Eco Brick "Playing with Fire"

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I was playing around with brick fuel a lot before the weather got really cold. I got my best burns with just the bricks in the stove to begin with. No coals, no extra ashes.

They are a slow starter as far as heat output, but once they get going well they are amazing in how much heat comes out of such dinky things. I think extra ashes might actually hurt the way they burn since a big part of their heat output seems to come after they hit the coaling stage. They produce the hottest and longest lasting coals I've ever encountered. I am not at all sure why that is, but the stove temps tell the tale in the end.

Due to the expanded and somewhat porous nature of the coals, I think the ability to generate sustained high temps has to due with the fact that air can get through them more readily. Anything that would reduce the direct exposure to air at this point would probably slow down the burn and reduce heat output. I don't have enough practical experience with them yet, just a hunch is all I'm going on here. Since I have a ready supply for three different brands of bricks (Envi, Bio-Brick, Wood Brick Fuel) just minutes from my home, and since I want to be done with the cord wood thing by mid-March, I will be getting lots of experience with them this spring. I intend to burn them every which way I can to see just how much potential they have.

FWIW you can get set up with your own wood brick making machine for about $150K. That's less than $2000/month for ten years at 10% interest. All you'll need besides the machine is a big metal building, a fork lift and a ready source of kiln-dried sawdust nearby. Paying as little as $15/ton for the raw material, you can start turning a profit almost immediately and help preserve the environment in the process. It's about as green as a business can be these days. 90% of this sawdust ends up being blown into nearby woodlands, producing tons of methane (an extremely potent greenhouse gas) as it decomposes.
 
Packed tightly, they should give you a nice long controlled burn. Wish someone nearby made them. I'd like to try them out in the T6 and see how they work in it. I liked burning BioBricks in the Castine, but the firebox shape was somewhat limiting. There is a pic of them burning in my wiki review of them:

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/BioBricks/
 
Magus said:
Backwoods Savage said:
Magus said:
Hello fellow Burners

I decided while at Tractor Supply this morning to pick up some Eco Brick to try out and give everyone a rolling report.
I picked up 4 packs. $3.99 a pack...8 count to a pack.

I cleaned out my stove of all ashes.

The house was at 59 degrees F.
I made a starter fire with some paper and cedar kindling strips.
Made this in a tee-pee form.

At 10:13, I lit the fire. Within 2 minutes the Bricks (which were also in tee-pee form) caught fire.
I started with 3.
As soon as those caught I placed them N&S (on their sides)...then added another going N&S
I also put 2 going across E&W on top of those.

Within the next 5 minutes all were on fire with the door closed)
Within 20 minutes from starting the fire, the flue temp was at 300 degrees.

I let it climb to about 400 degrees then fully closed the flue damper.

almost an hr later it is 64 degrees in the house, the flue damper is still closed and the flue temp is back down to 300 degrees....the very low end of the burn zone.

I will try to keep everyone updated (if interested)

The reason I am trying the Eco Brick is to see if I can get 6hrs of burn time ( i.e clean overnight burn) and how many it will take to do so.


Magus, you can do yourself a favor from now on by never emptying your stove of all the ashes. Leave a couple inches at least and you will have better fires.

While I can see the logic of leaving ash at the bottom of the stove in the older stove I had (protect the bottom from heat and cracking) I dont see how it help when I now have a stove with fire brick at the bottom of the stove.

Should I still leave ash at the bottom even though I have fire brick at the bottom?

Yes.
 
bboulier said:
From Backwoods Savage:

"Magus, you can do yourself a favor from now on by never emptying your stove of all the ashes. Leave a couple inches at least and you will have better fires."

Are there any controlled experiments about leaving ashes? Are there any manufacturing reps who can provide information? Any physicists who want to respond? This question is a frequent one and worthy of a definitive answer.

I am not convinced that leaving ashes is a good idea. My insert has fire brick. Ashes would insulate heat transfer to the fire brick and therefore send more fire/heat up the flue. Consequently, heat storage would be impaired and I would receive less heat from my firewood if I left ashes. Am I wrong?

If this were true, that would mean the flue temperatures would be high and this is easy to check. On our stove, the flue temperature generally ranges from 300-350 degrees but lower towards the end of the cycle. Many run 400 degrees. These temperatures are not too high but higher would mean that then you would be losing heat up the flue.
 
