Wet wood woes...

WDVR - If your located in the Morris, Sussex, Warren area Tractor supply has red stone compressed wood bricks, Kuiken Brothers lumber yard carries wood fuel stove bricks, The kuiken brothers is $3.05 a pack and you get 84 packs (20 bricks in each pack) on a 1 ton load.
Do not get the dura logs or any fireplace log as they have wax binders that can wreck your stove.
I burned compressed wood bricks in my stove last year with no problems, my dad and (3) other friends also did the same with no problems. If you go this route make a kindling fire and put in 2 or 3 bricks and see how your stove handles them, mix in some of your wood with the load to save on bricks, you will be fine.
As far as the farmer - I personally think that most people have no idea what dry firewood is, I don't think the farmer did anything wrong or was trying to by malicious, I just think its a lack of education / not worth the effort for the money received for wood. If this guy has prime hard woods that are spilt to your liking then continue to use him, just order for the following year and let your stacks sit and bake.

WDVR - If your located in the Morris, Sussex, Warren area Tractor supply has red stone compressed wood bricks, Kuiken Brothers lumber yard carries wood fuel stove bricks, The kuiken brothers is $3.05 a pack and you get 84 packs (20 bricks in each pack) on a 1 ton load.
Do not get the dura logs or any fireplace log as they have wax binders that can wreck your stove.
I burned compressed wood bricks in my stove last year with no problems, my dad and (3) other friends also did the same with no problems. If you go this route make a kindling fire and put in 2 or 3 bricks and see how your stove handles them, mix in some of your wood with the load to save on bricks, you will be fine.

Use Kindling and a good firestarter. You got to get the heat built up in the stove quickly.
Use Kindling and a fire starter even if you have coals to load on.
Load the stove up as full as you can as full stoves are easier to get the heat built up in them.
Have enough space on top of the full load of wood to load the small split kindling and good fire starter.
I like the cabin style stack you did by your house but have your next load of wood sitting by the stove
while the current load of wood burns. This will dry it out more. Along with the better fire starting technique
and sitting a load of wood close by the stove to dry out it should greatly improve your situation

Ctwoodtick said:

$300 for 18 percent kiln dried oak? I don't know about Virginia, but in Connecticut, that type of reasonable pricing is simply not available....and buying normal firewood expecting it to be seasoned as advertised is a losing game. Sounds you have great resource down there

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Central Virginia is dense in two very unexpected resources: soapstone and timber. We live in the middle of thousands of acres of tree farms, both pine and hardwood. Lumber mills are everywhere as well. This makes for a very competitive wood products market. I can get a true cord of legitimately seasoned hardwood delivered, and stacked for $185, not to mention the kiln dried at slightly lower moisture for $300. Even if I bought all my firewood, it would still cost roughly 1/7 of what it would cost to heat with propane or electricity.

I am new to this as well. We just put our wood stove in a few weeks ago that we got from my girlfriends grandma. Have no idea on the brand since we haven't been able to find anything other than the clearance sticker on the back, but we got a load of wood from a friend that says it was seasoned. We are finding out that it's not since when we try to burn it we can hear it hissing and stuff is coming out the ends. What can we do to help this wood burn. We have been using some wood left over from camping that I know is dry and mixing in the wood we just got. I've read on here about burning those bricks, could someone post a link to those.

Didn't read anything past the OP, but I'd take these four cords and stack them in the wind and sun for the next year. Start adding to it, until you have a three year supply. Furlough your wood burning until the first of it is dry enough to burn, next fall if you're lucky.

If you can't afford that, the usual (but painful) plan is to mix your wet wood with something super-dry, aiming to get < 20% average moisture content per load. That means framing lumber scraps (sometimes not too hard to find) or brick product (eg. bio bricks).

Tractor Supply has the Redstone blocks on sale for $2.99 per pack. Black Friday they were $2.50. I burned a few so far, 1 at a time and they do burn good. Will get more when on sale. Right now my plan is to load I large block before night on a coal bed to get a longer overnight burn.

