# Bio Bricks and semi seasoned wood



## Rich L (Aug 4, 2011)

Anyone have any experience burning biobricks mixed with semi seasoned wood?If so how was the heat output and burn times compared to burning seasoned wood ?


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## Backwoods Savage (Aug 4, 2011)

I don't ever recommend burning semi-seasoned wood no matter what it is mixed with.  Well, maybe in an outdoor fire at a campground it would be okay.


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## Jotul_Rockland (Aug 4, 2011)

If you give your scenario, it will enable us to make valid suggestions.

I burned Bio bricks and questionable wood last year.


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## billb3 (Aug 4, 2011)

I tried  some bricks ( don't remember which ones, but they weren't logs) and really don't think I would mix them with anything else. They're a bit tricky on their own. I only had about 18 leftover from a friend who tried them and didn't like them. Maybe that wasn't enough to judge.
Nice
I might consider them if I had no seasoned wood.

I really wouldn't burn green wood except for outside in a pit. and even then it's a waste of good wood.

I used to burn some punky stuff and thought a neighbor was being a bit of a jerk mentioning that my (or somebody's)stove stunk sometimes . I burned a bunch in a open pit. Just really wet punky oak branches that fell on the lawn. Wow. What a stench. I've gone back to throwing the real punky stuff back into the woods. 
Pine makes for a nice smelling camp fire. and I've got plenty of white pine.


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## fprintf (Aug 7, 2011)

I had questionable wood delivered late December last year, only I didn't know it until I tried to burn it. So we stopped burning wood. Later in the winter, closer to spring, we tried some bio bricks and really liked them. Now that I know a little more, I'd be really careful burning anything questionable. If it won't burn on its own really well, that is without the help of the very hot bio bricks, then it doesn't go in the stove.


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## CTYank (Aug 7, 2011)

Rich L said:
			
		

> Anyone have any experience burning biobricks mixed with semi seasoned wood?If so how was the heat output and burn times compared to burning seasoned wood ?



Let's get the concepts straight. Seems you have, or anticipate having, overly wet wood? How wet? Talk to us about moisture content. $10 will buy you a basic moisture meter. (IOW "semi seasoned" is meaninglessly fuzzified.)
In an "EPA" stove, I find that burning wood with MC > 15% presents problems. More difficult to get lit and keep lit. More tendency to smoke, blacken window, etc. Then, too, burning it is less efficient than if it were fully air-dried. You likely have more options than you suspect:
1 get going with some serious scrounging now, focusing on dead-standing;
2 sort your stack by MC; some of it may be ready for burning, some may be ready for 
3 finish drying wood indoors near the stove; it's possible to see a serious drop in MC in a short time.

Dare you to catch me burning wood with MC > 10%.


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## cptoneleg (Aug 7, 2011)

CTYank said:
			
		

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You crazy Woodpecker what do you burn your furniture  15% presents problems, if you have problems with 15% MC your problem is probably your cheap meter. :zip:


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## wood-fan-atic (Aug 7, 2011)

cptoneleg said:
			
		

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  Ha,Ha!! Thats funny!  But seriously -- if what you mean by "semi-seasoned" wood is , say 25% MC, and thats all you have, then I would say you will make out just fine mixing it with Bio-Bricks. If you mean 30%, then you will have a very frustrating winter.


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## CTYank (Aug 7, 2011)

cptoneleg said:
			
		

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Pay attention for a few seconds, now. See the ">" symbol? That means "greater than" which is not "equal to." Anyhow, did someone pee on your wiener-roll?
I know, subtleties escape you; go chase some.


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## karl (Aug 7, 2011)

I'm going to get flamed here but here goes.  I read a pdf file from some college study regarding burning unseasoned wood.  I forget where I found it, but I'll look.  The article basically said it's not a big deal as long as you burn it at a high temperature.  They suggested mixing in dry wood to get the temperature up.  Sounds like what you want to do.  It's also something virtually all of us on this forum have done at one time or another.  I did a little math to see if what they were saying makes sense.  It does. I recreated my problem here.

