Greenfires Chimney and Stove Services

If you are tired of poor quality damp logs that mess up your stove and give out little heat, give our briquettes a try! In recent years there has been a big increase in the number of woodburning stoves in use, and as a result, many people have started supplying firewood for them. Unfortunately, much of this wood is poorly seasoned if at all, and gives little heat, lots of smoke, and does your stove and chimney no good at all. Our briquettes contain much less moisture than even kiln dried firewood, and therefore burn more cleanly and give out a great deal more energy.

Firewood briquettes are very popular in many European countries where woodburning technology and usage is a fair way ahead of us here in the UK. They provide a clean, efficient and modern alternative to traditional firewood logs, and can be used as a direct replacement in all stoves and open fires, as well as outdoor firepits and chimineas. Being comprised of 100% wood with no additives of any kind, they are classed as a carbon neutral fuel, and are therefore much kinder to the environment than fossil fuels. They are also produced from wood wastes that would have traditionally been sent to landfill - thousands of tons of this valuable material is buried in the ground and wasted every year right here in the UK.

Firewood briquettes are produced by subjecting sawdust and wood chips/shavings to extremely high pressures - up to 80 tons per square inch. This causes the lignins and resins present in the wood to heat up and soften, and they then act as a natural "glue" which holds the briquettes together. There are no extras of any sort added to the recipe - no glues, preservatives or anything else. The end product is much drier and denser than normal firewood, and so contains more energy and produces less smoke and ash. Depending on the firewood in question - these briquettes may contain over four times the energy of the same weight of wood. So, one tonne of briquettes can contain the same amount of available energy as over four tonnes of seasoned logs!

Many of the briquettes on sale in the UK are imported - most of them from Eastern Europe where they are way ahead of us in this area. However, we have managed to find a company producing an excellent product here in the UK at a competitive price - especially given their higher manufacturing costs.

A few details for the technically minded!

18mj per kilo net calorific value
Each briquette almost 5kW
Average moisture content 6.6% (max 8%) compared to around 25% for well seasoned logs
1.5% ash
No spitting or sparks, and light easily.
Each briquette will burn for about two hours although hot embers remain for considerably longer.
Will burn happily in any stove even with the air almost completely closed, and will stay in overnight in most cases.

You may well have seen a number of other types of briquettes offered for sale. These include varieties made from leaves, cardboard, bark, straw, oilseed rape waste, rice husk and so on. All of these materials can be processed into briquettes that will burn satisfactorily in a stove. However, many of the "non-wood" briquettes will leave a great deal more ash behind. Rice husk is probably about the worst - leaving around 17% ash which is also very abrasive being full of silica. Straw briquettes have been fairly widely promoted lately, but they are being offered at around £900 per tonne and that's with a 40% discount!! We can't really understand why manufacturing this type, which are produced in a very similar machine to the one which makes our briquettes, should cost three times as much as ours!

There are other wood based briquettes available that I call "garden centre specials" These are often much smaller than usual - perhaps two inches in diameter and around three inches long. Again, these will burn satisfactorily, but they are generally rather soft in comparison, and have too short a burn time to be a viable alternative fuel. They are often made by small producers using adapted second hand machinery from other industries, which will not produce the pressure needed to make a really good briquette. A "proper" wood briquetting plant will cost over £100,000. Some of our customers have tried these types of briquettes and when asked what they thought of them, they said "they were rubbish - just like you said they'd be"!! So whilst some other types may appear cheaper on paper - if they only last half the time they often work out more expensive. As an example, we were asked to trial one particular variety, and found that our stove would easily go through 15 kilos in an evening. Using our briquettes we probably use 5 - 6 kilos in the same time.

We have trialled and used many types of briquettes over the years and are confident that these are the best we've used to date - that's why these are the ones we sell, and the ones we use in our stoves at home.

We feel they have a number of advantages over those offered by our competitors.

They have been shown in laboratory tests to be drier and denser than most of the competition. All woodfuels contain a certain amount of moisture, which requires energy to drive it off before the fuel can burn - this energy comes from the wood itself, and if it's being used to drive off moisture, it's not being given out as heat. If you consider that even seasoned logs contain around 25 - 28% moisture, then for every 10 kilos of wood you buy, you're paying for 2.5 litres or more of water! Our briquettes are around 6 -8% moisture - meaning that far more of the energy they contain is available as heat.

