Heating correctly with wood briquettes: This is what you should consider

When you heat your home properly with wood briquettes, you can heat your home efficiently with renewable raw materials. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

How to heat properly with wood briquettes

The energy crisis is not the only reason why heating with your own stove has become attractive for many people. After all, wood-burning stoves provide a particularly cosy warmth. In addition to logs, wood briquettes are also a popular fuel.

• In principle, all commercially available wood stoves can be fired with wood briquettes. No matter whether you have an open or closed fireplace, a storage stove, a kitchen stove or a wood-burning stove. Even wood gasification boilers and charcoal grills can be fuelled with wood briquettes.

• For firing up, open the ventilation slides and place a wood briquette and place a lighter on top. Now layer four pieces of kindling on top of this and then light the kindling. Then close the door and wait until the briquette has turned into embers.
• You can now add more wood briquettes to this bed of embers. How many you add depends mainly on the size of your stove. Be careful not to overload the stove. Only add more when the briquettes have burnt down to embers.

• How long wood briquettes heat depends on the type. Smaller to medium-sized varieties burn for about one to two hours and then keep the embers burning for almost as long. Larger stick briquettes can keep the embers burning for up to five hours.

Worth knowing about the topic of wood briquettes

Wood briquettes are an ecologically and economically sensible alternative to natural gas, heating oil and coal. Even compared to classic firewood, wood briquettes offer some advantages.

• Wood briquettes have a very high calorific value of up to 5.3 kW/h per kilogram. They achieve this high value mainly due to the high density of the pressed pellets. In addition, wood briquettes have a very low residual moisture of only about 6-8%. Seasoned logs have a residual moisture content of around 18%.

• Due to the low residual moisture, wood briquettes have lower emissions than logs. In addition, they are made from wood waste. They are therefore an environmentally friendly alternative. Due to their high calorific value, wood briquettes are also cheaper than other fuels.

• Due to their uniformly pressed shape, wood briquettes are more space-saving to store than logs. They require about 30% less space. However, they can swell or even mould if the humidity is too high. Therefore, wood briquettes must be stored as dry as possible. Then they will last for many years.

• Wood briquettes should not be stored outdoors. However, if you want to store them indoors, it is essential that you observe the applicable fire safety regulations. You can find out about these from the local fire brigade.