We have two splits.  Each contains 10 pounds of wood.  One is at 15% moisture.  The other is at 30% moisture.  The temperature of the wood is 60 F.  I assumed the wood was brought from the outside and aloud to sit inside and warm up a bit.  A BTU is the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree F.  We need to raise it to 212 F to get it boil out of the wood.  Actually, it will start coming out of the wood at a much cooler temperature but lets not worry about that.  So we need to raise the temperature of water in the split 152 F.  We get 8000 btu per pound of wood.


15% split                             30% split

10 pounds of wood               10 pounds of wood
1.5 pounds of water              3 pounds of water

10x8000= 80,000 btu           10x8000= 80,000 btu
1.5x152= 228 btu                 3x152= 456 btu

80,000-228= 79,772 btu        80,000-456= 79,544 btu

79,772-79,544 = 228 btu

79,544/79,772 =0.9971418542847114 or 99.7%


So the wet split will put out 99.7% of the heat of the dry one, and that's going from a 'way too wet to burn' split to an ideal split.  The problem is getting the wood hot in the first place.  This takes dry wood and a hot fire.  Last year, I had some really nasty wet wood that would not burn.  I found I could put a couple of wet splits in with dry without any problem, but I could not put wet splits in by themselves.  Not even on a bed of hot coals.

I believe in math, but I have to admit,  I have a hard time believing that the wet stuff puts out 99.7% as much heat as the dry one.


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## Danno77 (Aug 7, 2011)

May have similar BTUs stored in them, but does the study address the rate at which those BTUs can be released? I think that's where the real problem is. If you can get the temps high enough, then you can start getting a more complete burn and even start getting secondaries going.


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## Danno77 (Aug 7, 2011)

Oops, forgot why I stopped into this thread. Was wondering if there is anybody in the Midwest who has burned bio bricks? If so, what was your source?


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## Rich L (Aug 8, 2011)

Jotul Rockland - CT said:
			
		

> If you give your scenario, it will enable us to make valid suggestions.
> 
> I burned Bio bricks and questionable wood last year.



 I asked the dealer where I bought my Lopi from about using biobricks in the Lopi.He said never burn just biobricks in the Lopi alone because they'll get to hot for the stove and cause damage.He added I could burn biobricks in the stove if I mixed in some semi seasoned wood which would keep the stove from getting too hot.
 So what happened when you used biobricks with the questionable wood ?


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## dafattkidd (Aug 8, 2011)

I'm with the wood fanatic on this one.  
Mix the bio bricks with your cord wood.  Almost every one of us had to start one season with green wood.  And we all made do.  Bio bricks mixed with cordwood is probably one of the best alternatives to all seasoned cord wood, and probably the best way to get btus from not perfectly seasoned cord wood.  Either way good luck with it.


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## cptoneleg (Aug 8, 2011)

Rich L said:
			
		

> Jotul Rockland - CT said:
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I see you joined this post in 2008, there are lots of post helping folks get through first yr,  I burned a few of these bricks, got them at Tractor Supply, but I only burned about 20 or so and used them in the middle of night, wasn't that impressed.  Before anyone can really help you need ( as others have said)to  state what kind of wood is it how long stacked how big of splits.


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## Bigg_Redd (Aug 8, 2011)

Rich L said:
			
		

> Anyone have any experience burning biobricks mixed with semi seasoned wood?If so how was the heat output and burn times compared to burning seasoned wood ?




I've never burned biobricks and I have no idea what _you_ mean when you say "semi-seasoned" wood.   But, I say go for it.  Worst case scenario is diminished heat output and a sooted up chimney.  It's not like it'll cause a tear in the space/time continuum.


