Anyone burn Bio bricks in a down draft stove ?

[BJN644]

Just wondering how Bio bricks would work in a down draft type stove. I have a chance to get a good deal on some but was curious how they would burn in my Oakwood. I'm sure everyone has heard by now that you need a good thick bed of hot coals to get the secondary burn on a down draft going. So would the bricks work the same as cord wood or would they take even longer to build up that bed of coals ?

 

[James04]

Bjn,

I have purchased a half ton of Biobricks to supplement my less than ideally seasoned cord wood. What I have found is that if you don't let them burn down too far (they tend to produce a very fine ash that doesn't hold heat) you can bank them up against the secondary burn chamber throat and work very well for preheating the wood gases for secondary burn. My complaint is that they seem to burn too quick. Unless you stack them tight. Then they seem to give off too little heat. You must be careful. If left unattended they can get out of hand and you will discover your stove is at 750 to your surprise. I like them for what they are. I suspect that it would take two tons to equal one cord of hard wood though.

James

 

[begreen]

I'm not sure how well they would work in a downdraft stove, but it's worth a try. It will take some experimenting for sure so I wouldn't get a ton or two just yet.

They do need to be stacked solid after the first few are fully aflame. The trick it to rotate the next layer 90 degrees so that the joints between bricks don't align layer to layer. Don't try too many bricks at once until you have got it down. Maybe start with two layers.

Yep, there is a lot of heat in them. I pushed 750 the first time I tried them too. The second time I got a better behaved fire, but still hit 700 for about 20 minutes.

FWIW, It takes about 1.3 tons of cordwood oak to equal 1 ton of bio-bricks.

 

[Jclout]

The dealer I bought my stove from is burning bio bricks in a VC Defient with Everburn and he is having no trouble, he showed me inside and he did not have a thick bed of coals, unless he was mistaken he believed the stove to be operating properly.

 

[Cath]

FWIW, It takes about 1.3 tons of cordwood oak to equal 1 ton of bio-bricks.

BeGreen,
It's interesting that your estimate is so different from James'. Based on my very limited experience I would guess that you are right and that James' the difference is based on how tightly you pack them.
~Cath

 

[James04]

BeGreen,

If I am not mistaken. I probably am. You stated in another thread that the Biobricks had 17,000,000 Btu's per ton and red oak has 24,000,000 per cord. How do you get 1 ton of bricks=1.3 cord of wood? Or did you mean the other way around. 1.3 ton of bricks equals 1 cord of wood?

James

 

[James04]

For those who are using the BioBricks. How many bricks do you use for an overnight burn? Lets say 8 hours and at least 300 stove top temp in the morning. I tried 13 last night and it did not work. Less than 200 stove top after 7.5 hours. They were stacked four on the bottom row four on the second row (slightly offset). Three on the third row and two on the last.

James

 

[begreen]

BeGreen,

If I am not mistaken. I probably am. You stated in another thread that the Biobricks had 17,000,000 Btu's per ton and red oak has 24,000,000 per cord. How do you get 1 ton of bricks=1.3 cord of wood? Or did you mean the other way around. 1.3 ton of bricks equals 1 cord of wood?

James

From the other thread "By comparison, a cord of white oak = 4000 - 4500#, 25,700,000 btus or if very dry, 12,850,000 btus / ton"

Divide 25,700,000 in half (2 tons in a cord) and get 12,850,000.

 

[James04]

So you were comparing a ton of cord wood to a ton of Bricks? In other words 1 ton cord wood 12,000,000 Btu Vs 17,000,000 for 1 ton bricks? So then 1.4 tons biobricks would equal 1 cord of wood.

James

 

[swestall]

Its hard to burn anything right in a downdraft NC stove. But, I wonder (have yet to get some bio bricks to find out) if they actually burn a lot cleaner and if the secondary is as important (to clean burning) when burning them. Or, if you are still going to get a heat boost when you close the primary damper down and force the heat through the secondary chamber. All good questions.....

 

[Corie]

All this difficulty with these downdraft stoves (particularly the VC breed) makes me want to buy one just to try it out. I'm really curious if it is as tough as everyone says. No offense to those having a hard time with it, I'd just like to see for myself. Anyone want to sell me one? HAHA

 

[James04]

Corie,

Yes I will sell you mine for the full retail purchase price of an equivalent cat top loader. Ok, just kidding. I will have to say that any time I have had a stall that, I was just being inpatient and the blame rests on me. That being said. I believe that patients is the key to making this technology pay off. In other words building the needed coal bed before attempting to engage the secondary burn. The use of kindling and small splits seems to be what is needed. Prior to now that is what I was missing. It seems as little as 40 minutes is all that is needed with the correct fuel size. This is with my stove (Harman Tl300). I hope that others will chime in on whether or not they are using small enough fuel and patients and still not meeting with success with these downdraft stoves. I realize that this should be discussed in another thread if further discussion is desired.

James

 

[James04]

Its hard to burn anything right in a downdraft NC stove. But, I wonder (have yet to get some bio bricks to find out) if they actually burn a lot cleaner and if the secondary is as important (to clean burning) when burning them. Or, if you are still going to get a heat boost when you close the primary damper down and force the heat through the secondary chamber. All good questions.....

Swestall,

The Bricks burn very clean. However if all of them are not "on fire" and glowing there is still unburnt gases being released and the secondary burn is working. I can tell by the flue gas temp's. If all is burning "clean" I will have equal stove top and flue temps. If not flue temps will be higher than stove top.

