So how long do your fire bricks last????

[Hanser]

I bought replacement firebricks from the builders merchant. £2 each, Arada Stoves wanted £7 each plus postage

[tz1_1zt]

Vermiculite is temperature stable up to about 1000+ degrees Celsius so the heat of the fire will never break it, but it suffers from being brittle and very water absorbent. Good Danish Vermiculite is much tougher than the nasty Chinese stuff. Look out for lots of big black particles, they are a sign of poor quality mica and board.

 

Our customers break bricks all the time by throwing logs at them which is usually quite obvious. But most cracks are caused by the vermiculite absorbing moisture over Summer while the stove is the coldest thing in the room. In Winter they get all exciting and wind up the stove forgetting that it needs to be lit gently first time.

 

Damp vermiculite cannot withstand the expansion forces that a fierce fire causes, and this introduces small cracks. So light the thing carefully with a small kindling fire and allow it to cool down and dry out.

 

We carry 9" x 4.5"x 1" Danish Vermiculite bricks in the shop for £4 each, they fit many stoves or can be cut down.

A 1000x600x25mm board of Danish Vermiculite costs £64 plus postage if interested.

 

Regards,

[truncator]

Yes, I have, and your right it was an absolute pig to get out. The problem being that the plate warps with heat. I ended up going in with the angle grinder, just to get the thing out. Ground down the sides and thought it would be ok to get out the following year, but it had warped again. Nowadays, I clean the chimney from the top down. This avoids taking the plate out.

 

Wishing you the best of luck, you may need it!!!!

 

 

I did not get a chance to reply on Saturday. But a big thankyou @daveindales for posting this. It was a complete pig! I cut the plate in two it was so warped!

 

Putting the new one in showed how much it had changed (3yrs of use/abuse). I would still be there today thinking I could get it out without cutting!

 

All good now and new baffle happy sitting on a couple of new bricks.

Cheers