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## Rich L (Aug 8, 2011)

Thanks for the responses,though it looks as if none of you have actually tried mixing biobricks with semi-seasoned wood.(wood seasoned about  6 or 7 months).I was hoping someone could share their actual experience with the above scenerio.I like the rest of you is in the maybe,probably or not ever realm.Hopefully someone with some real life experience will chime in.


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## Slow1 (Aug 9, 2011)

karl said:
			
		

> I'm going to get flamed here but here goes.  I read a pdf file from some college study regarding burning unseasoned wood.  I forget where I found it, but I'll look.  The article basically said it's not a big deal as long as you burn it at a high temperature.  They suggested mixing in dry wood to get the temperature up.  Sounds like what you want to do.  It's also something virtually all of us on this forum have done at one time or another.  I did a little math to see if what they were saying makes sense.  It does. I recreated my problem here.
> 
> We have two splits.  Each contains 10 pounds of wood.  One is at 15% moisture.  The other is at 30% moisture.  The temperature of the wood is 60 F.  I assumed the wood was brought from the outside and aloud to sit inside and warm up a bit.  A BTU is the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree F.  We need to raise it to 212 F to get it boil out of the wood.  Actually, it will start coming out of the wood at a much cooler temperature but lets not worry about that.  So we need to raise the temperature of water in the split 152 F.  We get 8000 btu per pound of wood.
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However, if you add it up, you are actually comparing a 11.5 lb split to a 13lb split.  Re-do your calculations holding the total fed into the stove constant (include the water weight - reduce the wood fiber weight - hold the total weight constant making the first 8.5lb wood/1.5 water and the second 7lb wood/3lb water), and you will find your overall difference is more on the order of 82%.    Not flaming, just trying to point out that to believe in the math be sure you are modeling what you wish to represent.  By holding the weight of the split going in constant you can summize that the net BTU/Lb is about 18% lower for the 30% water wood.

15% wood calc:

Split Weight: 10 lb
Water Weight: 1.5 Lb
Wood Fibre: 8.5 lb
Wood BTU : 8.5 * 8000 = 68000 btu
Water BTU Loss = 1.5lb * 152 = 228 btu
Net BTU = 68000 - 228 = 67772 btu

30% wood calc: 


Split Weight: 10 lb
Water Weight: 3 Lb
Wood Fibre: 7 lb
Wood BTU : 7 * 8000 = 56000 btu
Water BTU Loss = 3lb * 152 = 456 btu
Net BTU = 56000 - 456 = 55544 btu

55544/67772=.8195...  or approx 82%


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## Backwoods Savage (Aug 9, 2011)

What would we do without engineers?    

Ugh. Me do old Indian trick. Cut wood, wait many moons until dry, burn wood, carry out ashes. Go cut more wood.


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## dafattkidd (Aug 9, 2011)

Backwoods Savage said:
			
		

> What would we do without engineers?
> 
> Ugh. Me do old Indian trick. Cut wood, wait many moons until dry, burn wood, carry out ashes. Go cut more wood.




BRAVO! Good show savage!


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## fredarm (Aug 9, 2011)

I mixed Bio-bricks with semi-seasoned wood (didn't have a moisture meter then) my first year burning and it worked fine.  Wood that didn't burn particularly well on its own burned fine when mixed with the bricks.  I put the wood in the back of the firebox and the bricks in the front and it burned from front to back drying the wood out as the bricks burned.  I wouldn't try it with green wood, but it worked well with semi-seasoned wood.  I still mix bricks with wood--I usually go through a cord of wood and a ton of bricks each winter.  I can stack the bricks in the garage where they are easily accessible when there's 2 feet of snow on the ground.  Four bricks and a quarter of a Supercedar are a great way to start a fire, too.


