Make the right decision when buying a wood stove for hot tent camping.
Winter hot tent camping is growing in popularity. The addition of a wood stove makes camping an enjoyable, 4-season pastime. Hot tent camping includes many shapes and varieties of tents, including shelters designed for hammock campers. The one thing all winter hot tent campers have in common is the reliance on a wood stove for heating and cooking inside their chosen shelter.
With the increasing interest in hot tent camping, the market has been flooded with wood stove options.
By definition, any camping stove must be transported to the campsite, set-up and then repacked and stored between trips. You can choose from mild steel, stainless steel, and now titanium stoves. There are stove choices that are big, small, and tiny. You want to be “just right” and not lug around too much weight and create enough heat for a sauna! But you don’t want a tiny stove that is only an expensive hand warmer. The total weight and packed size are important, but only two factors in considering your ideal portable wood stove.
The multitude of choices of hot tent wood stoves has resulted in very strong opinions.
In this article, I am reviewing the wood stove offered by OneTigris. The “Tiger ROAR” hot tent stove offers the best combination of features and is a great value. Here are my reasons:
The OneTigris hot tent wood stove hits the “sweet spot” for size. In my opinion, it’s neither too big nor too small. The stove measures 17.3” long x 8.5” wide x 10.6” high (which totals 878 cubic inches if you are comparing to other brands.) I have used smaller stoves, and they were a nuisance. You needed to cut wood in short 6” to 10” pieces, wasting hours over an extended trip. Then the small sticks burned so fast that you needed to continually stoke the fire AND you could never build a bed of coals for efficient heating or cooking.
The OneTigris stove is constructed from stainless steel, as opposed to mild steel. This means the stove is resistant to rust. (No stove is impervious to rust or corrosion, but stainless steel is the best option.) The stove pipes are also stainless steel so they will last longer than mild steel when subjected to high temps and the inevitable creosote.
The OneTigris wood stove is intelligently designed with stove pipes telescoping down – that is, each pipe connection fits INSIDE the flared pipe below it. Don’t overlook this important design feature. Creosote is inevitable when you burn firewood and exhaust the hot smoke into the cold winter air. If the pipe fittings intersect in the opposite direction, moisture will condense and cause the creosote to leak down the outside of your red-hot pipes! The resulting mess and toxic fumes will drive you out of the hot tent into the cold snow. This feature alone disqualifies over half of the hot tent stove choices. It is obvious that these manufacturers have NEVER used their product in real world conditions.
Other intelligent design features include the stove pipe collar already attached to the stove top plate – as opposed to a simple hole cut into the stove top. This collar includes a damper that allows you to control the exhaust and maintain the heat output longer. The pipe damper needs to be operated in conjunction with the large draft control on the loading door. You will open the draft and damper to build a hot fire, then gradually close both to maintain heat for cooking and sleeping. Every time that you open the door to stoke the fire you should first open the pipe damper to maximize the smoke draw. The base of the stove includes a raised grate to help promote an efficient burn.
The stove body includes a carrying handle at the front. You can grab this handle with the stove balanced on end to fold out the legs. These folding legs not only minimize the packed dimensions, but also are splayed outward to ensure stability. (Please always place the stove on a non-combustible surface!) At the same time, balancing the stove on end allows you to remove and repack the stove pipes which fit inside the chamber.
OneTigris includes seven straight stove pipes, which will extend over 6-feet. Depending on the location of the stove jack on your hot tent, the stove pipes will extend straight through the roof or out through the side of the tent. OneTigris also supplies 2 x 90-degree elbows and 2 x 45-degree elbows to match your configuration. NOTE: you will likely NOT need all 7 stove pipe sections, nor will you need both the 90 and 45-dgree elbows, if any. This means that you can leave the unnecessary pieces at home and store the required sections inside the stove for transport. The total weight of this stove package is 21.2 pounds – but that includes pieces that you aren’t going to need. The REAL weight is going to be under 20 pounds.
Unlike some other brands, the OneTigris stove pipes are ready-to-use. Some stoves require that you “construct” your stove pipe from a rolled piece of sheet metal. I can’t think of anything more inefficient or aggravating. I would never subject myself to rolling and unrolling a sharp, grimy piece of sheet metal every time I set up and break camp, especially when I’m cold and hungry! These weak and drafty rolled pipes are also prone to bending in high winds – spewing hot sparks on your tent and the surroundings in the middle of a storm – and then you are thoroughly screwed.
The package also includes a pair of leather gloves so you can safely handle the stove, pipes, and firewood. Gloves are recommended to open the draft and stove door when hot. OneTigris includes a flat steel ash scraper which comes in handy to rake the coals, adjust the vent draft, and knock out the cold ash when repacking the stove.
OneTigris designed this stove with a glass window in the door. This is purely for marketing and is unnecessary in a “working” hot tent stove. But it does add to the ambiance in camp. Unfortunately, this is the one piece of the stove that is NOT unbreakable. You are going to be banging this stove around, then subjecting it to blast furnace temperatures. Consequently, they also include a spare, replacement glass for WHEN (not if) you break the window. In my experience, I wouldn’t bother packing along the replacement glass. Just live with the cracked window when you break it. It has no effect on the operation of the stove.
Here is a video that shows the OneTigris hot tent wood stove in a "hammock" shelter:
To summarize, the OneTigris hot tent wood stove has ALL the features that I am looking for. It’s not perfect (I’d eliminate the glass viewing window) but it is the best option I’ve found and costs HALF that of many competitive brands. The ONLY thing you should add is a piece of metal screen to the top of the stove pipe as a spark arrestor – IF you aren’t camping in the snow or have a synthetic tent. (OneTigris also sells both nylon and poly/cotton hot tents. I always choose the heavier, more durable tents for winter camping with a wood stove.)
I totally reject the more expensive titanium stoves! I have to laugh when I see campers obsessing over saving a few pounds with a thin, titanium wood stove. Then they unpack a 50-pound tent, cots, fans, lanterns, and the kitchen sink. Give me a sturdy stainless-steel stove any day. I am happy to save hundreds of dollars and have a little more mass to maintain a comfortable winter camp, while minimizing warpage of the stove itself.
This hot tent wood stove is large enough to heat a roomy tent when car camping. But it is not too big or too heavy for a toboggan for pack-in snowshoe trips. I would also recommend this stove for early and late-season canoe trips where portaging was minimal.