Battenkiller said:
bboulier said:
I am not convinced that leaving ashes is a good idea. My insert has fire brick. Ashes would insulate heat transfer to the fire brick and therefore send more fire/heat up the flue. Consequently, heat storage would be impaired and I would receive less heat from my firewood if I left ashes. Am I wrong?

Insulation doesn't prevent heat transfer, it only slows down the rate of transfer. The whole idea of the EPA stoves is to get them up to secondary combustion temps as quickly as possible, thereby reducing the total particulate emissions for a given load. The beginning of the burn cycle is the dirtiest and least efficient because internal temps aren't high enough to support secondary combustion. You really want to transition through this early phase as quickly as possible. The ashes allow the internal temps to rise quicker, and secondary combustion to begin earlier in the cycle. At that point, the air is cut back, slowing the volume of hot gases going up the flue and allowing internal temps to get even higher. These higher internal temps are better able to transfer the heat into the sides, top and front of the stove. Which is, after all, what you are trying to accomplish, eh?

Of course, you can get too many ashes. You need to find the right amount for your particular stove/flue/wood/operator combination. I was advised to leave 1 1/2 - 2" of ashes on the bottom of my stove, but then I realized that the 1 1/2" tall ribs on the bottom of my stove (no firebrick on the bottom) are the best indicator of ash depth. This particular stove works best for me if I keep it to the top of the ribs but no higher. If I allow ashes to rise another 2" above the ribs, the air has a problem getting through the load and the burn suffers.

Thanks. I have asked this question before, but now think I have a definitive answer.
 
I've been running 100% solid brick fuel (bio-bricks) since November 1st. Convenient as hell, very low ash, and very predictable in the stove. A "tee-pee" built over a quarter cedar will get my Kent 1/4" rolled steel stove from dead cold up to 250 in about 15 to 20 minutes, at which point I push the teepee (in full burn) all to the back of the firebox, scrape forward my ash to the lip, and put in anywhere from 8 to 12 more bricks, packed tightly together. As that load hits 400, I cut my air back to 50% until the flames engulf the front "face" of the load (I call this the "thermonuclear phase" as that's what the firebox looks like). My air goes back to 1/4 and the stove at this point will cruise at anywhere from 500-625, with a peak burn no higher than 750. The cruise is good for anywhere from 3 to 4 hours, with a nice slow bleedoff to anywhere from 200-300 eight hours later.

Cycle begins the next morning by taking out the ashes from behind the door lip, pulling forward the leftover coals and embers, and building the tee-pee again.

Absolutely love 'em so far.
 
These sound interesting. Right now I have scrounged enough wood plus a felled tree for next year and the year after to keep going, but I see the potential attraction of the eco-bricks in the future. For me, an important problem is storage. I can store wood splits (covered) outside. Where do you store your eco-bricks and how much space does a ton take up?
 
agartner said:
The cruise is good for anywhere from 3 to 4 hours, with a nice slow bleedoff to anywhere from 200-300 eight hours later.

Nice! I'd need 50 pounds or so of well seasoned hickory to get the same effect in my stove.
 
I would add that they are very clean burning as well.
 
bboulier said:
These sound interesting. Right now I have scrounged enough wood plus a felled tree for next year and the year after to keep going, but I see the potential attraction of the eco-bricks in the future. For me, an important problem is storage. I can store wood splits (covered) outside. Where do you store your eco-bricks and how much space does a ton take up?

They really take up very little space, I belive their 1 ton pallet is 42X42X48. I plan on simply stacking them along the wall in my garage. However I'm still alittle on the fence about them. Seems the longest burn I can get out of them is about 4 hours. Plus tonight I got abit of a scare as I loaded the stove up with 8 bricks hoping to get a good long burn. What I got instead was what I belive to be an overfire after only 1/2 a hour with the damper completely shut. I noticed the upper lip of the stove opening starting to glow alittle. So seing as my air was already closed I figured my only option was to try and smother the fire. So I smashed down the bricks as much as I could, covering the air inlet then grabbed two of the wettest splits I had outside and threw them ontop. Luckily this clamed things down in pretty short order. Still with 8 bricks it only burned for 4 hours, granted the results of this may be alittle scewed due to my reaction to lower the stove temp early on, Plus may have to do with the size of my stove. In any case before that incident I'd used 26 bricks over a 30 hour period with 10 hours between loading for the nighttime portion. Doing this my home stayed in the low to mid 70's except over night where the temp dropped to about 60 by morning when the furnace kicked on for about 1/2 an hour to bring the temp back up to 68 after which the stove provided heat for the rest of the day.
 
