Hot Brick Outreach, Hot Brick Deception

I currently have two uses for a hot brick. The first is in an humanitarian inter species outreach project I’m running and the second is in the deceit of a machine in the cold weather.

Before I describe each use I will first cover off how I prepare my brick. The following paragraph is aimed at intermediate level brick warmers and so assumes some previous experience in the field.

Find a brick - I use a standard house brick from the ‘London Brick Company’ - and rinse it under a tap to wash off any loose debris. Next, find one of your life partners baking trays and put the brick onto it. Put the brick and tray into an oven and heat to ~180C or gas mark 5. Leave it in the oven until someone finds it and reminds you it’s there.

Good.

Once prepared I find the brick can be put to one of two exciting uses.

The first beneficiary of the brick is our family pet Guinea Pig ‘Momo‘, aka: The Black Blob, Mongoloid, Mosoleum, Fat Boy. We had a guess the weight of the Guinea Pig competition at ours this Christmas and weighing in at 2lbs 10ozs he’s a specimen little pig whom I‘m sure is looking forward to summer as much of the rest of us. For now though he is cage bound and miserable, left out in the cold.

I reach out to Momo in an inter species gesture that would surely see the woman out of Gorillas in The Mist applauding in her mountainside grave. I do this by placing the hot brick into the little Pig’s cage and then tuck him up for the night by folding down his insulated hutch cover and strapping it shut. Hmmmmm…. toasty little Pig.


The second use for a hot brick is a deceitful one. I have a bait fridge/freezer in my garage and with the air temperature inside dipping to minus two in recent nights the refrigeration is not being triggered. Quite simply the contents of the fridge are almost frozen without additional cooling. The fridge and freezer are on a single thermostatic circuit and so conversely the freezer contents have warmed and were in danger of defrosting. I overcame this by putting a hot brick into the fridge compartment which contains the thermostat. Voila! The brick heats up the air inside the fridge and the temperature monitor thinks summer has come early! When I checked this morning you could once again break your teeth on the bags of frozen particles they were so hard.

I did not take a photo of a brick in a fridge. Use your imagination god damn you!

Let me know if you have any exciting ideas for the use of hot bricks! Actually, don’t.