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## Rich L (Aug 10, 2011)

fredarm said:
			
		

> I mixed Bio-bricks with semi-seasoned wood (didn't have a moisture meter then) my first year burning and it worked fine.  Wood that didn't burn particularly well on its own burned fine when mixed with the bricks.  I put the wood in the back of the firebox and the bricks in the front and it burned from front to back drying the wood out as the bricks burned.  I wouldn't try it with green wood, but it worked well with semi-seasoned wood.  I still mix bricks with wood--I usually go through a cord of wood and a ton of bricks each winter.  I can stack the bricks in the garage where they are easily accessible when there's 2 feet of snow on the ground.  Four bricks and a quarter of a Supercedar are a great way to start a fire, too.



 Thanks fredarm for sharing your story.That's exactly what I wanted to hear.I'll be doing this come winter and share my thoughts about it when the time comes.


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## karl (Aug 10, 2011)

Slow1 said:
			
		

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I originally did it that way and changed it.  I didn't change it because the numbers look better my way.  I changed it because the size of a split doesn't really change much as it dries out.  So keeping the wood weight the same would keep the split size the same.  An 8.5 pound dry split is going to be bigger than an 7 pound dry split. If you soak the 7 pound split in water until it ways 8.5 pounds.  It's still going to be smaller.  Also most of the btu loss your way is due to it being a smaller split not because it's drier.


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## Danno77 (Aug 10, 2011)

karl said:
			
		

> 15% split                             30% split
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> 10 pounds of wood               10 pounds of wood
> 1.5 pounds of water              3 pounds of water
> ...


Math can't prove this one. Let's make up something that is highly unlikely, but still possible. I dunno if it is or not, but here we go...
50%
10 lbs of wood
5lbs of water
10x8000=80,000btu
5x152 =760 btu
80,000-760=79,240 btu
79,772-79,240 = 532 btu
79,240/79,772 = 0.99333099333099 or 99.3%

So the energy is there, Water only takes a small portion of those BTUs from our hypothetical split, but I insist that those BTUs will take longer to express themselves in the wet wood. With this example I just provided, I'd be skeptical that you could even light it for such an experiment!


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## Dix (Aug 10, 2011)

Rich, I played with some Bio Bricks last year. I had to. New 2nd stove, one of the worst winters we've seen ( didn't see my back deck from Christmas night until March, 3+ feet of snow), thought I had enough wood, but was wrong. Way wrong.

I mixed what I had left seasoned, with some marginal, got lucky in February with a cord of seasoned, bought  a sopping wet 2 cords in December, and another in February, and mixed it up about 1/3 of a cord of bricks to eek out the winter. It worked, cleaned the chimneys 2 X's from October to May. 

I was lucky in that I had ALOT of kindling, and "uglies" to help get the fires going.


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## fprintf (Aug 10, 2011)

Rich, 6 - 7 months seasoned wood might do the trick anyway. I know that is what I am going to be burning with bio bricks this year. For me, I just don't have the property to put away lots of cordwood. So I have 2/3 a cord of 12 month seasoned wood, and another cord just delivered of "seasoned" wood, which more than likely was cut and piled up this spring, so lets just say it will have 6 - 9 months on it by the time I need to burn it. 

I really liked the bio bricks. They were a real PITA to get started on their own, you need some good kindling and a little patience. They start much slower, even given a good draft, than properly dried wood. YMMV, but most mornings, even when over a bed of hot coals, it'd be 30 - 45 minutes before the stove got going well enough that I felt comfortable enough to close the doors. Rarely could I just shove them in and have it start up, as it almost always required paper, kindling sticks and starting with 4 or 5 bricks in a tee-pee at the back corner of the stove with the front doors open. However once it was going, holy smokes was it hot. 

My dealer says it is absolutely no problem to burn bio bricks as a sole heat source in my stove. I do not believe, however, anything about the advertising that these bricks are as much BTU as a cord of wood. Pound for pound I found regular wood lasted much longer and gave a more even heat over that time period. The bio bricks tended to run very hot for a short while before turning to ash. That said, your plan for mixing the woods is perfect. Biobricks are very low moisture content, and mixed with higher moisture will probably do just fine.


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## Freeheat (Aug 10, 2011)

Danno77 said:
			
		

> Oops, forgot why I stopped into this thread. Was wondering if there is anybody in the Midwest who has burned bio bricks? If so, what was your source?