I store mine in the garage. I buy them by the pallet - one pallet has a ton, and I double stack them so I can get my 3 tons in the floorspace of two. One thing to keep in mind with these things is that you don't want to store them outside, because they do not like to get wet. At all. Once wet, the brick will simply disintegrate into almost useless sawdust.

RG - your stove looks for the most part similar to mine. Are you packing them tight against each other or are they loose? Packing the bricks tight against each other is the way to go. With 8 bricks, I would build them into a block 2x2x2. I also try to get my air turned down earlier rather than later - if I back it down when my stovetop is already at 500 I know it will peak uncomfortably high.
 
agartner said:
I've been running 100% solid brick fuel (bio-bricks) since November 1st. Convenient as hell, very low ash, and very predictable in the stove. A "tee-pee" built over a quarter cedar will get my Kent 1/4" rolled steel stove from dead cold up to 250 in about 15 to 20 minutes, at which point I push the teepee (in full burn) all to the back of the firebox, scrape forward my ash to the lip, and put in anywhere from 8 to 12 more bricks, packed tightly together. As that load hits 400, I cut my air back to 50% until the flames engulf the front "face" of the load (I call this the "thermonuclear phase" as that's what the firebox looks like). My air goes back to 1/4 and the stove at this point will cruise at anywhere from 500-625, with a peak burn no higher than 750. The cruise is good for anywhere from 3 to 4 hours, with a nice slow bleedoff to anywhere from 200-300 eight hours later.

Cycle begins the next morning by taking out the ashes from behind the door lip, pulling forward the leftover coals and embers, and building the tee-pee again.

Absolutely love 'em so far.

When you say "at this point will cruise at anywhere from 500-625" is that the flue temp or stove top temp?
 
agartner said:
RG - your stove looks for the most part similar to mine. Are you packing them tight against each other or are they loose? Packing the bricks tight against each other is the way to go. With 8 bricks, I would build them into a block 2x2x2. I also try to get my air turned down earlier rather than later - if I back it down when my stovetop is already at 500 I know it will peak uncomfortably high.

I packed them loosely with 4 N/S 4 E/W. I figured 8 would be OK as I'd used 6 earlier in the morning to get the stove going and they took off pretty slow. I think what made the differance was the 6 I;d used earlier was on a dead cold stove with no coals, where as when I packed it up with 8 there was a good bed of coals going. I think I'll stick with 6 max for now. Also with a hot stove pretty much shut the air down right after I load the bricks as they take off pretty easily.
 
Magus - the cruise is stovetop - I keep it along the front edge of the stove. I don't have a probe on the flue but I check surface occasionally with the handheld infrared and have never seen anything over 350.

RG - I use a loose pack on a cold stove - 4 bricks built into a tee-pee, then once those catch and my temps come up, I reload with a tight block of bricks. Once the block "catches" I start dialing back the air. Try it and see what happens.
 
agartner said:
Magus - the cruise is stovetop - I keep it along the front edge of the stove. I don't have a probe on the flue but I check surface occasionally with the handheld infrared and have never seen anything over 350.

RG - I use a loose pack on a cold stove - 4 bricks built into a tee-pee, then once those catch and my temps come up, I reload with a tight block of bricks. Once the block "catches" I start dialing back the air. Try it and see what happens.

Thanks...The problem is my stove manufacture does not mention what is the optimal temp to keep the stove top. Alot of the post that are talking about temps...I never know if they are talking about what the flue temp should be or the stove top.

Do you know if there is a good range to keep the stove top vs the flue?
Should I buy a different term for the stove top?
 
BeGreen said:
I would add that they are very clean burning as well.

That's why I want to use them in the shoulder season. I don't feel that small loads burn as cleanly and efficiently as loads the stove was designed for, at least I know mine doesn't. Most stoves need to be hot and have a nice coal bed to get the secondary going. These bricks don't need a lick of coals under them to sustain a nice, clean burn. The fact that 3 or 4 bricks and a piece of firestarter will get the stove up to operating temps for a few hours and just fade away to a small pile of ashes is very appealing to me.

