Stove burning while you sleep

[chimpac]

(Wintertekking Admin Edit:  Hi folks.  The thread started to wander from the original "upside down fires", so I split it off starting here staring with Chimpac's post into a new topic about running the woodstove at night while you sleep.  Good topic.    ).

Forget burning a fire when you sleep.
 Any one out in the cold should have a sleeping bag warm enough to keep from freezing to death without a fire. A super warm bag is not always needed if you sleep in your warm walk around clothes plus a bag.
So you are in your bag with a fire in the stove, how much of the heat is getting to you in the bag? Its not like an insulated house, the heat is leaving the uninsulated tent almost as fast as the stove is kicking out the heat. Radiant heat is what is important, the same as an open fire, objects in the tent are heated by radiation.
A load of wood in my stove keeps a hot fire for an hour maybe 1 1/2, a smokey smouldering fire would last longer but who needs it.
It is dangerous to have a stove burning unattended with a full load of wood. If the damper is set wrong it could burn way to hot.  The wind could rip out the chimney and no one is awake to fix it.
In really cold weather it is not a good idea to take all your clothes of at night unless someone will light the fire for you in the morning. Or you are an eskimo in an igloo with a pile of fur and a fat warm wife.
With my little stove I can light it in the morning before I get out of the bag.

[jaunty]

Forget burning a fire when you sleep.
...
So you are in your bag with a fire in the stove, how much of the heat is getting to you in the bag? Its not like an insulated house, the heat is leaving the uninsulated tent almost as fast as the stove is kicking out the heat.

If that were true, there would be little point in trying to heat a tent with a stove, whether you were sleeping or not. 

When Pat Lewtas walked from Natuashish to Kuujjuaq in 2006, he found he was getting physically exhausted until he began using his stove at night.  The colder the tent, the more you need to use your body as a furnace.  That may not mean that you shouldn't do it, but heating the tent certainly does make a difference. 

The colder the tent, the more heat you lose through your insulation layers -- and don't forget:  warm clothing and bedding helps only so much; you lose a great deal of heat by breathing cold air. 

A load of wood in my stove keeps a hot fire for an hour maybe 1 1/2, a smokey smouldering fire would last longer but who needs it. 

This is probably mainly a reflection of the size of your stove.  A larger one could burn longer.  Yes, a smouldering fire is certainly a bad idea. 

It is dangerous to have a stove burning unattended with a full load of wood. If the damper is set wrong it could burn way to hot.  The wind could rip out the chimney and no one is awake to fix it.

It's dangerous in the sense that it's not completely without risk (what is?), but experienced campers have done it for decades without so much as a spark hole in their tents.  You would of course need to make sure that your damper is set correctly, and that your stove pipe is properly assembled and supported, and so forth.  You'd need to know what you were doing and use some sense.  The experience of veterans suggests that the risk can be kept to a reasonable level with sufficient skill and judgment. 

Don't get me wrong: the warnings are appreciated.  It's not something I'd do without a great deal of care and caution, but it's not something I'd rule out. 

[Mike]

I have found I get up much more often when I am sleeping in my tent. I have also found that my nose is like a thermometer telling me since it is cold get your a__ up and stoke the fire and while you are at it "visit nature". Since I am a restless sleeper I NEVER sleep that close to the fire that would allow me to stoke the fire right from my bag. I am more worried to keep my nylon bag from getting holes in it than my 10.10oz army duck canvas tent. Believe me after an incident last year I am VERY worried about a fire getting out of control while sleeping. That is why I also have a very small fire extinguisher near my bag. I also always have a bottle of water nearby to refill my bladder. The same as I have at home.

[HOOP]

For safety and comfort reasons in my hot tent, the rule is that the stove goes out on its own, (and don't stoke it just before retiring), and its not started up until we get up in the morning.  Everyone's sleeping system is designed for ambient temps.  

I know others use a style of getting up and stoking.  You can use lighter bags on such a trip.  But in the Boreal where the only firewood is almost always softwood (pine, spruce, fir), that means about every 2 hours on very deep cold nights (like -30C and colder.  The wood burns to ash within 2 hours and the heat from the tent is lost fast on really cold nights).   Birch (hardwood) is almost never available because its either green or rots on the stump very quick.   Sometimes you can find standing dead poplar (a soft "hardwood").  Never burned poplar in a stove (because I can never find it close by), so I don't know how long it lasts.   Usually there are no available hardwoods in the Boreal to carry a long burn unless you luck out with an extremely rare dead standing birch that lost its bark, or beaver peeled and dried sticks.

