#Oak nuggit for free
#Oak nuggit full
#Oak nuggit free

Unfortunately the supplier, The Briquette Company, doesn’t want to do business with southern softies, or for anyone else outside their immediate area. I considered buying a sample bag of one of the other heat logs on test, Easy Logs. Any holes in the bags would render the logs unusable. Storing the bags next to the boat wouldn’t work. We can keep it there and bring two or three bags back to the boat as and when we need it. Heat logs need to be kept completely dry.įortunately Sally and I have a storage unit, a twenty foot container, a couple of miles from the boat. However if they come into contact with water they act like a sponge, expand to twice their size and prove very difficult to light. They’re softwood so they’re not particularly good but they work very well if they’re kept dry. I don’t use them often so a pack of ten kept in a cupboard is enough to provide a quick burst of heat if the boat is cold when I get up in the morning. Heat logs are an entirely different matter. Wet coal is messy to handle but the fuel still lights easily enough. Although the coal is stored in plastic bags to keep them dry, sometimes the bags have holes in them. I store them on the walkway next to the boat. Where can I store them? I buy Pureheat ten at a time. The option I would prefer is the 50 bags at £3.64 each. The heat logs work of cheaper than my current Pureheat, but it’s not the only consideration. The cost of the heat logs for the same weight fuel is £9.98, £9.10 and £8.27. The fuel that I use at the moment, Pureheat in 25kg bags, costs me £10.78 a bag. The high density heat logs are available singly at £3.99 each, in packs of fifty for £183.75 (£3.68 each) and in packs of 100 for £364.09 ( £3.64 each).

#Oak nuggit full

There are a number of factors that will determine whether we switch to heat logs full time. Each 10kg sample bag costs £15 including delivery. I’ve ordered two 10kg sample bags from .uk one bag of Ecofire high density heat logs and one of their Ecofire oak nuggets. As the dust created by our coal use drives Sally mad, I thought I would run my own test to see how the briquettes fare in real life. The best fuel on test appeared to be wood briquettes.

#Oak nuggit free

Newspaper logs may be free to produce yourself once you’ve bought an inexpensive log maker, but they are time consuming and messy to make, leave a lot of unburned ash/fuel and don’t produce much heat. Peat is difficult to light and doesn’t produce much heat. Peat and newspaper logs didn’t fare very well at all. Seasoned wood only produced about 60% of the heat produced by either coal or wood briquettes. Even then, the results weren’t very impressive. The Waterways World testers used wood that had been seasoned for over a year. It’s not going to dry there, so it’s not going to burn very well. You’ll see many liveaboard narrowboats with logs stored on the boat’s roof. You certainly don’t have the space inside your boat and, unless you have a permanent mooring with dry canalside storage, you don’t have the space outside either. If you live on your boat you probably don’t have anywhere to store your wood to dry it out. If the wood you burn isn’t dry, much of the energy produced during burning is used to evaporate the water in the wood rather than producing heat. It needs to be stored under cover for at least six months so that it can dry out.

Wood, with the exception of ash, can’t be used immediately.

#Oak nuggit for free

Even though wood can be sourced for free as you cruise the network, it’s just not practical to use it. The clinical tests proved what I have suspected for a long time. They actually produced slightly more room heat than coal. Of course, the heat produced by the fuel is the most important factor and the wood briquettes scored well there too. The four wood briquettes tested produced just 8% – 11% of the volume of ash – and possibly dust – produced by the coal. “ No surprise there!”, said Sally waving her duster around for the umpteenth time that day.

Of all the fuel coal briquettes produced the most ash and unburned fuel. The testers recorded stove heat, room heat and the volume of ash and unburned fuel for each of the products tested. They tested coal briquettes, wood briquettes, wood, straw logs, newspaper logs and peat. It’s fascinating reading if your boat’s main heat source is going to be a solid fuel stove. Waterways World tested stove fuel in their March 2013 edition.