How to organize the heating of the tent: step by step instructions. Tents with a stove. Tourist Tent Heater
Overnight in a tent is great. But when it's cold outside, it requires special preparation, especially if children are taking part in the hike. Today we will find out what are the ways to heat the tent in the cold season. Let's start with the simplest and finish with the most technologically advanced and costly.
Clothes and sleeping bag
An important role in the issue of heating is played by the tourist's clothes, his and the mattress. If all these attributes are chosen correctly and performed with high quality, then they will be enough to comfortably spend the night in the autumn forest. However, with the advent of real cold weather, such heat will not be enough. There will also be little of it for children, and there are two reasons for this. First, children get colder. And secondly, they like to toss and turn and open up in a dream. Therefore, it is important to heat the entire tent.
By the way, if you spend the night in and in principle, and in any other case, try to make sure that the parts of your body are in contact with each other as much as possible. At the very least, take your hands out of your sleeves. The principle of mittens works here, which, as you know, warms (or it would be more correct to say, retains body heat) much more efficiently than a glove. To keep your sleeping bag warmer before the bitter cold sets in, a simple bottle of hot water to carry in your bag will help. Get a kind of heating pad.
Candles
The second easiest way is to heat the tent with candles. It is suitable in the fall, when you need to slightly warm it up, but in winter, candles will not be enough. Live fire in a tent is very dangerous, so it can only be used in two cases. The first is when you are awake and can follow the burning of the candle and its vertical position. Usually candles are used by winter fishing enthusiasts who put up a tent not at all for sleeping, but for protection from wind and precipitation. Well, the second case is when the candle is in a safe burner. The design of such a burner was invented by tourists. You just need to take a metal shell from an old thermos flask and put a candle in it. Such a burner has a number of advantages. Firstly, if the thermos falls, the candle will remain in it and will not cause harm. Secondly, the candle heats the thermos, which means that the heat transfer surface increases several times.
stones
Heating the tent with stone / stones is an old method, distinguished by its simplicity and reliability. It is suitable for more severe cold weather than the previous two. But here, as in everything, there are nuances.
If you just take a heated stone and bring it into the tent, it will be hot, but not for long. Literally in an hour the stone will cool down and the cold will come again. The first way to increase the cooling time of the stone is to place it in a pot and close the lid. Such a simple manipulation will provide heating of the tent for three hours, but this is not enough for a comfortable sleep. It is necessary to slow down the heat transfer of the stone so that it remains hot for at least 6-8 hours. For this purpose, simple aluminum foil is used. It is non-flammable, lightweight and very compact. If you wrap the stone in several layers of foil, it will cool much more slowly and will not create stuffiness in the first hours of cooling. Heat will be retained due to the air gap between the layers. If you feel that the tent has become cold, just remove one layer of foil.
A red-hot stone can burn through the bottom of the tent, so it is placed in a pot or pan. It is good if the stone gets stuck in the socket of the container and does not heat up its bottom. Otherwise, a wooden plank should be placed under the pan. Another important nuance: do not heat the stone too intensely in the fire. Due to a sharp temperature drop on the surface and inside, it may crack.
A canister of hot water also works like a stone. Only heat transfer occurs much faster.
Ground heating
Now we will learn how to heat a tent on a hike in severe cold weather. An old and reliable way is to put up a tent in the place of a fire. There are two options here. The first takes more time and energy. To begin with, at the place where the tent will be set up in the future, you need to remove the sod. Dig should be to a depth of 20 centimeters. Then a huge fire with wide logs is lit in this pit. The main goal at this stage is to dry and warm the earth, as well as to get large coals. When the coals are ready, they are evenly distributed over the pit and covered with a 7-10 cm layer of earth. It is important that the ground is dry. If there is none, you need to use the second method below. Dry grass or spruce branches are laid on the ground, and a tent is placed on top. The tent is heated throughout the night.
The second option is less energy intensive. In this case, there is no need to dig a hole. All that needs to be done is to kindle a large fire, and when it burns out, carefully remove the coals to the side. On the ground hot from the fire, spruce branches are laid and a tent is put up.
Heating a tent with a pipe
Let's move on to more sophisticated and technological methods. To bring this idea to life, you need to take 5-6 meters of duralumin pipe with you on a hike. It can be divided into meter lengths for easy transportation. It is even better to take segments of different diameters and fold them into each other. But do not forget about the seal at the joints, otherwise all the heat will go into the air. The weight of such a set will not be significant at all.
