Has anyone tried the new firewood blocks ('Envi 8) ?? Do they work well??

[doglady]

I finally bought 2 pallets of the large Envi blocks. I have found that the Hearthwise burn approx an hour longer but considering the price, I guess from now on I'll buy the Envi. They give really good heat and overall, I am pleased with them. The Hearthwise cost me almost $1200, with delivery, for 2.5 pallets; the Envi cost me $613 for 2 pallets, with delivery. So it's a major price difference.

 

[toonjie]

I found the Envi-blocks to be better than the Envi-8's. They last longer and seemed to start easier. I have a big stove though, (Quad 5100i), and the less blocks I have to stack, the better. Scored 2 free cords of wood and another cord of cedar kindling this season so I haven't been burning them lately, but I have a few packs sitting in the wood box for when the wifey needs to make an easy fire.

 

[Cape45]

I'm seriously considering removing my pellet stove and going back to wood. I think I'm going to pick up the first small insert that I come across and fire it up with envi blocks, even if I have to do it in the driveway. If it works out the pellet stove is history. .

 

[Battenkiller]

I have a local coal company that has started to carry them. They have three brands is different sizes (2, 4 and 6 pounds). They sell them for $249/ton (1 pallet), but you can buy individual sleeves at the same price break. I picked up a few sleeves of each flavor and ended up with 320 pounds of bricks for 40 bucks. That's 25 cents for a two-pound brick. Six of them got my stove up to 650º for about two hours. Not bad since all I have to do is drive five minutes out of town to pick up a car load.

I can't see them ever replacing cord wood, but they will certainly be a welcome addition to the arsenal. Best thing is they seem tailor made for shoulder season. With a little bit of experimentation, you should be able to dial in the correct amount to use for just about any outside temp and get a clean, steady, predictable burn out of them every time. Three of the two-pound bricks should take the chill out of any room in the fall or spring, and would only cost 75 cents... the cost of just one of those fancy SuperCedar firestarters. Drip a little wax on them and they'll probably ignite with just a match. They would then do double duty as both firestarter and heat source.

Sometimes you are up for the challenge of heating with cord wood, sometimes you just need to get warm. These are just what the good doctor ordered for those times.

 

[fdegree]

Does anyone know how this type of product effects the cat in a cat stove?

 

[fmer55]

I started to mix them with the green firewood I was told was seasoned. I use them full time now. Seasoned firewood on Long Island is impossible to find. There are just to many scams. I was going to swap out my wood stove for a pellet stove before I found them. The cost of the blocks is the same as a ton of pellets. I manages to save over $3000 buy using these and not swapping stoves.

Envi 8 blocks are made by enviblocks. No other company makes the Envi 8 block. Im not sure if you thought several companies made Envi 8 blocks.

The envi block is 6 to 7 lbs per block. The envi 8 blocks are 3 to 4 lbs per block. They are all hard wood.

Other blocks I tried were Bio Bricks, Liberty Bricks and Heat Smart Bricks. These manufactures have soft wood or use byproducts.

They burn good. The BTU value on these are about 5500. The envi and envi 8 blocks are over 8000 BTUs. I did the math one drunk night. I came up with about 3 cents per BTU.

Clean up on the blocks is great if you using a vacume. No nails and coals clocking my vacume. I burn 2 tons a year.

I love them. Hope this helps.

also on long island, was wondering who ou get the blocks from and what you are paying

 

[fmer55]

read past posts and now have my answer.....see that, i am too lazy to look at past posts, much less scrounge and splitHAHAHA

 

[Ducati996]

ah k I think they're saying that a cord of red oak is around 5500 pounds total, or 2.75 tons.

8000 BTU/pound give or take sounds about right for very dry firewood. The stuff I burn (woodbrickfuel, similar to biobricks) the mfr. claims it's around 7500 btu/lb give or take partly because that's the given BTU value by some formula for wood at 6-9% moisture level and I believe they confirmed it by lab experimentation too.

most of those products using extremely dry wood waste as their source probably clock in around that ballpark, but to say 1 ton of that stuff is equal to 2.75 tons of seasoned red oak is flat out BS, IMO. I never buy that argument one bit, as 1 ton would be around 15-16 million BTUs. that's similar to a cord of softwood, not hardwood. The moisture levels are different no doubt but I doubt that's significant enough to close the gap, the only thing that could close the gap a little further is the ability for compressed sawdust bricks to burn complete (into nothing but ash) instead of leaving some unburned charcoal behind, but those coals are perfectly usable the next time you fire up the stove too.

what sells these products IMO is the convenience factor, which is why I buy them--they stack wonderfully in very little space in the garage (they're very, very dense--much denser than oak) and don't track in fungus or bugs and I never have to wonder if they're fully seasoned. I don't have a good place on my property for seasoning cordwood so this works well for me.

I find they last longer than firewood - oak, ash, etc.......I only need 3 or 4 Bricks to burn all night with plenty in the morning....stove is shut down all the way....I use a regency 3100 and 3 or 4 bricks hardly fill up the stove, compared to using wood, which i would need to pack completly to get the same results.......so yes one ton of them blocks will be more than 1 cord of wood, easily.....I only see their advertising show they are more than a full cord....never 2 cords.....