Wood Heater for cook/warmth

Hey y'all. I have a slide-in camper on the bed of a pick-up truck. I'm thinking about this shelter as perhaps one that wife & I may need as "house" soon. I have been researching small, well built & designed wood stoves to put in the camper IN PLACE of the 3 burner propane built in. I realize the need for heat proofing, safe chimney, etc., but need to know if anyone has experience with this apparatus. I've spoken with several "tent stove" manufactures that claim to have sold many to folks like me, as well as the maker of the camper(dead against the idea) and thought a non biased voice is needed please.

I understand why the camper manufacturer is dead set against the idea. 1) they have to be for legal liability reasons and 2) they know how their campers are built (lots of particle board more than likely).

I know of a few woodstoves from the yachting or tiny house industry that would work, but they are more than you probably paid for the camper. http://www.marinestove.com/orderinfo.htm

There are stoves like the silverfire hunter that I think would work for cooking, but don't know if it would put out enough heat for warmth--it really was designed to minimize heating (but that may be a good thing in this situation). It would be my starting point because I can't think of anything close to its price that would work. http://www.silverfire.us/page_11_15/silverfire-hunter-natural-draft-chimney-gasifier-s

The easy way to make a woodstove safe is SPACE, a luxury you won't have. You will need radiant barriers, good insulation and some re-working of the space to remove any combustibles. Luckily you can get rockwool at home depot these days so we aren't talking super exotic stuff anymore. The silverfire would start you camper on fire if you just plopped it down on the counter and fired it up. It gets hot on the bottom so it needs airflow and barrier on the bottom just for short cooking burns. The sides are insulated so they are easier--that would be the big problem with most other camp stoves in such a small space.

I have seen a few people have threads like this on expedition portal forum--evidently this is a common thing (a woodstove in a van or tiny camper) among ski bums.

Kirk : It is very hard to give you good advice without knowing a little more ! location. and your ability to provide a shelter/ windbreak for your entire mobile Housing !
Big AL !!!

Bumping a thread with a question.

Somewhat weighing different heating options for a new chicken house.  The building is uninsulated wood-frame/wood-steel shell and is about 16 X 12 feet with a 12 foot high peak to the roof.  High steep roof was incorporated in order to have many rafters on which chickens can perch.  I've  considered some kind of thermal mass surrounding a woodstove idea, but also was wondering about just quick one-shot burns that, admittedly, would dissipate fast without the building being insulated.  Being around Fargo, ND comes with the usual winter temperatures....several subzero F. nights and some days of the same. The stove I came across which is often wall-mounted is shown below....it's use for marine purposes but others have used them for cabins and tiny homes I believe.  Any opinions/experiences on the use of this stove for heating small areas quickly?  For size reference, the exhaust port is for 3" pipe.  Thanks!

Hi John;
Is that a wood burner ?  Very nice looking but very small.
I would think, that with high ceilings you would loose your heat rather quickly.

Have you considered building a rocket mass heater?
You would have to cover it with metal / brick or stone, so the poop can be washed off.
You would need to burn it each day for a few hours at least. But it would release heat the chicks could sit on all night long.

thomas rubino wrote:Hi John;
Is that a wood burner ?  Very nice looking but very small.
I would think, that with high ceilings you would loose your heat rather quickly.

Have you considered building a rocket mass heater?
You would have to cover it with metal / brick or stone, so the poop can be washed off.
You would need to burn it each day for a few hours at least. But it would release heat the chicks could sit on all night long.

Yes, that is a wood burner.  Small and cute, but not cheap!   The RMH idea or some variation thereof is still on the table.  It's the cost/reward factor that's being considered for that building that I have to weigh during the decision making.

Yes, that beauty has the look of mucho dollars!

There are more options with RMH's than before.

Batch box's allow wood to lay flat and burn very hot , uninterrupted for over an hour.

A Brick bell can take the place of long pipes thru a solid mass.

Ceramic fiber boards and blankets are expanding horizons with builds.

Check things out here in the RMH forum and at another site http://donkey32.proboards.com/  And a third, strictly about batch box's http://batchrocket.eu/en/

I think you are really putting the cart before the horse.

It would be rather silly to try and heat a building without first insulating it. Insulation (although mundane and boring) you do once, and heating is something that has to be done every day in the cold season. Even if it a tank that just has to be topped off, it still is a task that has to be done. And a heater would have to work 4 times as hard to heat an uninsulated building as one that is insulated.

My Grandparents did the same thing on their home. For years they had a Tiny House and dumped (2) 275 tanks full of #2 heating oil through that home, or 8 cords of firewood...along with oil trying to heat it. Then last fall I moved my family into that house, but I spent $525 on insulation and heated that home all winter for $750 or what amounted to an armful of wood per day. My Grandparents worked their guts out heating their home all winter for 60 years, and all it need was $525 in insulation (in 2019 dollars).

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I had a chicken coop of about that size, but well insulated, and ended up digging a 100 foot trench 4 feet deep. Inside that trench I put a 4" drain tile (4 inch plastic flexible hose 100 feet long. One end started in the coop, looped out through the soil and back. A small squirrel cage blower drove air out of the coop through one end, around the loop and back in. As it did, the air inside the pipe heated up by geothermal heat. No matter how cold it was outside, it was always 20 degrees warmer in my coop. For me, here in Maine, 95% of the days this kept my water ice free, and my chicken laying eggs. I am not sure what the cost of running a 1/8th hp motor is, but not much.

For $150, you could insulate your coop, another $100 heat it via geothermal, and for 10 cents a day heat it with the flip of a switch.

I'm against heating chicken houses for the simple reason that I don't want my chickens to get acclimated to a warm house, have the heating system fail, and they all freeze to death.  We had -40 F last year and the chickens were fine.  Keeping them dry and draft free with lots of ventilation is key.  Granted, it's more work for me because I have to carry water to them daily in freezing weather, but that seems far easier to me than heating with wood.

If I were going to consider heat at all, I would follow Travis' excellent ideas.  An uninsulated building will very quickly go to outside temperatures as soon as the heat source is removed.  My next greenhouse is going to have the kind of geothermal heat Travis talked about.  Its cheap, very DIY friendly, and really only has one failure point, the fan.  If I were using it for my chickens, I would figure out a way to use redundant fans in case one went out.  That still doesn't protect against electrical outages unless you go solar but it's better than nothing.