Campfire Smoke Control

Me and some friends are planning a double overnighter and for this trip it will involve a campfire and with the campfire comes the smoke. During a scouting trip we had a small fire to cook our food on and the smoke just seemed to follow one guy around. Now I know to battle the smoke you can either hunt out and burn strickly hard wood to burn or build up the back of the fireplace bit taller then the tallest person on the trip. Building the back wall of the fireplace another 3 feet just seems a bit sketchy with what we have to work with. I'm not looking to tear up the ground looking for rocks to use and a stack of stones 7 feet high seems a bit extreme. We will be cleaning out the fireplace back down to its original floor which should help with air flow. The wood all around the site for a 100 yards is damp, not punky, it cracks like a campfire but the outer wood is damp. So that we don't have much control over. Is there any other tips or tricks to help stop the smoke from chasing campers in circles?

In my experience the smoke just goes where the breeze takes it. If the breeze is variable then one gets the impression that the smoke is following you. If there is no breeze then the smoke goes up but if there is a breeze then you need to be upwind to avoid smoke. If upwind is variable then you will have to move around. The only certain way to avoid campfire smoke is to avoid having campfires. If campfires are felt to be necessary then one simply must deal with the smoke.

I haven't personally bothered with a fire for years, but I've seen many young men sent to borrow a left-handed smoke-shifter from nearby groups...

Early in the season equals lots of smoke.
Duane

Someone tried to sell me a smoke shifter one time. But I was really suspicious especially when he started trying to throw in the bacon stretcher.

In my experience smoke is simple to control: wherever I stand, the smoke travels in that direction. Similarly, I'm sometimes recruited on trips to act as mosquito bait. I've come to accept these quirks as "talents."

Other than that, try to find dry wood to minimize smoke generation, and you'll have an easier time of it. Not always easy, but there's usually something in wooded areas that aren't heavily used.

Cheers,

You are dealing with "the Bernoulli Effect". My physicist dad taught me this when I was in scouts.
Basically, with a person standing near a fire, and an imperceptible breeze is blowing, an area of low pressure develops between the fire and person, so smoke heads to the vacuum.
I have fires in my fire pit on the patio often and the only way to avoid the smoke is to stand further back, or get really low to do your cooking. Even in high winds, smoke will head to the person. No matter where the person stands, or the direction of the wind, there will be a low pressure area somewhere around the person. Think about it.

And all this time I was convinced I was getting smoked out because "Smoke Follows Beauty"

A good friend says that chanting "I hate fuzzy white rabbits" will chase the smoke away. My experience is that it seems to works sometimes, but generally not for very long, which helped convince me I must be too beautiful to resist (at least it did until Dryer just told about the stupid "Bernoulli Effect" ).

Gathering your wood from old deadfall that still has branches sitting up off the ground is always good because those will be dryer.

Stacking your firewood close to your fire so it can dry out a bit before you add it will help too.

Using a "Super Shelter" type campfire tent works real good. The front clear plastic panel will keep the smoke out and the heat in. Here's some photos of one I made. YouTube has some videos of others.

Nice info and cool tarp shelter bill. The problem I seem to run into the most is gathering enough firewood to keep me happy for a whole weekend only to find out that other campers in the group just keep piling on the wood. It does have a chance to dry slowly because they pile it on top of the fire and then you end up with a fire that's getting choked and the weekends supply all in a big pile the minute I run to the outhouse or take a quick scouting trip around the lake. Maybe I need to practice more camper control then campfire smoke control. The fire pit itself was built by the state, Its stone and concrete, 3 sided fire pit. I'm thinking a small channel made by rocks underneath the fire will help to burn the wood more efficiently by increasing airflow. The smoke that was following our fellow camper was rolling over the back of the fire place and he just kept walking around in big circles but he mainly stuck to the back of the fire pit. I'm thinking about tieing a few logs together and standing them up behind the fireplace to help the smoke go up and over the campers. If it creates a vacuum then the smoke should naturally follow those logs straight up and out. Thanx for the help guys. I'm always looking for ways to make my outdoor experiences as enjoyable as possible.

That's one of the many reasons I use a stove instead!

