Bio Bricks and semi seasoned wood

[fprintf]

Rich, 6 - 7 months seasoned wood might do the trick anyway. I know that is what I am going to be burning with bio bricks this year. For me, I just don't have the property to put away lots of cordwood. So I have 2/3 a cord of 12 month seasoned wood, and another cord just delivered of "seasoned" wood, which more than likely was cut and piled up this spring, so lets just say it will have 6 - 9 months on it by the time I need to burn it.

I really liked the bio bricks. They were a real PITA to get started on their own, you need some good kindling and a little patience. They start much slower, even given a good draft, than properly dried wood. YMMV, but most mornings, even when over a bed of hot coals, it'd be 30 - 45 minutes before the stove got going well enough that I felt comfortable enough to close the doors. Rarely could I just shove them in and have it start up, as it almost always required paper, kindling sticks and starting with 4 or 5 bricks in a tee-pee at the back corner of the stove with the front doors open. However once it was going, holy smokes was it hot.

My dealer says it is absolutely no problem to burn bio bricks as a sole heat source in my stove. I do not believe, however, anything about the advertising that these bricks are as much BTU as a cord of wood. Pound for pound I found regular wood lasted much longer and gave a more even heat over that time period. The bio bricks tended to run very hot for a short while before turning to ash. That said, your plan for mixing the woods is perfect. Biobricks are very low moisture content, and mixed with higher moisture will probably do just fine.

 

[Freeheat]

Oops, forgot why I stopped into this thread. Was wondering if there is anybody in the Midwest who has burned bio bricks? If so, what was your source?

Danno77 I have dabbled in the bio bricks when I ran out of dry wood. They seem to burn way too fast for my stove and had no coals left after . I have solved that problem for this year
I have 2.5- 3 cords ready to go Cant remember the name of the ones I used.

 

[Woody Stover]

In an "EPA" stove, I find that burning wood with MC > 15% presents problems. More difficult to get lit and keep lit. More tendency to smoke, blacken window, etc. Then, too, burning it is less efficient than if it were fully air-dried.

I was wondering if my cheap meter was reading low, or what. You hear 20% mentioned a lot here, but I've said several times that when I burned some 18% wood last Winter, I could hear it hissing. I had better luck with 16% wood, and decided that 15% would be pretty good. I just hope that the stuff I've been cutting will have enough time to get to that mark. It's mostly Ash, Cherry and soft Maple. We have probably 2.5 months of good drying weather left here, so I'm hopeful...

 

[fredarm]

I really liked the bio bricks. They were a real PITA to get started on their own, you need some good kindling and a little patience. They start much slower, even given a good draft, than properly dried wood. YMMV, but most mornings, even when over a bed of hot coals, it'd be 30 - 45 minutes before the stove got going well enough that I felt comfortable enough to close the doors. Rarely could I just shove them in and have it start up, as it almost always required paper, kindling sticks and starting with 4 or 5 bricks in a tee-pee at the back corner of the stove with the front doors open. However once it was going, holy smokes was it hot.

Supercedars make them REAL easy to get started. I never use kindling, other than some splitter scraps occasionally, just because I have them. But they are are not really needed.

As I've noted before, all wood bricks are not created equally. I've had good luck with Bio Bricks, Eco Bricks and Geo Bricks, all of which have burned well for me. I have not had good luck with Wood Brick Fuel and Liberty Bricks. The Wood Brick Fuel bricks collapsed into a heap of glowing sawdust and the Liberty Bricks looked like they contained some non-wood particles (plastic? formica countertop? who knows?).

 

[zknowlto]

I'm going to get flamed here but here goes. I read a pdf file from some college study regarding burning unseasoned wood. I forget where I found it, but I'll look. The article basically said it's not a big deal as long as you burn it at a high temperature. They suggested mixing in dry wood to get the temperature up. Sounds like what you want to do. It's also something virtually all of us on this forum have done at one time or another. I did a little math to see if what they were saying makes sense. It does. I recreated my problem here.

