Help needed sourcing bio bricks

[bfitz3]

I'm a first year wood stover and did all I could to get a healthy wood supply, CSS. Made it to almost a three year supply, but am worried that my dead-standing-bark-free won't quite be there for year one. (three cords, cut small, at least some is coming in at 19% MC)

I want insurance this year, so... Please...

If you've ever bought or even looked into buying compressed wood bricks, please list the brand and stores you know carry or carried them. Google can do the rest! I'm sure a lot of folks are about to be looking for these soon, so a nice list might help a lot of people.

Thanks!

 

[BigCountryNY]

I bought a ton of BioBricks last year from a local farm in CT that is a dealer. I had to go pick them up because of the distance. They worked out great and I have three bundles left over for this year. I've seen the CountyLine brand from Tractor Supply, but haven't burned any before. I know several users here have and I have yet to read anything negative. If you've got wood that's close, you could thrown in a brick or two at a time with a load of your best wood and you should be in good shape.

 

[Ash]

I've seen them at Menard's. The brand might have been eco-bricks?

 

[HarvestMan]

You might check to see if there is a Family Farm and Home close to your location (http://familyfarmandhome.com/locations). They have the Gren bricks (http://www.grenheat.com/product-info.php). Also, you could check TSC, they sell a larger brick (http://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/redstone-wood-fuel-pack-of-6). You can get ton discounts from both locations. Also I remember black Friday sales for these last year.

 

[wdenton]

I was curious about these just in case my wood that I have is not dry enough.
We had a lot of rain here this year

So I called TSC and my local one has a pallet of 96 packs
to get the 5% discount you have to buy a pallet full.
So that is around 320 for a pallet.

I wonder how much "wood" this would equal out to

 

[BigCountryNY]

A pallet should equal out to 1 ton. BioBricks claim that 1 ton = 1.5 cords of wood - BTU-wise. My experience with them showed that I would get 4-5 hours burn time out of 8 bricks with stove top temps around 600dF.

 

[DoubleB]

BioBricks claim that 1 ton = 1.5 cords of wood - BTU-wise.

I've never bought or burned bio bricks, but that sounds like a very optimistic claim to me. So I looked up a general source that says 1 ton of bio bricks is roughly equivalent to 1 cord of dry pitch pine (16.5 MBtu/cord), which is also equivalent to 1.5 cords of about the worst species you can find on the chart (bamboo and white cedar).

(broken link removed)

A different way to use the same chart and math is that 1 ton of 16.5 MBtu bio bricks is roughly equivalent to 3/4 ton of oak at 22 MBtu. That's only half of the claim. (If the chart is even accurate, but it's probably close enough.)

This is intriguing me, so I went to their website, and the only claim I see is that 1 lb of Biobricks = 1.7 lb of cordwood. Based on the above math, I am assuming that's 1.7 lb of wet cordwood, which is an unfair comparison. (Unless you plan to burn wet wood).

I have no beef against biobricks, nor experience. Just that I wouldn't plan on 2 pallets giving you 3 dry cords of heat.