Wood stove heated awning screen room

Just wanted to throw out this question to learn from others progress or mistakes in regards to heating your awning screen room.

I've only seen Brian's Youtube channel where he added a stove jack to the side panel and heated his screen room with a wood stove.

I'm interested in hearing thoughts or personal experience with adding a wood stove for heat in your screen room.

Obviously outside temps/conditions can dictate minimal/maximum heat requirement to stay comfortable. If any, what is your take?

If any of you have gone this route, what things did you learn that you could pass on to anyone else looking to give it a whirl.

My reasons for considering wood heat inside the screen room are as follows. Obviously winter camping in the PNW can be wet cold and depending on elevation, snowy. I have heated my screen room with the various Mr Heater units, as well as electric heat either plugged into an outlet in a campground, or running off my Honda EU2000. Each of these have their negatives that have me reaching for another option.

-LP heaters create condensation.
-Plugged in electric heaters require me to camp in established campgrounds.
-Generator powered electric heat is is noisy, and require extra fuel to keep the genny running.

-Wood heat would be a dryer heat, quieter and soothing with the pops and crackles it makes naturally.

Lemme hear your ideas, thoughts, experience, etc. Maybe we can get something productive going here to have available for anyone else looking to go this route.

 

Damn, I would love to have a wood stove inside my soft topper!

 

That would be sweet!

The wood stove would probably be about the size of a coffee can, otherwise you'd cook yourself right out of that small space.

 

If you mean Brian from Off-Grid Backcountry Adventure youtube channel then yeah, he's the only one I've seen add a stove jack to his ARB. I've read where others have done it, but never seen any pictures. You'd definitely want to make sure that the fabric couldn't touch the stove; in fact, I'd seriously consider some sort welding blanket behind it (I think he uses one under his stove in his regular tent).

Remember size matters if you don't want to be getting up every couple of hours to add fuel to the stove. In several of the various travel videos I've watched, the owners complain about buying a small stove to save space but having to get up every three or four hours to add wood plus all wood has to be cut down to fit (recommend a Silky saw or an electric chainsaw). Some hardwoods burn cleaner and longer than others.

If you've got the room to carry it and don't mind the weight, some sort of insulated liner material would definitely help retain heat. Even the cotton liner used in the old military canvas tents seemed to help a little, I guess it provides a minimal air gap. I've draped blankets* over my tent before when it was really cold and I used to create a "tent fort" inside my VW camper when it was really cold since I didn't want to run any non-electric heaters at night. I do the same thing in my truck by draping a wool blanket over me, suspended on 550 cord tied to the D-rings attached to the mounting bolts for my roof rack tracks.

Whichever route you go, I'd make sure to carry a smoke/CO alarm.


*Harbor Freight moving blankets and even their wool blankets suck, I'd find a fabric shop or hit up thrift shops and see what you can find.

 

@Bajatacoma. I'm still pondering the actual size need of the stove I would need. My screen room is mounted on my offroad trailer and will only be heated during my awake hours when lounging around or making meals. I don't sleep in the screen room as I have an Autohome Maggiolina Airtop on the trailer for that. Still working out how I plan to get heat in that space when I go to bed and when I wake up and get going. Might try running my little 750w heater off my Jackery for short bursts just to take the chill off.

The only reason I would choose a smallish wood stove is for the physical space it takes up in the room, as well as in transport. Weight isn't really an issue, as it will ride in the trailer. Plenty of weight capacity there.

I don't mind processing the wood down to smaller pieces and having to stoke the fire often. I have a Dewalt chainsaw, Fiskars splitting axe, hatchet and a hand saw (similar to the Silky) for all that.

A CO detector will certainly be a necessity item.

I have some ideas floating in my head regarding a thermal barrier for the floor and behind the stove to keep the tent material happy. A doubled up welding blanket sewn into a three sided triangular shape to fit a corner and under the stove and held in place with strong rare earth magnets might be an option.