So, for starters, a fire is kindled a few meters from the entrance to the tent. The pipe is placed on the fire in such a way that one end goes into the tent, and the other protrudes beyond the flame so that smoke does not get into it. The end of the pipe that goes into the tent should be 1.5 meters higher than the second end. This design works very simply: the cold air entering the pipe heats up and rises, entering the tent. The steeper the slope of the pipe, the more air will circulate. And the closer the fire is to the tent, the hotter this air will become.
To provide yourself with efficient heating, you can go further and make two pits, as in the figure below. The first is needed to protect the tent from fire, and the second - to ensure good airflow. If the tent is too hot, you can simply close the chimney.
Heating a tent with the above methods requires energy and time. In conditions when every day you move to a new place and get very tired, this is quite inconvenient. It is also uncomfortable if there are children in the hiking group. Therefore, many prefer to use modern technologies. We will talk about them below.
Gas heater
A tourist heater with a gas burner is a simple design device that has compact dimensions and does an excellent job of heating a tent. By itself, it is very unproductive. It simply heats the air, which is mixed by natural convection. To make a real heater, a special nozzle (working fluid) is put on the burner, which accumulates heat and gradually releases it to the air. It is the nozzle on the gas burner for heating the tent that determines the type of device. Nozzles are metal and ceramic. In addition to nozzles that work in tandem with the burner, there are independent heaters, which also have a metal or ceramic structure as a working fluid. Let's take a closer look at each type.
Heater with a metal working fluid
Such a camping heater can be either an attachment to a gas primus stove or an independent device. The first option requires special care, because its hot surface, as a rule, is not protected. Therefore, leaving such a heater overnight is not recommended.
Independent designs are more acceptable for night heating of the tent. They are more stable on the surface and have protection of the danger zone from objects from the outside. Such heaters may have one or two independent burners. Thanks to the parabolic reflector (reflector) from the working fluid can be directed in the right direction. On sale there are a lot of such heaters, both foreign and domestic production. The advantages of the device are simplicity of design, low cost, safety. Cons - low return, insufficient efficiency.
Heater with ceramic working medium
A portable heater of this type has a stronger heat dissipation, and therefore, it is more economical. The combustion process takes place on the surface of a ceramic plate that has a shape similar to a honeycomb. Heat is removed much more efficiently than with an open flame. Up to 50% of the combustion energy is converted into thermal radiation. The advantages of ceramic burners are efficiency, compactness, unpretentiousness, a little carbon monoxide is released during operation, directional action. Unfortunately, domestic heaters lose to imported ones on all fronts.
Gasoline Tent Heater
Gasoline heaters work on the same principle as gas heaters. The main advantages of such products are availability and the ability to work in any weather. The gas burner for heating the tent at a temperature of -5 degrees and below starts to act up. However, along with all the advantages, gasoline heaters also have significant disadvantages. The main one is danger. If not used correctly, the balloon can do much harm. And the fuel itself - gasoline - requires careful transportation.
Safety precautions when working with gas and gasoline heaters
When using these products in a tent, special attention should be paid to the following safety rules:
1. There must be at least a little ventilation in the tent to remove combustion products.
2. The heater for the tent should be at least half a meter away from the wall.
3. Do not point the hot surface at walls, clothes or other combustible objects.
4. It is advisable to have a bed at a height of up to 25 cm from the floor. Carbon monoxide is heavier than air, so it accumulates at the bottom.
5. Only special cylinders are suitable for use in a tent, which are equipped with protective automation. It blocks the gas supply if the burner goes out or overheats. Also, the cylinder must have a certificate allowing its use in residential premises.
6. The heater must be installed on a non-combustible support with an area exceeding the area of the burner by at least 30%.
Well, the most effective way to heat a tent is to put a potbelly stove in it. This is the method used in army tents. Of course, the tourist stove has more modest dimensions than the army one, but the essence is the same. This method of heating is not suitable for a small tent. You will have to tinker with the stove, but the result will be more than worthy. There are few such products on the market, but they still exist. And some even adapt to gas and gasoline. The stove, as a rule, comes with a collapsible chimney. It is made of light metal and does not weigh much. The advantages of the stove - it gives a lot of heat, has a simple but reliable design of the hood, is inexpensive, does not require refueling.
Conclusion
Today we figured out how to heat a tent on a camping trip. There are many ways to make camping life more comfortable and safer, from the use of simple candles to full-fledged stoves. Which one to choose from this variety depends on the season, the place of rest, the composition of the group and the personal characteristics of each person. Someone wears a T-shirt in winter and sleeps in the same sleeping bag, but someone in the summer will not hurt.
