Eco Brick "Playing with Fire"

I talked the manager at my TSC into $2.99 a pack if I buy a whole skid, which works out to $242.19 for 81 packs @ 2025lbs. So one brick works out to $0.37/ brick. I think I figured out how to get a good burn finally, last night I started with a loose stack of 4 2 N/S 2 E/W (tried the pryramid like the directions, but my stove is too small), after those got good and coaled I smashed them and spread them out across the bottom of the stove, then laid out 4 more bricks ontop all N/S placed tightly next to each other. This gave me a good hot 4 hour burn without having to mess with them all the time, got the best secondary burn I've ever had in this stove, secondaries burned great for just over 2 hours.

bboulier - I also have the Jotul 550 stove and find that you cannot leave 2 inches of ash in the stove. Most effective for nice long hot burns seems to be very little ash left on the bottom (an inch at most). So I clearly don't agree with everyone posting to leave two inches. Remember every stove, home, flue, draft is different so do what works best for you. Not trying to be horse's aXX here - but I think many forget how different every situation is.

Roxburyeric - I agree, Two inches in the 550 is way too much. I now leave an inch or less.

I could order a truckload of biobricks. Maybe I'll set up a retail store

At this time we do not offer residential deliveries under 20 tons of fuel, but hope to in the future. If you are looking to purchase a truckload of fuel, please call in and speak with our truckload specialist.

We work exclusively with manufactures of high quality pellets and bricks, and can arrange for delivery of a truckload of pellets or bricks directly to your location. Pricing is available throughout the United States.

Please ask for a Truckload Direct Specialist:

Call:1 (800) PELLETS / 1 (800) 735-5387

E-Mail:[email protected]

Yup, unfortunately, the folks at woodpellets don't have distribution centers everywhere yet, so if there isn't a DC near you, this is their default answer. If I get over to their corp hq this year up in Goffstown, NH (this totally depends on whether I need to buy another skid, which is looking doubtful), I'm going to have to make it a point to find out where their distribution centers are.

BTW Sounds like TSC will be carrying these all winter as the manager told me the warehouse had 34,000 packs ordered that will be in next week, I assume this is for the S.E. Michigan area. With such a supply wouldn't supprise me to see them go on sale again in the future.

We've been trying Eco Bricks we got at the Tractor Supply in Derry, NH, using them in our old HearthMate stove. Seems to take a while to get them going, 6-8 bricks will burn OK for about 4 hrs.

Wife went on Tractor Supply web site and found you can order them and they will ship to the store, free shipping if the order was $50 or more. We have no garage (yet, next year we hope) or basement so we can only store about 40 8-packs on our small enclosed porch at a time.

Sam

Magus said:

Went out to the living room and the flue temp was 600 degrees.

Keep your good eye on these...they can run away form you...especially when you toss them in, in a willy nilly half sleep stupor like I did and left the stove damper WIDE OPEN!

Click to expand...

Well, gosh, just about anything will get away on you if you leave the stove wide open. Five or six decent splits of well-seasoned white pine left that way woulda got the pipe up way past 600º. ;-)

Magus said:

Non Eco Brick Related

I have noticed that as a wood burner...I am changing.
First I wanted to get a wood stove...got one and installed it.
Then I wanted to just burn wood..semi wet dry...did not matter.

NOW! I want to burn only dry wood, want to know what kind of wood I am burning and how effective I am at burning it.
I have found that when I am splitting wood now...I pick up the split to smell it...I know...sounds kinda wierd.
I now want to stack it a certain way so that it Looks good.
I am developing a "system"...
I now look at dead or fellen trees and smile.
My clothing smells of wood smoke...and I like it.
I am looking forward to a power outage!

I ticks me off when the central heat kicks on at night

This may get way out of hand

Click to expand...

I resemble all of this, even the smell the split

shawneyboy said:

Magus said:

Non Eco Brick Related

I have noticed that as a wood burner...I am changing.
First I wanted to get a wood stove...got one and installed it.
Then I wanted to just burn wood..semi wet dry...did not matter.

NOW! I want to burn only dry wood, want to know what kind of wood I am burning and how effective I am at burning it.
I have found that when I am splitting wood now...I pick up the split to smell it...I know...sounds kinda wierd.
I now want to stack it a certain way so that it Looks good.
I am developing a "system"...
I now look at dead or fellen trees and smile.
My clothing smells of wood smoke...and I like it.
I am looking forward to a power outage!

I ticks me off when the central heat kicks on at night

This may get way out of hand

Click to expand...

I resemble all of this, even the smell the split

Click to expand...

