Lewis Fiber Fuel Bricks / Ideal Steel Trial Fiber Fuel Running Diary The Setup -Woodstock Stoves Ideal Steel with soapstone liner and OAK. -4 year old Cat. Con.- recently cleaned with vinegar. -18 ft external class A chimney, double wall stovepipe. -Newish cat probe thermometer. -Newish flue probe thermometer. -Stove Top Temp (STT) measured near flue exit. Here we go- 7p- Decide to use two packages. I build a “sort of” cube, alternating orientation to minimize air channels. At this point I can easily fit 4-6 more bricks but decide against opening another package since I don’t know what will happen. Bricks feel more dense than the competitors I’ve used in the past. Less sawdust falling off them too. It almost seems like a hard coating is on them. Light the front of the almost cube using 1/3 Super-cedar and some kindling. 7:25p 600F cat temp 200F flue temp 7:30p Starting to catch and throwing some heat. 700F cat temp, 200F flue, 230F STT. Closed bypass 7:55p STT 250F, cat temp 900F, flue 200fF. Turned primary air to 75%. Secondaries start. Noticeably uniform secondaries. 8:05p Cat temp 1300F, STT 300F. Move primary air to 50%. Strong secondaries. 8:08p Cat temp 1500F, STT 350F, Flue 250F, Secondaries look like the burners on my propane kitchen stove. Primary dropped to 25%. Bricks a little puffy. Cat is now burning gasses exiting firebox like secondaries. 8:15p STT 350F, cat temp 1600F, flue 200F. Primary moved to 15%. Dancing blue secondaries. 8:20p. Cat temp stablized STT stablized. Primary moved to 7%. Slow northern lights secondaries then black box. Watching Despicable Me 3 with the kids. 8:30p No changes to report. Movie not bad. 10p Stable temps. Puffier bricks Off to bed 7a 12 hours in. I am astonished when I look at the cat probe. 1200F cat temp. 300F STT. Putting out a ton of heat still. Room temp 73F. Outside temp 24F. Bricks are puffy and the coffee’s hot. 9a- Spent a few hours out back cutting trees for winter 18/19 and wandering around looking for property lines. I mange to totally f-up the chain on my saw. Again. Talk myself out of ordering a 550xp. Again. 12:30p- Cat temp 900F. STT 300F. Half bricks left. Puffy. 1p- Head out to pick up Christmas Tree wife found. Don’t remember 8ft trees feeling this heavy. 5:30p- CAT temp 800F STT 250F Opened primary to 50%. 6p Cat temp jumped to 1200F (!) STT 300F. Not sure how high cat temps will go. Turned primary down to 30%. Bricks now glowing red. Let’s get this heavy tree cut to size and dragged inside. Get to use the chainsaw for the second time today. Good times. 6:20p- Cat stabilized at 1200F. STT 300F. 8p- 25 hour mark. Cat temp 1100F. Crack open a Sam Adams Harvest Hefe. Hazy Golden with Spicy and Sweet notes. Like me! Kids are watching Frozen. Again. 9p- Tree almost decorated. Kids are getting cranky and now I’m the only one watching Frozen. Don’t trust him Anna! 10p- Passing 27 hours. Cat temp 1000F. Un. Believe. Able. Tree done. Made a decision to retire for the night without a reload to see how long this can make legit heat. Because science. Might wake up midway through to check but probably not. I don’t like science that much. 11p- Could help it. Had to check. Cat temp 800F, STT 250F. Falling relatively quick. I bump the primary air to 50%. Bricks are barely there with some red glow present. I’m guessing 2 more hours of usable heat. 5a- Cat temp 200F. It’s been done for awhile, probably since 1a. I’m calling this 30hrs. Results: 30 hours of usable heat. This was a really interesting run. If I had put 4-6 more bricks I think we are looking at 34 hour burn cycles with a cat that is nearing the geriatric phase. Once the bricks finished they were cooked, unlike hardwood which slowly cools. I wasn’t expecting to have such control over the burn. It almost felt like a gas stove. I could have ran it much hotter and maybe on high this was a 24 -26 hour burn- even though it wasn’t full. The Fiber Fuel burned predictable, and remarkably even right to the end. At retail price for dry firewood it is a no brainer. Fiber Fuel wins hands down. Since I generally process my own wood I feel like I might pick up some Fiber Fuel to have on hand those nights it drops to -20F.
