If you had to make a choice- firebricks

[brooktrout]

If you had to make a choice- firebricks in the stove, giving heat retention, but less volume, or no firebricks, allowing for more splits, but less heat retention?

 

[raybonz]

If you had to make a choice- firebricks in the stove, giving heat retention, but less volume, or no firebricks, allowing for more splits, but less heat retention?

If your stove was designed to use firebricks then you should use them.. My stove which uses cast iron plates instead doesn't need them.. You could damage your stove by overheating if you took out the bricks.. Those buck stoves look pretty nice but they don't sell them around here.

Ray

 

[ControlFreak]

If you had to make a choice- firebricks in the stove, giving heat retention, but less volume, or no firebricks, allowing for more splits, but less heat retention?

Keep the bricks. Those bricks are critical to establishing the interior temperature range that is needed for clean combustion. Take them out and you extract more heat from the fire, bringing the internal temperature down, and sending smoke up the chimney rather than burning it in the stove. That smoke that you're losing is the fuel that otherwise would be creating heat. Actually, you're not losing all of that smoke, some of it is condensed in your chimney, and accumulates there until you happen to have an abnormally hot fire which ignites it.

If you need more firebox capacity, get a bigger stove. Don't take out the firebrick.

Dan