Danno77 I have dabbled in the bio bricks when I ran out of dry wood. They seem to burn way too fast for my stove and had no coals left after . I have solved that problem for this year 
I have 2.5- 3 cords ready to go Cant remember the name of the ones I used.


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## Woody Stover (Aug 10, 2011)

CTYank said:
			
		

> In an "EPA" stove, I find that burning wood with MC > 15% presents problems. More difficult to get lit and keep lit. More tendency to smoke, blacken window, etc. Then, too, burning it is less efficient than if it were fully air-dried.


I was wondering if my cheap meter was reading low, or what. You hear 20% mentioned a lot here, but I've said several times that when I burned some 18% wood last Winter, I could hear it hissing. I had better luck with 16% wood, and decided that 15% would be pretty good. I just hope that the stuff I've been cutting will have enough time to get to that mark. It's mostly Ash, Cherry and soft Maple. We have probably 2.5 months of good drying weather left here, so I'm hopeful...


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## fredarm (Aug 10, 2011)

fprintf said:
			
		

> I really liked the bio bricks. They were a real PITA to get started on their own, you need some good kindling and a little patience. They start much slower, even given a good draft, than properly dried wood. YMMV, but most mornings, even when over a bed of hot coals, it'd be 30 - 45 minutes before the stove got going well enough that I felt comfortable enough to close the doors. Rarely could I just shove them in and have it start up, as it almost always required paper, kindling sticks and starting with 4 or 5 bricks in a tee-pee at the back corner of the stove with the front doors open. However once it was going, holy smokes was it hot.



Supercedars make them REAL easy to get started.  I never use kindling, other than some splitter scraps occasionally, just because I have them.  But they are are not really needed.

As I've noted before, all wood bricks are not created equally.  I've had good luck with Bio Bricks, Eco Bricks and Geo Bricks, all of which have burned well for me.  I have not had good luck with Wood Brick Fuel and Liberty Bricks.  The Wood Brick Fuel bricks collapsed into a heap of glowing sawdust and the Liberty Bricks looked like they contained some non-wood particles (plastic? formica countertop? who knows?).


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## zknowlto (Aug 10, 2011)

karl said:
			
		

> I'm going to get flamed here but here goes.  I read a pdf file from some college study regarding burning unseasoned wood.  I forget where I found it, but I'll look.  The article basically said it's not a big deal as long as you burn it at a high temperature.  They suggested mixing in dry wood to get the temperature up.  Sounds like what you want to do.  It's also something virtually all of us on this forum have done at one time or another.  I did a little math to see if what they were saying makes sense.  It does. I recreated my problem here.
> 
> We have two splits.  Each contains 10 pounds of wood.  One is at 15% moisture.  The other is at 30% moisture.  The temperature of the wood is 60 F.  I assumed the wood was brought from the outside and aloud to sit inside and warm up a bit.  A BTU is the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree F.  We need to raise it to 212 F to get it boil out of the wood.  Actually, it will start coming out of the wood at a much cooler temperature but lets not worry about that.  So we need to raise the temperature of water in the split 152 F.  We get 8000 btu per pound of wood.
> 
> ...



I like the idea of this calculation, but I agree with some of the others that something doesn't seem right about the weights/moisture.  Also, the amount of energy to turn the water into steam is significantly greater than the energy to simply raise the temperature of water.


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## GAMMA RAY (Aug 10, 2011)

fredarm said:
			
		

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I have used Envi-bricks...very very easy to start a fire with a super cedar in the middle....I use the smaller bricks to start a fire in a "tee-pee" with the fire starter in the middle...I am a newbie and I never had a problem getting a fire started myself with them...and we used the Envi-bricks mixed with dry wood last season...I quite liked the combination...no weird chemical smell or anything like that ..we have a stove shop right up the road that sells them so we will probably mix them in with dry wood this winter...(we may be a little short of dry wood this winter so the envi bricks will help us out...we have wood for next winter stacked but we will not use it this year)


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## Danno77 (Aug 10, 2011)

Looks like mostly an Noreast sorta thing. I'm still having trouble sourcing some, and that makes me think that if I do find some they will be unreasonably priced.
Edit: ahhh, as I look at prices per ton of these things they seem to run more than double of what a cord of wood runs here, that's probably why they don't waste their time in this area.


