Softwood vs Hardwood Eco Briquettes

[FionaD]

as some of you will know, I've been burning Eco bricks/briquettes recently; today a question arose about the difference between hardwood and softwood bricks.

The question came up when someone asked me why hardwood bricks should be considered better/hotter/longer burning than softwood ones, becuase surely the density of both kind of bricks would be similar, because the compression would be equal.

This led me to wonder if that was true and so I asked around..

• One person said there was no difference, for the reasons stated above.
• Another said the quality of ALL Eco bricks (we're talking here solely about the ones that do not contain additives to bind the sawdust) is entirely based on how well - how highly - they are compressed
• someone else told me that it is not possible to create 100% hardwood bricks without using some kind of binding agent, so there always has to be some softwood in the mix if the brick is additive-free. I'm mostly interested because there's often quite a price hike for Eco bricks that Are described as hardwood and I wonder if this is merely preying on the general preference folk have for hardwood logs.

My personal experience of Eco bricks so far is limited, I have tried two kinds, one hardwood and one softwood.. So far the hardwood ones were markedly better in performance... They didn't expand hardly at all, didn't fall apart and burned much longer... But now I am wondering if their superior quality was down to the level of compression rather than them being hardwood bricks.

Any thoughts?

As an aside - For those of you who know the back story that lead to my move from burning wood to Eco bricks, you might be interested to hear that I recently scored some really excellent quality mixed hardwood! Funny how things work sometimes, what you're looking for turns up behind your back just at the point you're about to give up! The wood's not cheap though, so my plan for now is to have a good stock of Eco bricks on hand as well, as they are really a great burning experience and cost way less. I love real wood though - there's something about it, so, as I don't smoke or drink (much), <20% MC hardwood splits will be my luxury item

 

[mellow]

Same can be said for burning hardwood pellets in your pellet stove, the better quality hardwood pellets leave less ash and burn better.

 

[FionaD]

Same can be said for burning hardwood pellets in your pellet stove, the better quality hardwood pellets leave less ash and burn better.

So would you say that good quality hardwood pellets are better than good quality softwood pellets?

 

[mellow]

Yep.

 

[FionaD]

Yep.

Thanks.. I guess that agrees with my experience so far.... But mine is limited, so good to hear others opinions too.

 

[Pellet_Pete]

So would you say that good quality hardwood pellets are better than good quality softwood pellets?

As someone who's burned 7+ tons of pellets the past three years, this has not been my experience at all. I've burned poor to good quality hardwood & softwood pellets, and the heat output does not vary THAT much. What does vary is ashiness, even across ten different brands of so-called "Premium" pellets that supposedly control for ash content, which translates to how sooty the heat exchanger gets, which translates into lost efficiency before scraping the ash off again. In the Northeast, this appears to be correlated with raw material sources - hardwood pellets often are from roundwood which has much more bark content, and the softwood pellets I've burned are from mill residues (i.e. spruce-fir lumber mill out of Canada) which is just sawdust more or less. The Canadian mill residue pellets, which were the cheapest I've ever bought, burned hot and clean as a whistle. The stuff from the nearest pellet plant burns dirty as sin, giving off intolerable amounts of ash and "grit" which I suspect is bits of sand from the skidded logs. I've even burned a horrible pellet that had bits of colorful plastic, reportedly from the occasional plastic pallet that got ground up with the wooden pallets they were made with - those had noticeably lower heat output relative to reload time.

In any case, the premise of softwood vs. hardwood pellets is a perennial issue on the pellet forum, but as you may find, the pellet threads have a tendency to grow ten heads and it becomes hard to tell which is the true one. As you noted, the basic density and composition is essentially the same, so what really matters is the raw material, IMO.

 

[Highbeam]

So would you say that good quality hardwood pellets are better than good quality softwood pellets?

Oh no, that's not true. The softwood pellets are the good ones. So you're right about density, both are the same. The softwoods bring resins to the table that add btu per lb.

 

[begreen]

Agreed. When we had the pellet stove our east coast relatives were envious that we had softwood Lignetics out here. I tried a few bags of hardwood pellets and didn't care for them. At the time it appeared that Blazers out of Oregon (doug fir) were the hottest.

 

[FionaD]

And I guess you would all agree that what you're saying about pellets would apply eucalyptus to Eco bricks...

(Did I mention the eucalytpus Eco bricks I'd also tried? 'Eucalyptus' should read 'equally' - that was the result of the dance between my mistyping and my autocorrect, but I'll leave it in, cos it's funny!)

I found someone who sells 100% oak (apparently) RUF briquettes (I think you have the RUF system over your way too) using wood waste from their furniture and floorboard workshop.... they themselves are not trying to suggest that oak bricks are better, it's just what they've got to work with, which makes sense; but for other companies I've spoken to, promoting their bricks as hardwood is clearly a major part of their pitch.

The softwood bricks I tried a while back were not great, but maybe it was how they were made. Yesterday I found someone nearby who sells RUF bricks made from softwood, they're really reasonable compared to the hardwood version so maybe I'll get a smallish load and give them a try, then having burned both hardwood and softwood made using the RUF system, I'll hopefully have a good basis for comparison.

P.S. This latest wood I got last week is sheer heaven! It's a completely different burning experience, Honestly, I feel like me and my stove have arrived on a different planet. By God, no wonder the first question you almost always ask folk on this forum when they have any issue is, "what's the MC of your wood?" Bad wood causes all sorts of other issues, as well as the most obvious ones. Sub-par wood is probably worse, because you're always wondering whether it's the wood, the stove or you and you struggle to cope and adapt in all three directions at once. Good wood changes everything.

 

[Pellet_Pete]

P.S. This latest wood I got last week is sheer heaven! It's a completely different burning experience, Honestly, I feel like me and my stove have arrived on a different planet. By God, no wonder the first question you almost always ask folk on this forum when they have any issue is, "what's the MC of your wood?" Bad wood causes all sorts of other issues, as well as the most obvious ones. Sub-par wood is probably worse, because you're always wondering whether it's the wood, the stove or you and you struggle to cope and adapt in all three directions at once. Good wood changes everything.

Good for you! Wood is good, but I have quickly learned that dry wood is great! When I was first indoctrinated () by this forum 2 yrs ago, I started amassing wood in anticipation of my eventual stove. Boy am I glad I did, sparing me the "new wood-burner blues".

Re: ecologs & the like, my building inspector, who was in fact very knowledgable about wood heat, highly recommended them as an alternative fuel, so there must be good ones around. The trick is in seeing past the veil of marketing.

 

[Highbeam]

I do believe that you can have crap softwood pellets/briquettes and you can have really good hardwoods.

So if both are really good examples of the material clean, bark content, compression, dry, cost, etc. then the softwood will have more energy per lb.

 

[begreen]

Yes, definitely. We got a ton of cheap softwood pellets once from Home Depot in the late 90's. They were crap to burn. Full of fines and high silica (probably from bark) plus wildly irregular lengths. They required twice the cleaning as compared to Blazers or Lignetics softwood pellets.