thanks, zipcar!
Back on December 17, I published a post about my initial test of the manufactured wood fuel known as the Bear Brick. Here’s what I really liked about Bear Bricks:
- Relatively local, renewable fuel source, manufactured by Bear Mountain Forest Products in Cascade Locks, Oregon
- Produced using waste by-products: a mixture of douglas fir, cedar and hardwood sawdust, collected from nearby lumber manufacturing
- Made from 100 percent wood: no chemicals or binding agents
- Generate a lot of heat: each brick can produce 16,000 BTU
- Longer burn times with higher average temperature than cordwood
- Cleaner burning than cordwood –they’re dried to 8-10 percent moisture, thereby producing far less ash, lower creosote, etc.; this reduces maintenance (a cleaner chimney) while ensuring that you spend less time cleaning your stove’s glass
- Easier to control the intensity of your fire than with cordwood
- Easy-to-manipulate size
- Consume much less space than other compressed wood products (presto logs, NIELs, etc.)
- Quality and consistency of the fuel –as the moisture content is very low, Bear Bricks are ready-to-burn when you buy them. Cordwood could need up to 12 additional months of drying to be truly seasoned.
- Relatively affordable compared to other fuel sources
- Safe for catalytic stoves
- Can be stored without fear of insect infestation –the bricks are free of pests and far too dry to be a food supply for wood destroying pests
With all these benefits in mind, I picked up a Zipcar truck (Ziptruck?) and headed to Mount Scott Fuel, on SE Foster Road, where I purchased one pallet of bricks (972 total bricks) for $250. The dealer loaded the pallet into the back of the truck via forklift; Keri and I were able to unload and stack the entire pallet in less than 15
972 bricks-o-burning
minutes. That’s the fastest wood haul/stack that I’ve ever performed!
I’ll post an update after we’ve used the bricks for a more significant amount of time, but the benefits were immediate. Aftering initially adding in about four bricks to an established fire, we were able to fully damp and choke the stove to its absolute minimum burn and still extract more heat than we were typically getting from our less-than-perfectly-seasoned cordwood. The bricks produce fantastic heat and give you far more control over how hot you burn your stove. I’m even more impressed than I was after our initial test last month.
[...] every trip. Cars do many things that bicycles cannot easily do: carry extremely heavy loads (like a pallet of Bear Bricks); travel extreme distances quickly; and protect riders/passengers from the elements. Additionally, [...]
Bear Bricks: I will agree that these do produce a lot of heat. I am wondering what the size of the stove that you are loading these into. When I place 6 bricks in the center of the fire box it is like placing a Mini in the middle of empty four car garage. I will say that I am just doing a test run to see how they fare. I have a considerably large fire box on my insert. After getting a good bed of coals going, I could easily place 3 plus trays in the wood stove without even trying. This would still leave about a 3 to 4 inch space on all sides including the top. Has anyone used these with larger fireboxes?
We use the Vermont Castings Winterwarm Small cast-iron fireplace insert, so the firebox is relatively small. You can see the relative size in the photos at:
http://www.towseyfrench.com/2009/12/11/bear-bricks-in-action/
You can get the dimensions of our insert here:
http://www.vermontcastings.com/content/products/productdetails.cfm?id=91
It really comes down to BTUs… a bigger firebox has far greater BTU capacity almost exclusively due to size, which definitely translates into more bricks or logs. We’re using the insert for supplemental heat, so the size is right for our home, but a big stove could definitely eat the bricks!
Happy testing –and stay warm. :)
Hello again, Dan. It looks like a new, bigger Bear Brick is on its way!
http://www.towseyfrench.com/2009/12/15/bigger-bear-bricks-available-soon/