn, but it will burn with a yellow flame. To make gas burn with a blue flame--that is, to secure complete combustion--air must be mixed with it. This is done in the air mixer (Fig. 4). The blue flame is desirable for cooking because it is hotter than the yellow flame and does not blacken the cooking utensils. Gas passes thru the air mixer before entering the burner. Sometimes the air inlet is only a hole put in the under side of the pipe. The opening for entrance of air is shielded so that the gas will not escape from the mixer, but will go on into the burner. A gas pipe looks about half an inch in diameter, but the stream of gas which is allowed to flow into the burner is very small, in some cases being about the diameter of a darning needle. The opening for air is so large, that a person's finger may be put into it.