We have two splits. Each contains 10 pounds of wood. One is at 15% moisture. The other is at 30% moisture. The temperature of the wood is 60 F. I assumed the wood was brought from the outside and aloud to sit inside and warm up a bit. A BTU is the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree F. We need to raise it to 212 F to get it boil out of the wood. Actually, it will start coming out of the wood at a much cooler temperature but lets not worry about that. So we need to raise the temperature of water in the split 152 F. We get 8000 btu per pound of wood.


15% split 30% split

10 pounds of wood 10 pounds of wood
1.5 pounds of water 3 pounds of water

10x8000= 80,000 btu 10x8000= 80,000 btu
1.5x152= 228 btu 3x152= 456 btu

80,000-228= 79,772 btu 80,000-456= 79,544 btu

79,772-79,544 = 228 btu

79,544/79,772 =0.9971418542847114 or 99.7%


So the wet split will put out 99.7% of the heat of the dry one, and that's going from a 'way too wet to burn' split to an ideal split. The problem is getting the wood hot in the first place. This takes dry wood and a hot fire. Last year, I had some really nasty wet wood that would not burn. I found I could put a couple of wet splits in with dry without any problem, but I could not put wet splits in by themselves. Not even on a bed of hot coals.

I believe in math, but I have to admit, I have a hard time believing that the wet stuff puts out 99.7% as much heat as the dry one.

I like the idea of this calculation, but I agree with some of the others that something doesn't seem right about the weights/moisture. Also, the amount of energy to turn the water into steam is significantly greater than the energy to simply raise the temperature of water.

 

[GAMMA RAY]

I really liked the bio bricks. They were a real PITA to get started on their own, you need some good kindling and a little patience. They start much slower, even given a good draft, than properly dried wood. YMMV, but most mornings, even when over a bed of hot coals, it'd be 30 - 45 minutes before the stove got going well enough that I felt comfortable enough to close the doors. Rarely could I just shove them in and have it start up, as it almost always required paper, kindling sticks and starting with 4 or 5 bricks in a tee-pee at the back corner of the stove with the front doors open. However once it was going, holy smokes was it hot.

Supercedars make them REAL easy to get started. I never use kindling, other than some splitter scraps occasionally, just because I have them. But they are are not really needed.

As I've noted before, all wood bricks are not created equally. I've had good luck with Bio Bricks, Eco Bricks and Geo Bricks, all of which have burned well for me. I have not had good luck with Wood Brick Fuel and Liberty Bricks. The Wood Brick Fuel bricks collapsed into a heap of glowing sawdust and the Liberty Bricks looked like they contained some non-wood particles (plastic? formica countertop? who knows?).

I have used Envi-bricks...very very easy to start a fire with a super cedar in the middle....I use the smaller bricks to start a fire in a "tee-pee" with the fire starter in the middle...I am a newbie and I never had a problem getting a fire started myself with them...and we used the Envi-bricks mixed with dry wood last season...I quite liked the combination...no weird chemical smell or anything like that ..we have a stove shop right up the road that sells them so we will probably mix them in with dry wood this winter...(we may be a little short of dry wood this winter so the envi bricks will help us out...we have wood for next winter stacked but we will not use it this year)

 

[Danno77]

Looks like mostly an Noreast sorta thing. I'm still having trouble sourcing some, and that makes me think that if I do find some they will be unreasonably priced.
Edit: ahhh, as I look at prices per ton of these things they seem to run more than double of what a cord of wood runs here, that's probably why they don't waste their time in this area.

 

[GAMMA RAY]

I am willing to spend the extra $$$ this season for the envi-bricks to supplement our dry wood to get us through this winter...I would rather not burn at all then to burn with questionable wood...we had a small stack of oak that was c/s/s for at over a year and it was not good at all....(I now know oak needs more time to dry than that...it was before I found Hearth.com) The difference between burning with dry wood and questionable wood IMHO is two different worlds...I may be a newbie but I discovered that fast.....When we started to use our other wood that was c/s/s for a longer period ...it was like a joke...well not really, but it was so much easier....like I died and went to heaven.....easy as pie.....I so like pie...and I so like dry wood.....and that was the best lesson I learned....I love dry wood....or "seasoned" wood as some call it.....either way "dry" or "seasoned"....me likey it a lot....and "HAPPY WIFEY....HAPPY LIFEY"....as Mr. Gamma knows....I won't burn no chit wood..or turn the mother off. >:-(

 

[karl]

I'm going to get flamed here but here goes. I read a pdf file from some college study regarding burning unseasoned wood. I forget where I found it, but I'll look. The article basically said it's not a big deal as long as you burn it at a high temperature. They suggested mixing in dry wood to get the temperature up. Sounds like what you want to do. It's also something virtually all of us on this forum have done at one time or another. I did a little math to see if what they were saying makes sense. It does. I recreated my problem here.

