Cracked firebrick in wood stove

Back40

Well-known member
#1
My wood stove is a Lopi Leyden. It's got a significant crack in the side firebrick.

Is that a problem? Obviously there's still the sidewall, which I think is ceramic.
 

HandLoad

May GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Brass Subscriber
#5
Ship's Boilers are all @ positive pressure, and some of them (mostly on NAVAL vessels) can be pretty higly pressurized. They must have great care taken to seal up.

Home Fireplaces, and Stoves, are actually at slight negative pressure, so leaks don't have tongues of flame trying to eat their way out.
 

O:gweh

Domari Nolo
Forum Merchant
#7
Not to derail your thread.....but I have always thought about buying a couple of boxes of firebrick. I am thinking that I could stack them up on top of the stove in such a way as to make an oven. I'm thinking it would hold the heat better and therefore cook more evenly than the metal ovens you can buy. Store it all away until grid down etc. What do you all think?. Anyone with any experience with such a concept?

(I didn't feel it was worth starting a separate thread for such a topic)
 

HandLoad

May GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Brass Subscriber
#10
Putting on My Engineering Hat (looks just like a Dunce Cap, but it is an Engineering Hat!)

Problem is mass. Bricks are good insulators, but You gotta raise the bricks all the way up to Steady-State at Your desired temperature. Mass is the enemy.

Better to have several layers of Gold foil insulation, in the smallest space You can Take, and a quick-responding temperature regulation system, coupled to a relatively big burner/heating device.
 

O:gweh

Domari Nolo
Forum Merchant
#11
@HandLoad. Good point. That would make sense if cooking during the warmers months when you just want to light the stove, cook and let it die.

I was more thinking about the winter months. My woodstove is HOT 24hrs a day. Bricks would stay warm all day and night. I would fashion a piece of sheet metal for a door and for a temperature control vent.
 

HandLoad

May GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Brass Subscriber
#12
Yep, ya WANT a leaky Heat Source, if You are Cooking AND Heating the space. So a small heatsource, insulation good enough to reach desired Cooking Temperatures, with external surfaces that emit enough Heat for Space to be Comfortably warm, would pose a different problem than just an Oven.

Sounds a lot like a Soapstone walled Woodstove! Too hot in Summer, though. Then Ya go to the Summer Kitchen - Outdoors!
 

Optimist

NMR. 11/04/2020
#15
You guys may want to give foamed concrete a gander for this kind of app. If you mix it with kaolin (aka fire clay) you can come up with a castable composite that is pretty darn heat resistant. (The Dutch, I think it was, made up firebrick with straw inclusions that they burned out when the brick was fired. Those would actually float....)