The very high density of our briquettes means that you can stack an awful lot of energy in a very small space - no need for a huge log store or shed to keep them in. In fact, a full tonne (approx.) occupies just 0.9 cubic metres. Because of their shape, they are very easy to stack up like building blocks, unlike the cylindrical types which are often loose in sacks. The manufacturer of our briquettes uses them solely for heating his own home, and a single pallet load (100 x 10kg approx. packs) has lasted him just over 11 months.

You may have seen the cylindrical firewood briquettes that look like many discs or pucks stuck together - these are available from a number of manufacturers with several brand names which I won't mention here. You may find warnings on some of their packaging about them expanding when they burn - and we've heard several stories of people having these types of briquettes "escaping" from their grates when they've been used on an open fire! Our briquettes keep their shape until they are completely burned away - they don't expand at all, and also they don't fall to bits if you poke them when alight! Most of the cylindrical ones will break down to a pile of red hot sawdust if poked or if more fuel is added on top of them. These qualities also mean that our briquettes burn for longer - the expanding ones have an ever increasing surface area, and this cuts down the burn time as more fuel is exposed to the air.

Our briquettes have an excellent burn time of about 2 hours per kilo, which is generally around half an hour longer than most of the competitors. However, a bigger advantage is that their heat output stays high throughout the whole burn time, compared to the cylindrical types which are good in the first stages of burning, but then their performance falls away quite rapidly after that.

Our briquettes are very hard to the touch, and as they are so highly compressed, there is very little dust. We don't need to seal them in plastic sacks like many of the competitors, where you may find a good shovel full of sawdust at the bottom of each bag! You will also find that the less dense briquettes tend to burn very quickly, meaning that you can get through an awful lot of them.

Our briquettes are an extremely consistent product and will always give excellent performance. This is because unless the briquetting machine is fed with exactly the right material, it simply won't work. The briquettes either fail to form at all, or blow to pieces when they come out of the machine. Traditional firewood will vary from log to log, and from one load to the next, and unfortunately, a great deal of "seasoned firewood" is no such thing. We keep a moisture meter on the van and are happy to test any logs for you if you're having problems.

Many people, quite understandably, wish to give our briquettes a go before placing a larger order. This is no problem at all and we encourage people to try a sample first.

Sending any heavy items with a carrier can be expensive, but we have found that Interparcel offer pretty competitive rates. If you wish to pick up from us in person, or have another carrier and wish to arrange your own collection that's no problem at all - just contact us first to make arrangements.

We only ever charge carriage at cost, and don't add anything on for packing and so on.

Our current prices are as follows:

Premium quality Firewood Briquettes

Please note that due to natural variations in feedstock, briquette weights are only approximate. 10 kilos per pack is only a guide weight - some will be slightly over, and some slightly under. All premium briquettes are packaged in 10's and sold as such.

Sample pack - comprising three packs of premium briquettes - £24.00 including delivery. (These are sent with a carrier) Please note that the carriers have just increased their delivery charges to £12.00 for the 30 briquette sample pack.

Small orders - £4.00 per pack. We deliver small orders locally for £5.00. We deliver orders of 15 packs or more locally for FREE.

Bulk orders - full pallet of premium briquettes - comprising 100 packs - £335. This price includes FREE delivery to mainland UK addresses - saving you £65 on the small order price! Deliveries to Scotland are subject to a £25 cariage surcharge imposed on us by the carriers.

We welcome orders via email, by phone, or through the post. You can also call us if you need any further information about any of our products or services. Please leave a message if we are not available and we will call you back as soon as we can.

Cheques should be made payable to "Greenfires" and sent to us at:

Greenfires Chimney and Stove Services
26 King Street
Carnforth
Lancashire
LA5 9DU

We can also accept payments made online direct to our account. Please email us if you wish to pay this way, and we will send you the required details to make the payment.

We prefer not to take Paypal payments due to the high charges imposed. This helps us to keep our prices as low as possible.

 If ordering a sample pack of briquettes, PLEASE include a contact phone number as we are unable to book collections online without one.