Brick mortar

[BoarsNest]

I hope to start bricking my wood fired arch soon. Has anyone used the fireplace mortar that you can get in a tube at Menards? I was thinking that just squeezing that into the joints and smoothing it out would be pretty quick and easy. I plan on using 1" of blanket behind 1/2 brick for most of the arch except using full brick in the firebox area.

[PerryW]

Can't see why not. I bricked my 3x10 20 years ago and just dry fit the full firebricks with no mortar at all.

[slammer3364]

We just have a small evaporator,and I also used no mortar. All the wood-burners I have seen just have the fire-brick laid in mortar free Good Luck

[Goggleeye]

I am in a similar situation. I used red bricks this year, but want to put in fire brick for next year. I designed my arch with a slight outward slant (5 to 10 degrees) to the sides and back of my firebox. The firebox is fairly tall on the sides (about 28 inches). will gravity alone keep the fire bricks in place, or should I mortar them in? or secure them in some other way? (straps? bolts?) It just seems to me that with all the jostling around from adding wood, the bricks would move around a lot Would appreciate any suggestions.

Mark

[3rdgen.maple]

Heres my 13/4 pennies worth of info. The It will take quaite a few morter tubes to do the arch. It might get costly but it might be easier per say. The majority of the bricks are going to lay pretty tight together and there will be no gap to shoot morter in. So you need to morter the sides/edges before they are laid in to get the most out of the morter to begin with. A bucket of refactory cement is pretty easy to work with and would be cheaper.
Goggleeye as far as your firebox it sounds like the one Patrick makes. It has angled sides and a tall firebox as well. I mortered everything together and after two seasons it is still tight. I would not worry about strapping things in or bracing. I used splits not full bricks and it is fine. I would atleast morter the firebox area and if you don't want to do the rest I think a good dry fit would work fine. Heck that is how my old arch was and three generations boiled on that with the original bricks in it. Just don't wait till winter when its cold it sorta takes the fun out of it and the drying effect.

[red maples]

uuuhhh 13/4 cents so thats 3.25 cents wow thats a little more than 2.

I used refractory cement and cured it the way it says to on the container. I do have cracks all throught it where the blocks join together. but its fine!!! but I don't know if you need to worry about bricks shifting at all due to vibrations and heat/moisture expansion.


What I did which was easy beacuse you will need lots of cement is go to a restaurant supply store or a big craft store that sells cake decorating supplies and buy disposable plastic pastry bags. fill several up you can even reuse them and when they are finished just disspose of them. but make sure you wear gloves that stuff will irriatate your skin.

[C.Wilcox]

Having used a bucket of refractory cement this past spring to brick my 2X4 I would definitely ante up for the added cost of the tubes if I had to do it again. Maybe it was just me, but that stuff in the bucket was a mess. I had it all over the place by the time I was done. If you don't mind paying a few extra pennies I say go for it. I mortared the firebox area but just dry-laid the ramp and side rails.

[maple flats]

I re-bricked my 3x8 this season when I added over fire combustion air. The sides have a slope outward, I dry stacked and just surface parged with refractory up to where the air injection manifold is. The rest I used refractory and laid each brick with a layer of refractory on all sides, then I parged the surface to fill the extra needed which was up to 1" thick in spots. I see a few shrinkage cracks but everything looks good except the fine cracks. Going back from the firebox area, all bricks were laid dry and on the slope I used ready to use refractory to parge, on the flat I just put a thin layer (about 1/2") of dry refractory and sprinkled it with a fine mist of water. That looks and feels like it worked well too.