Fuel Briquettes

h1701

Hi
Does anyone know if £189 is a good price for 1/2 tonne of smokeless fuel briquettes, this includes delivery. I have an Aga and Stoves are Us say this fuel is good to use on it and HETAS approved?
Haven't used briquettes before
Thanks H

alleycat`

What smokeless is it?

I'm fairly certain there will be someone on here that has at least tried most of the major brands.

No4_Winder

h1701, If you tell us what kind of Briquettes you are thinking of buying, maybe we can tell you if it's a good deal.

Greenfires

This one at a guess:

http://www.stovesareus.co.uk/accessories/fuel-stores/20-bags-smokeless-briquettes.html

alleycat`

Looks like are made by Maxibrite.
Other than that i can't find much about them and it's not something i've ever tried.

However it works out as about £9.45 a bag which is neither exceptionally good or bad for smokeless.

Kiran

Just wondering if anyone had tried these guys before?

http://www.woodfuel.coop/wood-briquettes--prices.html

I liked the idea of the mix and match pallet so you can pick a selection and see what works.

Does anyone have any opinions on try/dont bother of the briquettes they stock?

h1701

Yes they were Maxibrite briquettes which seemed like a good deal, when I asked them they said they burn for 6-8 hours, which seems good

Greenfires

Kiran - this is only my personal opinion, but as someone "in the game" (as opposed to on it!) I'd be asking why would they stock ten different types of briquettes?

Think of it this way. I sell briquettes, and we've burned nothing but briquettes at home for probably ten years now. As we have a website and are fairly well known, we get offered a lot of different ones from all over the place, and have tried most of the usual suspects. Over the years, we've learned a lot about them, and have found the one we think is currently the best of the bunch. Now as a seller, would I be doing you any favours at all by offering you a bunch of other briquettes that I wouldn't use personally because I didn't think they were as good? Or would I simply be looking for any opportunity to make a sale and line my own pocket?

I like to be thought of as an honest bloke - and there have been many times over the years when I've turned down work or sales as I didn't think it was the best option for the customer. And I don't see why briquettes should be any different. We sell what we believe to be the best available - and we want the best available as we use nothing else at home, and we pay exactly the same for ours as our customers do. But we're not tied to any contract or agreement - if we found a better one tomorrow we'd be selling it next week. But ONLY that one - trying to talk you into buying something else would feel like I was conning you.

Robwiz

@Kiran – I haven't bought from the Wood Fuel Cooperative but I have found the information on their website very useful. They live up to their name – they bulk loads of wood fuel from eastern Europe, store it in their warehouse and sell it in smaller lots.

Their aspen log looks like the product I bought from the Luxury Wood Company, which is no longer available from them. I and others who bought these have been very impressed with them.

I bought elsewhere because the Wood Fuel Coop isn't always the cheapest. For example, their 'member' price for a pallet of Verdo briquettes is £274 but you can buy 10kg lots from Home Bargains at £2.79 each.

Note that Wood Fuel Coop charges an extra £38 per pallet for delivery – many online wood fuel vendors quote delivery included.

I have been very happy with the briquettes I buy in the range of £230 to £250 per full pallet and I'm very sceptical that paying £395 per pallet would give me 60% more or better heat output. This is after all a money saving website and if I didn't compare my electricity tariff every year I could probably spend 50% more on that too!

No4_Winder

h1701 wrote: »

Yes they were Maxibrite briquettes which seemed like a good deal, when I asked them they said they burn for 6-8 hours, which seems good

Yes they'll probably stay hot for 6 to 8 hrs but there wont be much heat coming from the fire.
My own fire will stay quite warm overnight if I burn smokeless coal, but not hot enough to keep the whole room warm.

I would see if they will sell you about 4 bags so you can try them on your fire. It's no good buying 25 bags and then finding out that it doesn't suit your fire.

Greenfires

I'm a big believer in each to their own and have no problem at all with anybody buying whatever they like from wherever they like but as I've probably mentioned before - we've offered cheaper briquettes in the past as an "economy alternative". The universal feedback we received at the time was that everyone went straight back to the "expensive ones" as they considered they worked out cheaper in use as they lasted so much longer. This confirmed our own thoughts - and as I said, we pay exactly the same for ours as everybody else does, so there's a reason we don't buy the other "cheaper" ones! A good deal is just as important to us as to our customers.

Just as an illustration - and it's not the economy briquettes I mentioned above by the way - many years ago we were asked if we'd sell briquettes from a company in Sheffield, so I went down to see them and brought some back to try out. The ingredients were all hardwood (they were from a flooring company) but the briquettes were pretty soft. We found that we could often go through a 15 kilo bag through the course of a late afternoon and evening. In the same stove and in the same time, we'll use probably 5-6 kilos of our briquettes. We have a lot of customers locally who are using 3 or 4 briquettes for a whole evening - admittedly in smallish stoves (around 4kW)

If you're happy with your briquettes, then I'm happy too. I just wanted to get the message across that there's a bit more to the story than the price tag alone.