I'm one of you too... I search for firewood everywhere. I check out other people's wood stacks as I pass by. I re-stack my piles for fun. I mark certain species of wood with an "X" to keep them separated (I get laughed at for this!). My inside storage is always neatly stacked (and restacked) and swept clean. I've always hated the cold...now, I get mad when it's too warm to start a fire. I check out other people's chimney caps.

Pathetic, I know...

"I have noticed that as a wood burner…I am changing."

Guilty as charged.

I too have become a fan of the wood bricks . I have a smaller firebox ( 1.7 cf) & it's an east /west design . I have found that the ECO Bricks that I bought at the Tractor Supply store at $239 per ton are just the right size to place 3 bricks N/S in my stove & then put a large half round of oak E/W on top of the bricks . With this configuration I get a significantly longer & warmer burn time & typically after the large half round has burned down there are still enough of the bricks left to put another large half round on top of them again . I would suspect that if a person's wood supply is not as dry as it could be that these bricks will help give you a better burn .
I do have a question about wood bricks in general & that is " Are there different BTU ratings per ton of bricks " ? I have talked with some different suppliers of bricks & of course the suppliers that have a higher cost per ton warn that their bricks have a higher BTU than others priced less . This may be true but I haven't come across any specs on different bricks just yet .

With 300 feet of snow (3ft deep x 100 feet distance) between me and my firewood stacks, I'm starting to wonder if for the next couple weeks I should give some bricks a try. I've read some threads here and I'm still not 100% sure on this question: Are these safe in EPA Stoves? Or are they designed for older stoves?

The Eco Brick website says that a pallet of Bricks is "= 1 cord of wood". A pallet is 42" X 42" X 49". A cord of wood is 48â€x48â€x96â€. That means that it takes 3 times the volume of cord wood to generate the same number of BTU's as Eco Bricks. http://ecobrick.net/home

In the instructions contained on the website they show you how to load a Catalytic or combustion air-tube fire box with eco bricks tightly packed together. In the example the firebox is loaded as full as you would load with wood. To me that means you have 3 times the energy in the firebox. http://ecobrick.net/instructions

People at this site seem to be suggesting that the firebricks are burning about as fast as their cord wood loads. Now that would suggest to me that we are creating 3 times the heat/temperature as well.

To me this just sounds dangerous. Am I missing something in the equation?

To me , some common sense goes a long way . A person wouldn't load the stove full of seasoned oak & leave the air inlet all the way open or that would be dangerous . The firebox in my stove is small ( 1.7 ) & I put 3 ECO bricks in there N/S laying them on top of some kindling or wristwood & then lay a nice chunk of oak E/W ( I have an E/W stove ) & after it reaches temperature , I dampen it down & let it cruise . I have a strong draft ( 35 ft chimney ) but the temp has not run away . Every situation may be slightly different but I have had a good experience using the ECO bricks & I will continue to use them in the future . I like the way that the ECO bricks sort of act as the engine that drives the fire & that they pretty much burn down to nothing ( after letting in a little air as time goes by ) . I don't do the teepee thing because of the small firebox size but I don't need to.
Give them a try & experiment a little bit & see if they serve a useful , cost effective purpose for you .

I use both wood and bricks and find them to be very similar in heat. When using the bricks you just have to pack them in tight as you can with no space inbetween the bricks after your initial teepee style fire is going strong. Routinely get about 6 hours of good heat out of them with the draft all the way closed on my Jotul C550. I generally uses 3 or 4 to get it started and put 12 - 14 in stacked tightly for the long haul. Stove top temps generally in the 500 degree area with the fan on high.

I found a place in Ohio that will deliver a skid of EcoBricks free up to 150 miles.

I put my zip code into their calculator.

I live 151.5 miles from them.

Dang.

I like the idea of folks' joining together to place an order. Maybe they'd do a free delivery if three or four of us placed an order.

I'm in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Anybody near me interested? Anybody? Don't be shy...

Nancy

Nancy,

Got access to a full size pickup w/o a camper top?

If so, locate a U.S. Post Office, Walmart, Target, etc within the 140 miles from the distributor.

Request a ’tailgate to tailgate" transfer of a full pallet, they do all the grunt work.

Schedule a ship date down to the hour in the chosen parking lot.

Tell them to cell call you if there are any changes.

If your neighbors burn wood they may want to get in on this as well.

The more pallets ordered the more they will want to accomodate you. ;-)

Well, I did it. Went to the hardware store and grabbed a couple packs of bricks from BioPellet, which, after I bought them learned are not only from my home state, but from my home town. Bonus for less fuel used to transport them.

I put in 3 just for testing, and they lasted about 3 hours. I had a bed of coals from regular wood splits, and just dropped them on. Within 10 minutes stove top was up to temperature and I backed the air down. I now just loaded up 6 of them to see how this goes.