I'd love to hear some reports from cat stove owners, they seem like they'd work fantastic in something like a Fireview. I doubt we'll get Dennis to give up on his 7 year old white ash any time soon, but maybe he'd let the stove go out one time in the spring just to report back to us what 3 bricks did for him. I'll mail a package of Envi-8 to him if he's interested. ;-)

As far as getting them to your location, this would be the ideal product to have a cooperative buy with. Unlike firewood, everyone would know exactly what they are getting, no surprises. If 12 guys within driving distance each agreed to buy 2 pallets, it might be worth getting a truck load delivered to a central location. The size of the membership on this forum makes that at least a possibility. There are probably dozens of lurkers to every active member who would come to the surface if such a buying plan was announced here.
 
I am trying some eco bricks as we speak. They are working well but are a bit *weird*. That is a very scientific observation. I wish I had access to the firebrick options you guys in New England have.
 
Overall Stove performance

Well...I added two more feet to my chimney.

WOW! what a big difference!

I am burning cord wood in it right now but I am going to try and give it another go with the Eco Brick tonight.

I figure by the time I get home from work, I will have a nice ash bed to place them on to try and get an all night burn...i.e 6-7 hrs.

I installed the 2ft section last night and have noticed that it drafts much better and I can control the air from the damper on the stove much better. I will try not to use the flue damper. I was told on a EPA stove I did not need the flue damper. I just installed in at the beginning because my neighbor has one.
 
~*~Kathleen~*~ said:
They are working well but are a bit *weird*. That is a very scientific observation.

There ya go, we love hard scientific observation here! ;-P

The weirdness goes away for me after I close the stove doors. That's about the only advantage I can think of to not having any glass in the front of the stove. What happens behind closed doors, stays behind closed doors.
 
Magus - good to hear the extra length made a difference. With stoves, the chimney and the draft within it is the "engine" that drives the the whole shootin match. As to "recommended" stovetop temps - well basically you want it high enough to burn clean without making anything glow that ain't supposed to, and low enough not to blow you out of the stove room. As far as thermometers go, pretty much any magnetic one will do - I think mine is a "rutland". They're dreadfully inaccurate, however what they do is give you a consistent ~reference~ point as to your stove's performance. If you're warm, and you're not bellowing smoke out of the stack, and nothing is glowing that shouldn't be - then you're probably pretty close to where you want to be.
 
Magus said:
Overall Stove performance

Well...I added two more feet to my chimney.

WOW! what a big difference!

I am burning cord wood in it right now but I am going to try and give it another go with the Eco Brick tonight.

I figure by the time I get home from work, I will have a nice ash bed to place them on to try and get an all night burn...i.e 6-7 hrs.

I installed the 2ft section last night and have noticed that it drafts much better and I can control the air from the damper on the stove much better. I will try not to use the flue damper. I was told on a EPA stove I did not need the flue damper. I just installed in at the beginning because my neighbor has one.

Glad to hear the 2 feet made a big difference for ya.
 
What a coincidence. I just happened to be driving by TSC and figured I'd pop in and see what those Eco bricks looked like and just happend to pick one up to see how they work.

Yeah, no it didnt actually go down like that. I drove to TSC because of this post and I didnt just pick one up - I wiped them out. I threw 2(bricks, not packs) of them on top of the oak that was burning when I got home. Burned hot and kept the cat burning bright for a while. Coaled up nicely and I was quite surprised because two of these bricks arent very heavy.

What does the price come to per brick if you buy them buy the ton? I like them enough to consider buying a ton. A lot less messy and much more flexibility in how you can configure and stack. This could make for one hell of a game of Jenga in the stove!
 
Not sure about the eco's in your neck of the woods, but up here in n'england, I paid 270 a ton plus shipping for biobricks. To make the math even, lets just call it 300. A ton of what I got yields 1000 bricks - 2lb each, so if my math is right, it comes out to about 30 cents a brick. Pushing through anywhere from 20 to 24 bricks a day at full burn, I'm tossing about 6 to 7 bucks a day into the woodstove to stay warm.
 
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