Anyone researched wood briquettes?

Greenfires

Hi elastic,

Pleased to hear you were pleased with the briquettes - we have quite a lot of customers who've shopped around a bit and tried different types, and all of them seem to think these came out on top. It's always been our aim to have happy customers - but I think we're going to have quite a few glum ones come the winter this time around.

Funnily enough - Eco Logs were the first variety we ever sold - that was way back! I don't know if the recipe is still the same but I was forever sticking my head in the bag to smell them - better than air fresheners they were!

We've never dealt with peat briquettes due to exactly the reason you mentioned - but have often wished we could as it's lovely stuff as far as fuel goes. Interestingly it's actually classed as renewable in some countries - although obviously renewable over a much longer time frame than timber crops for instance.

I'd also be interested to hear about peoples experiences with other briquettes - and particularly from those who have tried a number of different types. I think we've probably tried most of the commonly available ones at some stage, but we always reckoned we had the best of the lot with ours and stuck with them alone. Now of course, we're going to have a lot of customers looking for an alternative, and while I don't think we're going to find anything that's as good, we may be interested in the "next best thing"

Cheers,

Andy

Greenfires

Just to follow up on this rather old post - we're "back in the game" as it were with a new briquette that's very similar to the old ones, being screw extruded rather than piston compressed - so still none of the problems with expanding and falling to bits that most of the others suffer from. These are made in the UK of course - we're still not dealing with the Russians - and in fact the whole factory is powered by renewable enrgy from a biogas digester next door, so they tick lots of green boxes!

Cheers,

Andy

Skulls

I've been looking at some hardwood briquettes from a Liverpool based company, they are £259 for 910kg delivered, has anyone tried these? They sound quite good and I'm tempted to try a load but at £259 it's quite a risk.

Greenfires

Hi Skulls,
They're imported for starters, so not a particularly green option. Also, they have come out of a piston based machine, which means they'll do the expanding and then falling to bits routine, which to be fair, the majority of briquettes on the UK market do. With one or two exceptions of course! ;-)
Yes - they appear to be pretty cheap on paper. What you need to remember though, is that if they only last half as long as a better briquette, then that makes them twice the price in "real terms". Often a briquette that appears more expensive will actually work out cheaper overall as you'll use less of them in a given time.

Roebuck_2

Hi Skulls,

I bought a couple of packs from the Liverpool suppliers last week to try them..

They do smell a bit 'odd', a sort of un-natural smell as though they are not pure wood? Nothing too bad though...just a slight 'chemical' odour?

They do expand. A lot. Need to break them in half for my little Riva 40. They give off very good heat and break down quite slowly. If I set the secondary air to around 10%, I can get around 4 hours out of them, but the embers will continue to give off heat for a least another couple of hours. They are NOT a very dense briquette though.

I have also been using the 'Hotties' heat logs. These appear to be much denser and do not expand anywhere near as much. They also do not have an un-natural smell.

As for performance, I would say that both give our a similar heat, although the 'Hotties' do retain their original shape quite a bit longer.

lagi

As a rough price how much should we be paying per eco-log? Obviously the more you buy the cheaper it would be.

But as an average would they be about 50p or £1.50?

Just so i can quickly do the math should i see a pack somewhere.

Just seen some logs made from rice husks, can anybody confirm if these are any good?

Roebuck_2

If bought in bulk, the hotties logs work out around 40p each.

alleycat`

I'm trialling the hotties and on first impression it looks like i can get two of them to last about 3 hours (with the odd bit of wood to keep a better flame picture).

Edit:- That is with my stove at a constant 330F.

They don't expand or fall apart.
Ash production is pretty small, especially compared to the smokeless i also use.

I need to do some maths on the economics of them but on first impression i'd be tempted to swap some of the smokeless to something like these due to the lack of comparitive mess and ash production.

I also think they are probably going to be easier to store.

alleycat`

lagi wrote: »

As a rough price how much should we be paying per eco-log? Obviously the more you buy the cheaper it would be.

But as an average would they be about 50p or £1.50?

Just so i can quickly do the math should i see a pack somewhere.

Just seen some logs made from rice husks, can anybody confirm if these are any good?

I'd concur that a reasonable price for the hotties will be between 55p and 35p per log depending on how many you buy (lowest price would be buying like 100 packs).

I've read in several places that the rice husk ones burn perfectly ok but leave a considerably higher ash residue compared to wood based briquettes.

Greenfires

Rice husk briquettes are about as ashy as they come - up to around 20 - 22% Imported too of course, and generally use a binder such as gum arabic or starch to glue them together. The ash is also very high in silica - possibly not the sort of stuff you want to breathing in!!

Lagi - the price varies quite a bit depending on the amounts you purchase, and whereabouts you live. We sell samples (not of rice husk ones!) at a fair bit less than RRP, and bulk orders are cheaper still per briquette.