fire brick replacement

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hockeyfan

Member
Dec 28, 2011
45
Western MA
A bunch of questions about the often unappreciated fire brick.

What is a good metric to decide whether a fire brick needs to be replaced?

They appear to perform a rather mundane but important task, protecting the back of the stove (especially the hopper) from excessive heat. However, I notice that as they begin to wear, there is a larger gap (although very very small) between the bricks as they are positioned than when they were new.

Is there a way to measure their effectiveness? Obviously in my case they're doing a fine job right now, but if excessive heat were beginning to get through, it would be nice to know well before a problem occurs.

Hypothetical question (I'm not going to try this).........would the stove know the fire bricks were missing or defective via a temperature anomaly (maybe too hot in the hopper or too cold in the firebox area), and execute a shut down in the process?

Do fire bricks have ratings and are they different between stoves, or are they a very cheap replacement item (not stove specific and readily available)?
 
Cheap, readily available. I think I bought a box of 6 for $10 at the farm store where they sold stove supplies. Helps radiate heat forward away from pellet bin. I used four. Going to get some rope gasket tomorrow and do the doors. $5 for I think 10 ft. of 3/8 rope. May not need to do all the little things but if the stove is in a warm place, I like to make everything as good as possible before things go south.
 
in most stoves they are purely ornamental… nothing fireproof about them. Tossed mine six years ago...
 
Usually the last thing standing after a house fire is the brick chimney.
 
Thanks for the replies, I always wondered about their function. I certainly don't plan to take mine out anytime soon, but at least it appears they don't have such a critical function as I suspected.
 
Those fake brick panels are nothing more than sales tools to help sell the pellet stove ambience… just like those dumb fake log sets.
 
Needed in Ecoteck, Countryside to name 2 I know intimately.
 
Those fake brick panels are nothing more than sales tools to help sell the pellet stove ambience… just like those dumb fake log sets.


And the fake log set was tossed after the first clean out...........
 
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