Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wood Stove for Small Cabin????

If you don't need light from the stove I'd look at these.
http://www.cylinderstoves.com/stoves-c-21.html

Well built, light enough to move around by hand yet heavy enough steel to hold heat and can be delivered to your door.

That looks damn nice!

A far cry from the abominable pack-in stoves that we used to have to use in the high country in the Forest Service! Hated those things!

The older cook stoves are anything but airtight. They take a lot of wood and do not hold a fire well. There are modern wood cook stoves that are airtight but they coost a lot. The advantage of a modern cook stove other than cooking is they are exempt from the new EPA regs. We are looking at a modern wood airtight cook stove that will replace both the wood stoves in our cabin. It will heat and cook, hold a fire, is clean burning, and will use way less wood. The downside is the six grand price tag.

There is a style of stove with a lot of mass from bricks that hold heat in the mass. they differ from fire places in that they are stoves and they have chambers that heat the mass. They are expensive to buy but if your a DIY guy I bet you could do ok.

Maybe build a two barrel stove, have the upper chamber hold the mass.

There is a manufacturing community that caters to the Amish/Mennonite type folks. The still make and sell wood cooking stoves and house heaters. Do some Google pho and find their web sites. They have great products.

I have a similar size cabin. 16x20' = 320 sq ft plus a 9x16' loft = 144 sq ft - total 464 sq ft.

It is well isulated, log walls and R 30 insulation roof and floor. My first mistake was to put in a Round Oak stove...too much heat and was a lot of work to keep a small fire going. Those stoves operate best with a good load of wood.

Second mistake was to install a wood cookstove with a water reservoir. Fun to cook and bake with it, had an ample firebox, would hold a fire if coal was placed on top of wood fire, but it took up a lot of room.

Went searching on Craigslist(all stoves found on Craigslist)and located a "Kitchen Heater". Turned out to be the perfect stove for the size of the building and cooking needs.



This stove has a two lid cook top and the firebox is larger than some full size wood cook stoves. As you can see it does not have an oven, but I went out on Ebay and purchased a Coleman stove top oven that fits on top of the stove. Bannock bread, muffins, pot pies and beer can chicken are some of the items baked in the oven.

If I bank the fire with wood and coal I can get good heat for about 4 hours.

Here are a couple of cook stoves I had in the cabin and you can see how much room they take up.

Round Oak cook stove


Quick Meal cook stove

Another suggestion would be to find a used Jotul 118 woodstove which would a good size for the square foot building you have.

I owned one years ago and you regulate the heat quite well. Small fire to let her go with a large fire. The only draw back, which is minor, it does not have a grate and an ash pan.

If you find a used one look for cracks and check to see if baffle is intact and good condition. The door seal rope can be replaced easily and material found at most hardware stores.

I see them for sale on Craigslist in my area from time to time.

In fact there is one for sale in Florissant (Colorado Springs) currently on Craigslist...$450.

Good luck

Another comment or two: For stoves that are not especially tight, a chimney damper does a fine job of regulating burn rate.

I learned that lesson with my fold up elk camp stove. Choked all the way down it could still over heat the tent. Installed the chimney damper and we now have absolute control.

Again, anything that involves inspections or code compliance in Oregon means one is going to install a certified up to snuff unit. Put something in that's under the counter or not up to code, and the insurance companies have an out if the place goes up.

The high mass stoves might be a good call. Slow to heat up, but once there, they're good for the long haul. We have a King sized Blaze King in our home for primary heat and it sits on a fairly massive stone hearth. It can be loaded and easily do the night, but there's enough heat storage in the hearth to keep the house up to temp. I see no reason to have a raging fire going when we're all under the blankies.

The don't go oversize warnings should be heeded.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I'm on the look out for a small stove like round oak showed. If not, then maybe a cylinder stove set up high like bootsfishing showed.

THanks for your help!

TF

Are you dead set on a wood stove? I work on a remote camp on a barge feeding fish and we heat our living area (2 small bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and common area) with a 13,000 BTU Nordic Stove that runs on diesel. It takes a little bit to get the whole place heated up but once it is going we can turn it down pretty low and it maintains the heat really well. It will burn about .053 - .150 GPH. All the rooms we are heating are on a single level.

Here is a picture of it that I took today. We are set up with an 18 gallon tank up in the attic that we can pump fuel into with either a hand pump or a small electric pump. I filled it up halfway 4 days ago and its barely below a half a tank right now, we run it about 7-9hrs a day.

Kni-co manufacturing if'n you don't want to spend a lot.

I have a 24X24' cabin with a loft. I have an Earth Stove in it. It heats like crazy. It holds coals almost all night long. It gets the loft to 90 degrees sometimes and ya just have to open the winder a bit. It's getting old though and will be replaced but I won't buy the Vogelzang, they are made in China. The ones I see at Menards are China made and most likely cheap steel.

In the Skandanavian countries they have a word for a small cabin with a wood stove, Sauna.

One has to choose, a stove big enough to hold fire all night and it putting out so much heat you're in your skivvies and sweating until the fire dies down, or a stove sized for the cabin and not being able to hold fire all night.

Not quite sure what the magic number is but I'm thinking around 800 sq ft is the point where you can have a big enough stove to run all night, but not run you out.

Well, I went out and looked at a number of wood stoves. Cruised the internet and saw a bunch of pics. I scratched off the diesel kerosene heater option as I have abundant supply of wood and want to use that. No electricity so some options don't make much sense; like a blower to ramp up the performance of a small wood stove.

Anyway, I have decided that while a small Jotul wood stove might be ok, they are pretty darn expensive to buy new and the only used one I could fine are too big for this little 430 sq ft cabin.

So, gonna keep it simple and get one of those cylinder outfitter type stoves. Won't keep fire overnight but that will be ok for this small place. If I need to augment the heat in the am, I'll just turn on a propane burner for awhile.

Thanks for you help and ideas!

TF

That sounds about right. Almost twice the size of our home. To hot vs getting up once or twice a night to add wood.

Just got an email from Sportsmans Guide with a "US Govt. Surplus Dual Fuel Stove" for $197. Says the stove is new/unused. You might search their site for it. They have a video showing it in action. It will run off diesel or you can burn wood/coal in it. Looked pretty cool to me. Put "us stove" in the search bar on their home page.

I recommend a Jotul 602. They have been around quite a while and you might find a good used one. It would fit the bill.

How about one that is supplemented by a drip waste oil?

I've had an Englander 13ncl for about 6 years now. It is the sole heat source for my house, which is 27 x 24 and two stories high. Living in CT, it manages to heat the house to 75�F, even when it is zero outside (yeas insulation and good windows/doors help). I would recommend buying the Englander in a heart-beat. I needed to replace a couple bricks inside, just went on their website, ordered them and had them in a couple days. Well worth it, easy to get lit and burns quite well.