Wood stoves and their pipes…

[Matt W]

This weekend i got to try my new hot tent and titanium backpacking wood stove.  The tent is basically an unbranded (bought direct from tent manufacturer) One Tigris hot tent: https://www.onetigris.com/smokey-hut-chimney-tent.html   The stove is a rectangular box roughly 8 x 8 x 16.

My biggest complaint is how far into the center of the tent the stove sat.  As i was scrolling through YouTube this morning, i noticed a video where the person had a similar looking stove, but the pipe coming out of the top was located in the front side (see photo below) by the door vs the back end away from the door like i had mine.

So my question is, what are the pros/cons of having the pipe towards the front vs. the back?

[Chris R]

Stove and pipe are usually central to maximize opportunity for everyone to get a share of the heat, plus putting the pipe central means more stove pipe inside the tent so you get the additional heat from the pipe as well as the stove. This also means less cooling of the pipe so less creosote and more draw as the pipe doesn’t get cooled by the outside air so much and a vertical pipe is more effective as the vertical distance is maximum. It also means that the pipe is supported closer to the top so is more stable in wind.

Having the stove pipe at the back is safer getting into and out of the tent as it’s away from the door plus there is reduced chance of fabric flapping and coming into contact with the stove. However it can mean that if you are trying to get a full complement of folk in the tent someone ends up sleeping near the door, often in the way so that gear has to be shuffled around and they may be in a draft. And of course one of the occupants may be further from the stove.

Towards the front makes for more living space but see above about safety so it needs to be off to the side. This becomes more of a problem as the stove gets bigger. We use aluminum foil heat shields to allow us to place the stove closer to the tent fabric. These are also good for protecting gear from coming in to contact with the stove.

At each location it’s worth experimenting with which way the stove faces to optimize space and heating. The vast majority of the heat you’ll be getting is coming off as radiant heat so being closer to the sides is warmest., off at a corner is the coolest.

[David Thomas]

Chris hits most of the advantages of the chimney leaving the tent higher up on the tent: more heat into the tent, the chimney stays warmer longer (less creosote deposited and more draft), and better supported.  Also, the chimney is less hot when it goes through whatever your stove jack is through the tent wall.

In addition to experimenting with different positions within the tent, experiment with different lengths of stove pipe in the chimney.  It is gospel among wood stove / fireplace shops that “A chimney can be too narrow, too wide, or too short, but it can never be too tall.”  Too narrow is an obvious constriction.  Too wide (is rare but) can result in not getting to a sufficiently high temperature for a decent draft.  Too short is the most common problem both for lack of overall height to develop enough draft to keep the stove under negative pressure and not leaking smokey (and CO rich!) air and also if the chimney ends too far below the peak/ridge of the roof/tent, then it can catch a downdraft and have smoke blown down the chimney.

Short story: try out an extra section (maybe just a galvanized section from Home Depot on a shorter trip) and see if it improves the performance of the system.

Also, a longer chimney lets cinders burn themselves out more completely and puts your tent at less risk of being burned by falling cinders.   You don’t want to be this guy:
https://dps.alaska.gov/getmedia/4d477f96-1d92-4082-8ec9-76dd97580108/Winter-Fire-Survivor_1-10-2020
Content warning: it doesn’t go well for the dog.

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