Registered: 02/07/07
Posts: 3917
Loc: Ozark Mountains in SW Missouri
Well, the tent did not hold up well in the ice/snow we got. It was pretty much collapsed when I got down to it yesterday. On the plus side it was not ripped up and it was still dry and mostly snow and ice free inside.
My six year old grandson, Shea, who's been staying with us the past week, had wanted to go for another hike with me but it was way too cold to bring him down there in the days since the snowstorm so I waited it out with him.
It's about two city blocks to the campsite from our house on the trail we took. On the way down there I told him about the tent, how it worked, and that we'd build a fire and get in it when we got there. He wasn't impressed when he saw it. Six year olds are tough to impress.
Unfazed, I shook the snow and ice off the roof, reset the guy lines and one of the stakes, and in just a couple minutes the tent was back in order. Then I cleared the snow from in front of the tent and started gathering up some sticks I'd left down there to make a fire. The sticks were not covered so it was a good chance to see how well I'd do at getting my campfire going.
Shea help knock the snow and ice off and stacked the sticks up. When we had it all ready I lit a small piece of fat pine and tucked it into the kindling. We waited, and waited. The wood was freezing cold and not entirely dry and he mentioned a few time along the way that I was doing it all wrong. Now he was convinced. I offered that patience would serve us well now and told him soon we'd be nice and cozy warm.
With the temp at 30º and the fire lit I pinned down the front panel on one side, we got in, and I pinned the other. I set the thermometer inside the tent on my pack. It took about ten minutes for the fire to get a good flame and by then it was up to 60º inside the tent. In another ten minutes it was 80º inside.
Shea and I took our coats off and sat inside for awhile and discussed tents and campfires and all kinds of things. I gave him a little piece of candy I brought. It wasn't long before he was bouncing around inside the tent and putting it though yet another durability test. I took a minute to make this video just seconds before that...
Not bad, no permanent damage. Just a quick reset and back in business. I am really impressed with the temps you can build inside your tent. A gain of 50 deg. is great. Im sure if you were at the tent while the snow was coming down you could have done some intermittent removal preventing the collapse and you would have been good to go.
Registered: 02/07/07
Posts: 3917
Loc: Ozark Mountains in SW Missouri
Yeah, that was a long slow storm. I think it would have been easy to shake the snow off from inside the tent. If you could keep it warm inside it might have shed it off by melting it, but I'm not sure.
In the 1st photo you can see there's two charred pieces of wood sticking up out of the snow. That's what's left of an experiment my neighbor Randy and I did last week. I found a video on YouTube while searching for long lasting fires and came across using a "Swedish Torch" . I'd never seen or heard of this.
That worked really good with this tent. It lasted over three hours without hardly any fiddling around with it and most of the heat is radiated out the sides of the "torch", not straight up, so you can direct a great deal of it right into the tent. We even held the awning out over top of it and the heat never got more than warm. This would work great in a rain or snow. I'm not sure yet if it's a practical method for a backpacking campfire, but it's really good for a patio fire or car camping or canoe trips.
I'm going to experiment using that method with deadfall sticks to see what I can do, but in addition to that there are some other interesting videos on building long lasting campfires on YouTube as well.
I like the idea of the pots but wonder if there is a different material to use.The pots are bulky and heavy.In the end I bought a propane tent heater .
Edited by packlite (04/05/1401:34 AM) Edit Reason: {removed link}
Registered: 10/30/03
Posts: 4963
Loc: Marina del Rey,CA
Bill, check out wintertrekking These campers hike and camp in deep winter, mostly in Canada. They use canvas tents with real stoves in them. Pretty much anything you want to know about stoves in tents, someone there knows. Check the forums as well as the articles.
Edited by TomD (04/05/1402:45 AM)
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Don't get me started, you know how I get.
Registered: 02/07/07
Posts: 3917
Loc: Ozark Mountains in SW Missouri
That's a nice setup phat, and a wow, what a great step by step how to!
This is a subject I could go on and on about. I played some more with the candles and aluminum bread pan stove idea and while it did warm the tent some, when it got down below 20ºF it was still cold inside.
With my tent especially one issue is that the candles are drawing cold air into the tent to supply the fire, so up near the ceiling it was warmer, but on the floor where my sleeping bag is, not warmer at all.
I want to try adding a duct that feeds the heater fresh air from outside the tent. This way it would warm that air before in got inside and pressurize the tent instead of creating a draft of cold air being sucked into the tent.
The stove design you're using is certainly capable of producing a lot more heat than what I'm playing with, but I think it'd benefit from adding a fresh air intake too. Of course that adds weight that may or may not be worth the added efficiency (though I strongly suspect it would).
The tent I'm using is just a bit too small for a heater of any size so I've been giving some thought on how to design a one person tent made specifically for using a heater. I've been focusing on using candles but a bigger tent that is designed to use a heater like yours might be a better option. I have to admit I'm curious to know how much the heat reflective HDPE would improve the efficiency of using a heater.
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