interesting report Unhdsm couple of questions price of bricks where you found them? did heat feel same if a guy did not have any primo wood (oak, locust etc) wood putting 1 brick in on cold bitter nite be useful? never used them
The price varies by distributor. In my opinion, if you are buying firewood at $200/ cord it is probably worth an extra $50 for the convienece and performance of Fiber Fuel. The IS just gets every bit out of them. They do seem better than the competition I have used in the past. If you don’t have dry wood or a place to store firewood then Fiber Fuel is your answer. I do think that a pallet is probably comparable to a cord of dry wood. I don’t know that I would mess around with adding a brick to green firewood. My advice would be to run full loads of bricks and let the wood dry appropriately. Interestingly the instructions ask you to throw in a couple bricks every few hours. After going 30 hours without opening the door I don’t know the justification to sit there all day adding bricks- at least with the IS.
Bricks work great to supplement a borderline load. It will bring the average moisture content of the load down. They are a good investment until you get on the 3 year plan or if you don't have the room to be one the 3 year plan.
great info Unhdsm .. maybe I worded it wrong.. I finally got on 3 year plan last summer.. my wood is dry.. BUT it is mostly mixed weaker BTU wood. soft maple, ash elm cherry etc.. IS is great at heating my home as long as Temps stay above negative 10.. was wondering if supplementing a brick or 2 on coldest days with dry shoulder season wood might be a idea in your opinion...
If your goal is to make marginal wood “usable” it would probably help. I still think the better bet is to save the bricks for a full load, make a giant cube, and run it. In my opinion, a couple bricks here-and-there is missing the biggest benefit of the Fiber Fuel. These are Blaze King run times. I see similar heating capacity and I think our homes have similar square footage (2400) -10f and my IS is having trouble keeping up by itself.
Pellets Direct has a reg. price at $249/ pallet(1920#), were on sale at $229.$89 60 mile delivery. my usual daytime burn is 6-8 brick, 10min. open, 2-3 hrs full air close, 2-4 hrs 1/2 to full air, reload. over night in a jotul f100 easy restart in am.
Wow that is a ton of bricks in at one time. Maybe it's my stove. When I would start the fire on one side, the top would get going strong once the stove got up to temp. Even if the flame was no where near it. Simply a temperature thing. That is with keeping my stove withing the burning zone. I found with experiments that I had to go with less bricks and keep my stack lower. Once I did this, I get longer and just as hot of a burn. I've moved on from the bricks to the larger Envi-blocks and find that even when I light the base of all of the blocks, once I cut down the air all I get is the rolling secondaries with longer burns. With just 4 blocks I'll get around 6 hours. If I put 6 blocks in, I'll get 8 hours roughly. Problem is that the temps are rather high in the beginning. Enough to drive you out of the room. Good for overnight, but not good for during the day or early evening. Granted your Ideal Steel is much taller than my stove. I could only get three rows of bricks. Two standing tall and the third row on it's side. Where my stove is wider. That could make all the difference between the results we both see.
Me like - Harvest Hefe. Oh yeah, thanks for the info and report on the bricks. Good stuff right there.
Very nice report with great humor interjected, appreciate the time, effort and valuable insight. Thank you.
Nice review. Will have to try some with a better overnight burn on real cold nights in mind for a smaller 2 cu. ft. stove. The last time I tried some blocks ( quite a while ago, different stove ) I wasn't impressed for the price.
After your review, Im now waiting to hear back from Fiber Fuel Guy. He is going to contact a local distributor to get me some bricks to try out. Also, I would have never thought of a stove color combination like yours, but I love it! You should paint the chimney pipes the stove color too, I think that would really complete it. I painted mine the same color as my AS, and it looks much better than the gray/black combo.
Did my wife put you up to that? She’s been bugging me lately about painting the stovepipe. I could probably use some pointers. Actually repainting the stove body is on my ling list of things to do. Lorin told me that they had more orders for that color combo after they reluctantly agreed to use them on mine.