 

Since you have a RTT why don't you just buy one of those Chinese made gas/diesel heaters (or a proper European original version) and use a flexible duct to route the heat into your tent?

Examples- I have zero experience with these, they're just the first two examples that came up on search. There are quite a few folks on ExPo who have used these on one form or another and like them. Put the heater a little away from the tent with the exhaust facing away and then use a flexible duct hose to connect to a hole/fitting on the bottom of the RTT.
(self contained)

$135 VEVOR Diesel Air Heater, 5KW 12V Parking Heater, Mini Truck Heater, Single Outlet Hole, with Black LCD, Remote Control, Fast Heating Diesel Heater, For RV Truck, Boat, Bus, Car Trailer, Motorhomes

https://smile.amazon.com/VEVOR-Park...ords=5k+heater+gasoline&qid=1638490337&sr=8-6
(mountable)

Happybuy 5KW Diesel Air Heater 10L Tank Diesel Heater 12V Diesel Parking Heater with LCD Thermostat Monitor & Remote Control for Trucks Boats Bus Car Motor-Homes Vehicle

https://smile.amazon.com/Happybuy-D...ords=5k+heater+gasoline&qid=1638490441&sr=8-1

Yeah, packer type stoves are a compromise between packability/weight and footprint and convenience. I'm probably overly cautious with the welding blanket/heat shield idea but with my luck I'd end up a nylon burrito.

 

You're not overly cautious at all. I watched Brian's tent wall pulse in and out in the wind and questioned why there wasn't at least something there to protect the fabric from touching the hot stove.

I have thought through several of the other heating options for the RTT for when I am not using the screen room, or I toss the RTT up on my truck bed rack when I go somewhere not trailer worthy.

If I were to go with the diesel heater, I would do the Wabasto or other high end unit. The Chinese ones seem to be hit or miss on their quality and not as reliable. One negative is that I would have to carry yet another fuel type to make this work. The fuel pump tapping would drive me nuts.

I really like the Propex LP heater system that works along the same idea with a burn box/heat exchanger that won't require a CO detector in the RTT.

Since I would already be carrying LP for my camp stove, it wouldn't be that big of a deal to have a bigger tank to support both.

For the screen room I really like the idea of a wood stove. Wood for fuel, dry heat and reliable.

 

Did a quick experiment this morning with my Jackery 1000 and a 750W mini space heater. Looks like the 750W heater draws about 1% of battery capacity per minute. Given that my RTT square foot of space is slightly less than a queen size bed and only about 3' high, it is quit small compared to a typical flip over roof type RTT.

I feel that I could adequately preheat the RTT area in about 10 mins prior to crashing for the night, and maybe another 5 mins in the morning. Just enough warm air to take the chill off things.

I might look into an even smaller 400W space heater just for the sake of physical space the heater takes up.

 

I’ve used a 5kw chinese diesel heater in a tent for a while no issues. Some times too hot.
not that I switched to a wedge tent I got another, this one is a 2kw and it’s been good so far. Definatly less heat but it ran all night on approx .5gal of diesel

 

Do you have any issues with the general control of yours?

In my research regarding any of the diesel heaters, the temp is controlled by the fuel delivery and takes some time to get up to temp as well as cooling down.

Whereas the Propex LP heater is an instant burn and will turn on and off as needed via the thermostat. On a side note, I can see a possible potential issue with the LP in higher altitudes if the tank pressure is affected.

 

So for our heater the temp sensor is in the controller which is separate. It doesn’t take long to get to temp inside the unit. If it’s too much heat, we’ve set the temp lower and cracked a window.

while the unit does continuously run, it will idle down once the temp the controller senses is reached.

 

How's the fuel pump ticking on yours? Do you have the unit far enough away so you can't detect it?

 

https://cubicminiwoodstoves.com/col...-br-cubic-mini-wood-stove?variant=11416868868

What about one of these? You'd have to come up with some sort of mount for it but shouldn't be hard.