James

 

[swestall]

Well, that's good input on the bio bricks, and Corie if you position a pickup at just the right angle, you might feel a large thump as the downdraft stove falls in off the deck. As with other folks, I am getting to know how to get the secondary engaged, but also I have concluded getting the Everburn secondary engaged in a manner that doesn't stallt is far too time consuming for a person that has to go to work and do other things. I have no problem at all on those days that I can just sit around and futz with my stove. I have to add that my benchmark is the VC CAT stoves, that do not perform the same way, they are reliable. My personal goal is to get VC to work out a fix or pull back and market only user friendly models. I think they are a good company and want to see them with 100 % products that work well: as claimed in the marketing materials. Now, I know for example, Englander stoves do that.

 

[LostOne]

I have a Vermont Castings "Winter Warm" large fireplace insert in the house we are renting while we look for a place to build a home.

We just started using the Bio Bricks at the beginning of December. Back in November, we bought 10 packages of Eco-Logs and 10 packages of Bio Bricks to test them out. The Eco-logs lasted about 2 days. The Bio Bricks lasted about a week. Considering the Bio-bricks were considerably cheaper than the eco-logs, that made my choice pretty easy.

I can't use cordwood as I have nowhere to store it. The bio bricks, on the other hand, store rather nicely in my garage. No mess, no fuss.

It took me a while to figure out how to best use the bricks in the VC insert. At first I kept either getting it too hot or having it just smolder along, not putting out much heat.

I found that what works best in my VC insert was to use 1/2 of a "super cedar" firestarter, put a bio brick on top of it, then stack 4 bricks on either side, tightly stacked with 2 on the bottom facing front to back and 2 on the top facing left-right. Then I light the fire starter and put another brick on top of the first brick so that it's in sort of an "A" shape, front to back.

Then I close the door and walk away for about 20 minutes. I come back, close the damper and turn on the inserts fans (the fire will be going well, but will still not be putting out much heat) then walk away for another 10 minutes. I come back, the stove will be putting out good heat by this time and I'll close down the air damper. Now it's done and I can walk away for about 4-6 hours. When it needs more fuel... which doesn't happen until the bricks are all nearly gone with just about 1-2 bricks worth of glowing coals... I push all those glowing coals to one side of the firebox and create a stack of about 10 bricks up against it. Making sure that I stack them as tight as I can. Then I close everything down again and walk away for another 5-6 hours.

I go through about 1.25 packages (about 25 bricks) per 24 hour day. I can't heat my entire house with the stove as it's not located properly and there's no force air system to circulate the heat... but I estimate that the bricks will lower my heating gas bill quite a bit. Not enough to make it "financially" cheaper... but the house stays more comfortable and I enjoy knowing that even if the power goes out, we'll have good heat in the house.

 

[BioPellet]

The dealer I bought my stove from is burning bio bricks in a VC Defient with Everburn and he is having no trouble, he showed me inside and he did not have a thick bed of coals, unless he was mistaken he believed the stove to be operating properly.

People, Please see my detailed instructions on burning downdraft and tube type stoves. I burn a VC Encore downdraft in one room and Regency 2400 in the other. regularly get 12 hour burns with enough coals to get started again. Use only 100 or so gallons of fuel oil per season

http://biopellet.net/instructions.html

 

[BioPellet]

BeGreen,

If I am not mistaken. I probably am. You stated in another thread that the Biobricks had 17,000,000 Btu's per ton and red oak has 24,000,000 per cord. How do you get 1 ton of bricks=1.3 cord of wood? Or did you mean the other way around. 1.3 ton of bricks equals 1 cord of wood?

James

Guys, BioBricks(tm) change the way your stove burns. They make the stove much more efficent. With cordwood you have wet pices and dry peices, big peices and little pieces -> not all the wood is at combustion temp -> lost energy as smoke, coals in the ash. My testing shows 1 lb of BioBricks is the same as 1.7 lb of cordwood in terms of the heat delivered to the house. Put away your btu bookkeeping - you are not capturing efficency differences. A typical new england cord of hardwood weighs 3400 lb. a ton of biobricks * 1.7 = 3400 lb

http://biopellet.net/data.html

 

[LostOne]

The dealer I bought my stove from is burning bio bricks in a VC Defient with Everburn and he is having no trouble, he showed me inside and he did not have a thick bed of coals, unless he was mistaken he believed the stove to be operating properly.

People, Please see my detailed instructions on burning downdraft and tube type stoves. I burn a VC Encore downdraft in one room and Regency 2400 in the other. regularly get 12 hour burns with enough coals to get started again. Use only 100 or so gallons of fuel oil per season

http://biopellet.net/instructions.html

How many gallons would you go through if you used fuel oil exclusively?

How many tons of bricks do you go through in a season?

 

[James04]

The dealer I bought my stove from is burning bio bricks in a VC Defient with Everburn and he is having no trouble, he showed me inside and he did not have a thick bed of coals, unless he was mistaken he believed the stove to be operating properly.

People, Please see my detailed instructions on burning downdraft and tube type stoves. I burn a VC Encore downdraft in one room and Regency 2400 in the other. regularly get 12 hour burns with enough coals to get started again. Use only 100 or so gallons of fuel oil per season

http://biopellet.net/instructions.html

BioPellet,

How many bricks are you using to get a twelve hour burn?

 

[BioPellet]

The dealer I bought my stove from is burning bio bricks in a VC Defient with Everburn and he is having no trouble, he showed me inside and he did not have a thick bed of coals, unless he was mistaken he believed the stove to be operating properly.

People, Please see my detailed instructions on burning downdraft and tube type stoves. I burn a VC Encore downdraft in one room and Regency 2400 in the other. regularly get 12 hour burns with enough coals to get started again. Use only 100 or so gallons of fuel oil per season

http://biopellet.net/instructions.html

BioPellet,

How many bricks are you using to get a twelve hour burn?

Look at my data page. In the VC there is a higher, flatter temp profile. More energy per time means more bircks needed for long burns. In my regency 2400 I put 15-20 in for a 12 hour burn.