Overnight in a tent is great. But when it is cold outside, it requires special preparation, especially if children are involved in the campaign. Today we will find out what methods exist for heating the tent in the cold season. Let's start with the simplest and end with the most technological and costly.
Clothes and sleeping bag
An important role in the issue of heating is played by the tourist’s clothes, his sleeping bag and mattress. If all these attributes are selected correctly and performed efficiently, 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 be scarce. There will also be little of it for children, and there are two reasons for this. Firstly, children are freezing worse. And secondly, in a dream they like tossing and turning. Therefore, when camping with children, it is important to heat the entire tent.
By the way, if you spend the night in a sleeping bag, and, in principle, in any other case, try to make sure that the parts of your body are in maximum contact with each other. At least take your hands out of the sleeves. The principle of mittens works here, which, as you know, heats (or rather speaks, retains body heat) much more effectively than a glove. So that an overnight stay in the sleeping bag was warmer until severe cold came, a simple bottle of hot water will help, which you need to take with you in a bag. 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 warm it up slightly, but in winter there will not be enough candles. Live fire in a tent is very dangerous, so it can be used only in two cases. The first is when you are not sleeping and can follow the burning of a candle and its vertical position. Usually, winter fishing enthusiasts use candles to put up a tent not for sleeping, but for protection from wind and rain. 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 the metal shell from the old bulb thermos and put a candle in it. This burner has several advantages. Firstly, when the thermos falls, the candle will remain in it and will not bring harm. Secondly, the candle heats the thermos, which means that the surface of heat transfer increases significantly.
Stones
Heating the tent with stone / stones is an old way, distinguished by its simplicity and reliability. It is suitable for more severe colds than the previous two. But here, as in everything, has its own nuances.
If you just take the heated stone and bring it into the tent, it will be hot, but not for long. Literally an hour later the stone cools down and the cold comes again. The first way to increase the cooling time of a stone is to place it in a pot and close it with a lid. Such a simple manipulation will provide a 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-combustible, 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 it has become cold in the tent, just remove one layer of foil.
Hot stone can burn the bottom of the tent, so it is placed in a pot or pan. It is good if the stone gets stuck in the bell of the container and does not heat its bottom. Otherwise, put a wooden board under the pan. Another important nuance: do not heat the stone too much in the fire. Due to a sharp temperature drop on the surface and inside, it can crack.
A hot water canister works like a stone. Only heat transfer occurs much faster.
Earth heating
Now we learn how to heat a tent on a camping trip in the conditions of severe cold. An old and reliable way is to put up a tent in place of a fire. There are two options. The first takes more time and energy. To begin with, at the place where the tent will be installed in the future, you need to remove the turf. Digging should be to a depth of 20 centimeters. Then a huge bonfire with wide logs is made in this pit. The main goal at this stage is to dry and warm the earth, as well as to obtain large coals. When the coals are ready, they are evenly distributed over the pit and covered with a 7-10-centimeter layer of earth. It is important that the land 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. Tent heating for the whole night is provided.
The second option is less energy intensive. In this case, digging a hole is unnecessary. All that needs to be done is to light a large fire, and when it burns out, carefully remove the coals to the side. On the ground hot from the fire, a spruce is laid and a tent is set up.
Tent heating with a pipe
We move on to more sophisticated and technologically advanced methods. To bring this idea to life, you need to take 5-6 meters of a dural pipe with you on a trip. It can be divided into meter sections for easy transportation. It is even better to take pieces of different diameters and stack 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 lit a few meters from the entrance to the tent. The pipe is placed on the fire in such a way that one end enters the tent, and the other protrudes beyond the flame so that smoke does not enter it. The end of the pipe that goes into the tent should be 1.5 meters above the second end. Such a design works very simply: the cold air entering the pipe heats up and rises, falling into the tent. The steeper the slope of the pipe, the more air will circulate. And the closer the bonfire to the tent, the hotter this air will become.
To ensure effective heating for yourself, 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 is to provide good blowing. If the tent is too hot, you can just close the pipe.
Heating the 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 completely inconvenient. It is also uncomfortable if there are children in the hiking group. Therefore, many prefer to use modern technology. We will talk about them below.
Gas heater
A tourist heater with a gas burner is a simple device in design, which has compact dimensions and copes with tent heating. The gas burner itself is very unproductive. It simply heats the air, which is mixed by natural convection. To get a real heater, a special nozzle (working medium) is put on the burner, which accumulates heat and gradually gives 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 working in tandem with the burner, there are independent heaters, which also have a metal or ceramic structure as a working fluid. Let's consider in more detail each of the species.
Metal Heater
Such a marching heater can be either a nozzle for a gas 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 tent heating. 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), thermal radiation from the working fluid can be directed in the right direction. There are a lot of such heaters on sale both foreign and domestic production. The advantages of the device are simplicity of design, low cost, safety. Cons - low return, lack of efficiency.
Ceramic Heater
A portable heater of this type has a stronger heat transfer, and therefore it is more economical. The combustion process takes place on the surface of a ceramic plate having 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 emitted during operation, directed action. Unfortunately, domestic heaters are losing to foreign heaters on all fronts.
Gasoline tent heater
Gasoline heaters operate on the same principle as gas heaters. The main advantages of such products are their availability and ability to work in any weather. A gas burner for heating the tent at a temperature of -5 degrees and below begins to junk. However, along with all the advantages of gasoline heaters, there are significant disadvantages. The main one is danger. In illiterate operation, the cylinder can be very harmful. And the fuel itself - gasoline - requires careful transportation.
Safety precautions when working with gas and gasoline heaters
Using these products in a tent, it is worth paying special attention to such safety rules:
1. The tent must have at least a little ventilation to remove combustion products.
2. The tent heater should be at least half a meter from the wall.
3. It is forbidden to direct a hot surface at walls, clothes and other combustible objects.
4. It is advisable to have a bed at a height of 25 cm from the floor. Carbon monoxide is heavier than air, so it accumulates below.
5. Only special cylinders that are equipped with protective automation are suitable for use in the tent. It blocks the gas supply in case of burner extinction or during overheating. Also, the cylinder must have a certificate authorizing its use in residential premises.
6. The heater must be installed on a non-combustible stand with an area exceeding the area of the burner by at least 30%.
Tents with a stove
Well, the most effective way to heat the tent is to put a stove in it. This method is used in army tents. Of course, a tourist stove has more modest dimensions than an army one, but the essence is the same. This heating method 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 are still there. And some even adapt to gas and gasoline. The stove, as a rule, comes complete with a collapsible chimney. It is performed from light metal and does not weigh much. Advantages of the stove - it gives a lot of heat, has a simple but reliable hood design, is inexpensive, does not require refueling.
Conclusion
Today we have figured out how to heat a tent on a camping trip. There are many ways to make camping life more comfortable and safer, starting with the use of simple candles and ending with full stoves. What to choose from this variety depends on the time of year, place of rest, group composition and personal characteristics of each person. Someone walks in a T-shirt in the winter and sleeps in the same sleeping bag, but for some, the stove will not hurt someone in the summer.