Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Tent Heat Q

Does anyone know of a non-electric tent heater that won't kill you in your sleep...?

Mr buddy propane heaters work pretty well, have never killed me. They do produce water, so you'll need to deal with that.

I prefer a wood stove, but the mr buddy is convenient.

In a small tent a Coleman lantern will provide an amazing amount of heat. Not winter camping amounts but not so bad getting dressed during moose season amounts.

This fall while moose hunting I used a vented propane heater in a 12-man tipi. It was a very efficient design that I and my partner had worked on, so this was the maiden voyage. Designed it to have proper baffles, heat tubes, and a battery-driven forced air fan to distribute the heat inside of the tipi instead of having most of it escape up the stove pipe. The cat's ass. Instant heat in the morning, no screwing around with finding and cutting and splitting wood, and infinite adjustability. It was PLENTY cold this September where we were and we were very toasty and comfy. We had to have two Cub gear loads anyway and the propane bottles fit easily into our second load. If the bulk and weight of propane bottles (I used the ultra-lightweight fiberglass 18# bottles) fits into your logistical and financial budget it's an awfully nice way to go. Since this was the maiden voyage for this prototype I had a CO monitor on the table right beside the stove the whole 14 days we were hunting. Nary a beep. Next year it will be a titanium version with better valves and instead of weighing 11# it should be right around 7# (the stove by itself).

A better sleeping bag works, or an Arctic Oven tent that comes equipped with a pipe vent.

This looks like a modified NuWay stove? I've used one for quite some time with an 8 man tipi here in rainy SE, where firewood is a total chore. You're spot on about the joy of no screwing around, right now, heat. Like you, I say if a guy can haul the propane, they are a great way to go. I use mine for boat based camps so weight is less of a concern. I'm interested in the fan set up you were using. Can you tell us more?

pabucktail, it's not any relation to the NuWay stove. This thing was designed from the ground up as a propane stove and is not a wood stove that has had a propane burner put inside of it. 20000 BTU's at the burner tip is the same no matter what stove it's in (assuming the burner orifice is properly sized and the burner is operating efficiently with a nice blue flame). But the percentage of those 20000 BTU's that stay inside the structure instead of being wasted up the vent pipe is a function of how efficiently the stove captures and distributes the heat. We're still working on definitive testing, but if more of those BTU's stay in the tent/tipi and fewer of them are lost up the vent pipe we'll burn fewer pounds of propane for X-number of hours of heat. That's the idea anyway. Use of a fan depends on properly designing the interior baffles and heat exchanger tubes through which the forced air is blown, heated, and then expelled into the tent/tipi. The fan in this prototype is a cooling fan used in computers. I ran it for all the hours we burned the stove over 14 days using just one of these: https://www.anker.com/products/vari...cAe19hGX7mF_mFYJ85AmqgryPmwaAke6EALw_wcB

John, please keep us updated on the stove. Sounds awesome. I have avoided vented propane due to the inefficiency /fuel burn. Would much prefer to send the exhaust elsewhere, but have always been turned off by the fuel numbers.

John,
I have two of those cylinders here if you need to borrow next season.

Vern

I have heard of that before

great set-up and great photos, thanks...

I think the stove we used as kids in the ice-fishing shanty was called a Nuway, burned fuel oil, had to burn off the galvanization...sooty, nasty thing...

I had a small titanium wood stove for my Arctic Oven. Worked great. Nice dry heat and our clothes would dry out overnight inside the tent.
If the outside temperature was above 35 or so a dual mantle lantern worked great.

I have a Seek Outside Courthouse with their Titanium wood stove. It keeps the tent nice and warm when you burn good wood. It melts the snow in most of the tent.

Our moose hunt tent is an enormous Arctic Oven, 12x18, with a 6' vestibule. We run an ordinary woodstove in it and it will drive you out if thin-blooded folks run it.

The buddy heater works for me also. I have a Cabelas Instinct-6 Guide tent that's about 9' diameter. I run the Buddy Heater with just the pilot light during the night and then turn it up just before we get up in the morning. Can't run the Buddy Heater on high for very long because it gets too hot inside the tent.

People are right who say that a Coleman 2-burner lantern puts out lots of heat. That works also but you want to be able to turn out the lights at night. Then you shut off your heat source.

For my wall tent, I use a wood burning stove.

if i remember right [ ahem , cough] a lantern puts out about 8000 btus and a burner on the stove puts out 8500 btus while a little buddy heater claims 9000 btus.

i have little buddy heater -sometimes it runs all night in a tipi.

i have a big buddy heater in a 10x12 cabin that runs all night all the time.

They have propane.

http://nuwaystove.com/product-category/propane-stove/

Neat idea to heat tent with pipe and single log fire.

https://youtu.be/QeHGDr81XwM

thanks

The Nuway, propane stove works very well in a tent with a stove jack...the chimney vents the exhaust products and it really heats up an insulated tent very well... between -30 and -40C you start to lose pressure as the propane phase to gas slows down and at -40C and lower you might get very little heat even from a full bottle. Keeping the bottle full helps as does using a 30 pound bottle. After -30C moving to wood makes sense. The venting of the chimney makes accumulation of CO less likely and using a non vented heater is a bit more risky.

For a non vented source ensuring clean burning and making sure you aren't cooling down the flame with a big pot of cold water helps a non vented heat source like a coleman stove be a bit safer but always a risk. I used a coleman stove in Nunavut for a lot of years but wouldn't do it again. Too risky. CO can kill you.

I made a video on vented sources if you really want to geek out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgoP9_Fj26w