We have two splits. Each contains 10 pounds of wood. One is at 15% moisture. The other is at 30% moisture. The temperature of the wood is 60 F. I assumed the wood was brought from the outside and aloud to sit inside and warm up a bit. A BTU is the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree F. We need to raise it to 212 F to get it boil out of the wood. Actually, it will start coming out of the wood at a much cooler temperature but lets not worry about that. So we need to raise the temperature of water in the split 152 F. We get 8000 btu per pound of wood.


15% split 30% split

10 pounds of wood 10 pounds of wood
1.5 pounds of water 3 pounds of water

10x8000= 80,000 btu 10x8000= 80,000 btu
1.5x152= 228 btu 3x152= 456 btu

80,000-228= 79,772 btu 80,000-456= 79,544 btu

79,772-79,544 = 228 btu

79,544/79,772 =0.9971418542847114 or 99.7%


So the wet split will put out 99.7% of the heat of the dry one, and that's going from a 'way too wet to burn' split to an ideal split. The problem is getting the wood hot in the first place. This takes dry wood and a hot fire. Last year, I had some really nasty wet wood that would not burn. I found I could put a couple of wet splits in with dry without any problem, but I could not put wet splits in by themselves. Not even on a bed of hot coals.

I believe in math, but I have to admit, I have a hard time believing that the wet stuff puts out 99.7% as much heat as the dry one.

I like the idea of this calculation, but I agree with some of the others that something doesn't seem right about the weights/moisture. Also, the amount of energy to turn the water into steam is significantly greater than the energy to simply raise the temperature of water.

971 btu per pound.

 

[velvetfoot]

Can one buy these things around Albany, NY?

 

[cptoneleg]

Can one buy these things around Albany, NY?

The few I burned I got at Tractor Supply, they had pallets of them, and I think you can order a pallet off of internet.

 

[velvetfoot]

I'll give TSC a jingle.
The web site I found wanted to sell 20 pallets min.

 

[velvetfoot]

I just spoke with the local TSC.
Redstone (?) bricks, $306.99 a pallet.
Seems a lot...

 

[Danno77]

I just spoke with the local TSC.
Redstone (?) bricks, $306.99 a pallet.
Seems a lot...

What's a cord of seasoned wood cost in your neck of the woods?

 

[fredarm]

I can get Geo Bricks for $264 locally and get them delivered for $40. TSC is overpriced.

 

[Danno77]

I can get Geo Bricks for $264 locally and get them delivered for $40. TSC is overpriced.

And how about you, 300 bucks anywhere near a cord of seasoned firewood?

I'm really interested if that's what drives the availability of these things in certain areas.

 

[cptoneleg]

Go to the top of this post put in bio-bricks hit search this topic has been discussed many times, I remember reading about them last year.

 

[Dix]

Check Craigs List.

 

[cptoneleg]

They were $3.99 for a pack of 8 so .50 each

 

[Slow1]

Back a few years ago I found them to be rather expensive no matter where I found them. A decent product but a premium fuel - basically on par with good pellets as best as I could estimate (although I've not actually done much pellet shopping). IF I were inclined to exclusively burn bio bricks or such long term I would probably opt for a pellet stove to begin with given that there is convenience in filling a hopper and having it auto-feed at a rate set by a wall thermostat eh?

However, I was happy to have them help me out my first year when I didn't have good dry wood to burn so I mixed them in with the questionable wood. I now still have about 1/2 a pallet of envi-blocks under my stairs that are parked "Just in case", In case of what I'm not sure of anymore... although my wife wants them burned this winter to free up the storage space so I expect they probably will not be there in the spring.