Yeah, do I ever know what you mean. I have a good hiking buddy that can burn a weeks worth of firewood before the night's over and there's not much you can do to stop him. I finally decided I would gather enough wood to last me for the evening, which he'll burn all at once, and after that he can go get as much wood as he wants.

I've sat and watched him smother some pretty good going fires I've just started more than a few times. I just sit and grin when he starts doing that, and generally don't waste the chance to tell him how good he just put our fire out.

On the plus side, once it's going strong he'll head out in the black of night to go find more sticks to burn, and you never get cold when you're camping out with him.

When I'm solo, and out bushwhacking, I lay of base of thick sticks down, all lined up tight together, and then stack my firewood on top of that, either log cabin or pyramid style to get it started. This base does three things, it gets my firewood off of the cold wet ground, it lays the foundation for a good bed of coals, and it creates channels for air to come in under my firewood. Getting (and keeping) a hot bed of coals going reduces smoke a lot too.

You need a really big and hot bed of coals to burn logs without getting smoked out. I rarely burn anything bigger than 3 inches in diameter when I'm backpacking. Most of my fuel will be smaller than that. If I find a suitable chunk of a log I will set it behind my layer of sticks on the ground and build my fire in front of it. That helps reflect some heat my way and keeps the breeze off of my bed of coals, and it gives me a place to prop up damp sticks behind it and dry them out, and prop up sticks front, over the coals, so they burn with less smoke.

I'm one of the few here that almost always has a campfire, hence the tent I made. But we can do that here in the Ozarks without burning down the forests or scarring the land and I don't make big huge fires anyway. I like small campfires that I can hunker down over and feed sticks while enjoying the night.

I've walked away from my campfires at night just to see how far I have to go before I can't see it. Here, you don't have to go far at all. Sometimes less than 150 ft. If you're close to a white limestone cliff face they will light it up and make them glow. I just love the way a small campfire lights up the forest and gives off so much warmth. They are one of the real joys of backpacking for me and I've spent a lot of time studying them...

The solution is to increase the atmospheric pressure between the scout and the fire. Wear one of these:
http://inventorspot.com/articles/solar_powered_fan_hat_wearable_gadget_looks_and_feels_cool_24822

I need to have somebody photograph me from overhead to see whether I resemble an airplane wing, in profile.

What's galling is when a dude group is gathered 'round a fire and the smoke heads my way, regardless. The mosquito thing just means I'm delicious. (Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after me!)

Cheers,

Too bad that hat won't work after sundown!

It could double as a solar powered ember helper so a double duty purpose almost makes it worth buying.

Controlling smoke is in the same category as herding cats.

I thinking herding cats would be easier. lmao, It was another rough trip. The other campers were either bringing wet wood into camp or overloading the firepit. It was bad, between the wind, rain, snow and sleet and the predator nudging my tarp up I think I would have been better off staying home. The next trip will be better. Different group of friends and I am the fire keeper.

Pretty funny stuff!

Maybe you need to tell that group to bring a big industrial sized bottle of oxygen next time. That would sure get the fire hotter fast and keep the smoke down, and when you see someone getting to close with wet wood you could just crack open the valve a bit more and brighten the fire enough to set them back on their heels.

The way to reduce smoke is to make an "indian" fire, instead of a "white-man" fire. The diference is this. The indian fire has the thick logs at the bottom, then the thinner twigs and on top the thinnest and the tinder. You then light the fire from the top, and the fire burns downwards with greatly reduced smoke. One more advantage is that you may start cooking very early, since the flame is all the time on top. If you put the thick bottom logs parallell to each other you may also have a fire without making a burnmark to the vegetation. I use to have this type of fire on top of the snow, and it never burns a hole even in the snow.
Otto

Reason was that where we were going is one of the few places where fires are allowed and wood is plentiful.
Never heard before of "Indian" fire so because we had the time and really dry wood and kindling in abundance (we have eucalyptus trees everywhere, the leaves burn better than paper) I thought of trying that out.
To my amazement it worked right the first time. One stroke on the Mini Bic ant that was it.
VERY little smoke right from the start.
THANK YOU OttoStover.
(BTW, I avoid using fire starters but I have them just in case.Alcohol and olive oil, part of my kit anyway)