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## GAMMA RAY (Aug 10, 2011)

I am willing to spend the extra $$$ this season for the envi-bricks to supplement our dry wood to get us through this winter...I would rather not burn at all then to burn with questionable wood...we had a small stack of oak that was c/s/s for at over a year and it was not good at all....(I now know oak needs more time to dry than that...it was before I found Hearth.com) The difference between burning with dry wood and questionable wood IMHO is two different worlds...I may be a newbie but I discovered that fast.....When we started to use our other wood that was c/s/s for a longer period ...it was like a joke...well not really, but it was so much easier....like I died and went to heaven.....easy as pie.....I so like pie...and I so like dry wood.....and that was the best lesson I learned....I love dry wood....or "seasoned" wood as some call it.....either way "dry" or "seasoned"....me likey it a lot....and "HAPPY WIFEY....HAPPY LIFEY"....as Mr. Gamma knows....I won't burn no chit wood..or turn the mother off. >:-(


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## karl (Aug 11, 2011)

Go Blue! said:
			
		

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971 btu per pound.


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## velvetfoot (Aug 19, 2011)

Can one buy these things around Albany, NY?


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## cptoneleg (Aug 19, 2011)

velvetfoot said:
			
		

> Can one buy these things around Albany, NY?







  The few I burned I got at Tractor Supply, they had pallets of them, and I think you can order a pallet off of internet.


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## velvetfoot (Aug 19, 2011)

I'll give TSC a jingle.
The web site I found wanted to sell 20 pallets min.


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## velvetfoot (Aug 19, 2011)

I just spoke with the local TSC.
Redstone (?) bricks, $306.99 a pallet.
Seems a lot...


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## Danno77 (Aug 19, 2011)

velvetfoot said:
			
		

> I just spoke with the local TSC.
> Redstone (?) bricks, $306.99 a pallet.
> Seems a lot...


What's a cord of seasoned wood cost in your neck of the woods?


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## fredarm (Aug 20, 2011)

I can get Geo Bricks for $264 locally and get them delivered for $40.  TSC is overpriced.


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## Danno77 (Aug 20, 2011)

fredarm said:
			
		

> I can get Geo Bricks for $264 locally and get them delivered for $40.  TSC is overpriced.


And how about you, 300 bucks anywhere near a cord of seasoned firewood? 

I'm really interested if that's what drives the availability of these things in certain areas.


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## cptoneleg (Aug 20, 2011)

Go to the top of this post  put in bio-bricks hit search this topic has been discussed many times, I remember reading about them last year.


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## Dix (Aug 20, 2011)

Check Craigs List.


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## cptoneleg (Aug 21, 2011)

They were $3.99 for a pack of 8 so .50 each


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## Slow1 (Aug 22, 2011)

Back a few years ago I found them to be rather expensive no matter where I found them.  A decent product but a premium fuel - basically on par with good pellets as best as I could estimate (although I've not actually done much pellet shopping).  IF I were inclined to exclusively burn bio bricks or such long term I would probably opt for a pellet stove to begin with given that there is convenience in filling a hopper and having it auto-feed at a rate set by a wall thermostat eh?

However, I was happy to have them help me out my first year when I didn't have good dry wood to burn so I mixed them in with the questionable wood.  I now still have about 1/2 a pallet of envi-blocks under my stairs that are parked "Just in case",  In case of what I'm not sure of anymore... although my wife wants them burned this winter to free up the storage space so I expect they probably will not be there in the spring.


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