You all are starting to convert me from thinking I shouldn't burn bio bricks.....is it really ok to do this in your wood stove?

I don't see why not. Just don't overfire. I cant see packing the stove full.
I even put small shovels full of pellets in now and then on a coal bed. They burn fine,

CentralVAWoodHeat said:

You all are starting to convert me from thinking I shouldn't burn bio bricks.....is it really ok to do this in your wood stove?

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yes it is ok to do this, they are just smaller pieces of wood compressed by a few tons of force into a bigger piece of wood. just make sure that you don't burn any that use a wax binder this will result in problems. buy a bag at a tractor supply or similar place and try 2-3 blocks in your stove and see how they work. i know myself and many others on here have used them.

Good Bio bricks are fantastic. It's just burning the best, driest wood you could ever want. As others have said, the only thing to carefully avoid is loading as much into your stove as you wood normal splits. I did that once and I won't do it again in a hurry. No harm done tho, just a few minutes with the flames roaring and the stove top sitting at 700 till I had the guts to open the door wide and let the cold air in. It can happen with wood too, as we all know. Had I read about bio bricks on this forum before the first time I tried them I wouldn't have had that problem, so you won't have it... all you need to do is try no more than three or four per load to start with, till you get to know how they work.. No harm can be done by under loading for one or two cycles till you get their measure

I've tried two or three different brands, as they can be very different, just like different species of wood can be. I prefer bricks made from hardwood, they burn twice as long as softwood bricks. I've also seen ones made of compressed bark, which are recommended for overnight burns - have yet to try them. There's no point in me mentioning brands as they will doubtless be different here in the UK. I also know that here, at least, it really pays to shop around, I've seen bricks for sale for as much as 50% less from one supplier to the other... A bit like wood in that respect too. I recently discovered a wood burners cooperative here I Scotland who sell bricks at cost price to members - that's been real gift.

I feel for you in your wet wood situation... I've been there too many times myself and am probably infamous on this forum for moaning about it. I'd say your two simplest choices are either to mix the wood with bricks... or forget the wood for a year and use 100% bricks. I have a small stash of oak splits I put away last year becuase they were too wet and they're doing pretty good this year, and there's some enjoyment to be had in that, better than struggling in various ways to get them to work for you.

... But if you order a load of bio bricks, you can't store them like wood - make sure you have somewhere really dry like a barge or basement, they are more fussy than splits that way by far and will return to pulp if they are exposed to damp.

Supersurvey said:

Tractor Supply has the Redstone blocks on sale for $2.99 per pack. Black Friday they were $2.50. I burned a few so far, 1 at a time and they do burn good. Will get more when on sale. Right now my plan is to load I large block before night on a coal bed to get a longer overnight burn.

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Looks like I can also get these from Tractor Supply. It looks like they have no additives (ie wax, or binders) and are safe to burn in a wood stove. Am I correct?

So, I just spoke with my stove dealer and he said NOT to burn those bricks in my Jotul. Is this just them being overly cautious with the company line?

CentralVAWoodHeat said:

So, I just spoke with my stove dealer and he said NOT to burn those bricks in my Jotul. Is this just them being overly cautious with the company line?

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RYM. Took me all of 10 seconds to find this.

Page 10:

"Use Solid Wood Fuel Only
First this stove is designed to burn natural wood only. Wood
that has been air-dried for a period of 6 to 14 months will
provide the cleanest, most efficient heat.
Do not burn:
*Coal *Trea
ted or painted wood
*Garbage
*Chemical Chimney cleaners
*Cardboard
*Colored paper
*Solvents
*Any synth
etic fuel or logs
The burning of any of these materials can result in the
release of toxic fumes. Never use gasoline, gasoline-type
lantern fuel, kerosene, charcoal lighter fluid, or similar
liquids to start or “freshen-up” the fire. Always keep such
liquids away from the heater at all times."

Bio bricks are solid wood, as someone mentioned above, with no binders. http://jotul.com/us/guides/_attachment/12849