bio bricks liberty bricks warranty issues

[asabatelli]

To make a very long tale somewhat shorter--I had some problems with Liberty Bricks earlier this year (described in an earlier post). I found lots of non-wood in them and was experiencing lots of build up in my Hearthstone Homestead stove when using them, especially on the secondary burn tubes. The Liberty company and BT enterprises here in CT were very good about working with me and ultimately refunding my product. When all was said and done, however, I discovered that my secondary burn tubes had actually cracked down the center, and the ceramic baffle above them had a big hole in it. All of this would point to over-firing, except for the fact that I'm very careful not to ever burn the stove too hot (I don't think it's even every hit 500F surface). Could something in the Liberty product have made the tubes more susceptible to cracking? They continually were getting covered in deposits, and I had to clean out the holes/scrape them off....

My main point, however, is that Hearthstone's initial response, conveyed through the dealer where I bought the stove, is that I have voided my warranty by burning non cord wood in the stove. I've since contacted Hearthstone directly and I'm waiting to hear. I did double check with my user's manual, and it very clearly states that the warranty will be voided if you use any non cord wood product whatsoever.

It's looking likely that I'll be out about $260 for replacement tubes and baffle (ironically exactly the cost of a pallet of bricks) plus the headache of removing the old parts/installing the new.

So, a word of caution to those of you using brick-wood products. Pay close attention to how your stove is dealing with their burn temps/whatever it is in them you are burning. Avoid over-firing at all costs. With soapstone, I'm wondering if the internal temp. gets too hot sometimes before the stone absorbs/radiates the heat, so you are in effect overfiring without being aware of it by checking surface temperature??

Also: should Biobricks/Libertybricks, etc., soften their language/issue warnings especially if manufacturers void warranties when these products are used? I hear that Jotul will also void your warranty if you use non cord wood products...

The sad part is that I'm very committed to the wood briquetting mission--using recyled products that burn cleaner. Perhaps I need to consider burning them in a different type of stove? Do any stove manufacturers support/advocate their usage, in the same way that pellet stoves are specifically designed to burn pellets efficiently?

 

[tripw/liberty]

I am in charge of Sales & Procurement with the company that manufactures Liberty Bricks and we want all of you to know that we take your concerns very seriously and we are committed to rectifying the issues we have experienced in our first year of production. There have been 3 primary issues about which we have received consistent feedback from the people using the product; the courseness of the bricks, an unpleasant smell and flimsy shrink wrap. Because of the difficulty in locating consistent sources of fine sawdust, a large part of our feedstock comes to us in the form of wood chips. We now recognize that bricks composed of chips alone do not hold their form properly or provide the burn time of a denser brick. Therefore, we have added equipment to reduce the chip down to a finer grind allowing us to produce a denser brick. As for the unpleasant smell, we traced that back to a door manufacturer we where we were collecting sawdust and we have since stopped collecting from that source. The shrink wrap issue has been addressed as well and we have been using a heavier guage shrink wrap for several months now.
We have and will continue to work with our vendors to rectify our consumers complaints and we are working very hard to produce a product that will make the end user very happy.