A good nights sleep without getting up (unless the bladder insists) is better than interrupting sleep deliberately to get up to stoke a stove.  In a big group, you can luck out with different pee schedules and different people can keep a stove going all night, so as others have mentioned it can work.   But to me, it does not make sense to get woken up by cold because one has a light bag, to then have to stoke the stove.   Me, I would  rather sleep soundly in a warmer bag.

My -40 goose down bag is so incredible, that it actually gets me stressed out being too warm.  I WANT the tent to get down to -15C to -20C very quickly.   I won't be able to sleep well at all if the tent heats up to much warmer than -10C.    I can't deal with a yo yo temp gradient all night, zipping and unzipping the entire sleeping system - no deep sleep.

Days on end at -40 and colder might indeed require the occasional mid night stoking, because then its hard on the face, with frosty face protectors and sleep interrupted because of the face mask adjustments.  

I hot tented last year in an incredible wind storm, where I was safely well inside the protection of the bush, but the tent was being saturation bombed with big clods of snow from the overhead spruce trees.  One big snow bomb slammed into my stovepipe and shook the entire tent.  These snow bombs could be 10-20 pounds (maybe more if they were iced), falling from 30-50 feet!  That's quite an impact.   My pipe (on my old stove with not too good fitting joints), was wired together using a wiring bolt system I developed.    It could have been ripped away, causing an inside pipe separation, which could be a life threatening situation if the stove was really going hard.   The wiring probably saved it.    

My new Kni-co stove has really nice fitting pipe joints, so I am not as concerned, and don't plan any pipe wiring system, but I still would not run a stove at night when sleeping with very windy conditions and snow bombs overhead.  Then there are blow downs and tree top snap offs.....I can imagine many hazards

I really look forward to a long trek of 2 or more weeks with -40 temps at night, to see how badly I would want to stoke a stove while sleeping, but its just to damn warm around here most of the time with a good sleeping system.   Going to have to go way north as the planet heats up....

(Edit update:  I forgot to mention (how could I forget  ) that we also have Black Ash here which is our primo hardwood.  Unfortunately it is hard to find.  In the far southern part of NW Ontario it does grow occasionally in uplands, but in most of the region it tends to be found in wetlands or   seepage areas, and tends to be few and far between.   If you luck into a mess of it with dead stems on a winter camp, you have the Boreal's best hardwood.)

[pablo]

I've often kept the stove simmering all night to keep cold sleepers comfortable, although if I had to get up to stoke the fire, I'd much rather sleep through the night with a warm bag.  However, in damp conditions, bitter cold, or other extremes, a slow fire can be very nice for keeping the interior environment dry, or for taking the edge off the cold.  Here in N. Wisconsin, we've got access to loads of real hardwood.  I've had numerous instances where I've stuffed the stove at 10 pm with oak, maple or ironwood, closed the air vent and damper, and awakened next around 5 am with the temp around 40 or 50 inside, and the outside temp in the single digits below zero.  It really doesn't take much heat to maintain a comfortable sleeping environment.  This is an optimal situation, but illustrates just how effective a well-managed little sheet metal stove (these were snowtrekker's medium sized stoves) can be.  Since my damper is placed just above the stove in a short section of pipe, I think there's minimal danger of an out-of-control fire.  If the stove and people are situated well inside the tent, the risk of melting sleeping bags is very minimal as well.  Do what works for you...

[yardsale]

I asked Garrett Conover about this and he said they keep fires overnight. I have not.

[Mike]

I agree with HOOP about not getting up. But a -40 goose down bag would cost more than my tent and stove put togeather. It is on my dream list. I also could use a larger bladder but thats another story.

[HOOP]

I agree with HOOP about not getting up. But a -40 goose down bag would cost more than my tent and stove put togeather. It is on my dream list. I also could use a larger bladder but thats another story.

Ha!  Ha!
Actually, my tent was more expensive!       

I got a nice deal on my Mountain Hardware -40 bag, through a local bricks and mortar outdoor gear retailer with whom I had established a good customer relationship (i.e. I bought stuff from them, chatted them up about gear, and had them make special orders, which they like if they are into gear).   They don't carry -40 bags in their store since its a specialty item.  Since I had dropped big cash in their store over the years, and they liked my business, they put in a special order for the item, and gave me a discount, which was huge savings for me.  They get my continued support and my word of mouth promo.   So my advice is to cultivate relationships with really good gear stores, especially with the owners.

But you don't need an expensive -40 bag.   You need a -40 "system".   For example, a high end, generous cut, goose down -20 mummy, and a goose down rectangular or barrel bag (e.g. MEC Sygnet), over top can take you to -40 no problem.   You have your fleece sleeping clothing "system" too (which for me is just my day clothing LJ's, socks and fleece inner top (I don't change into sleeping clothes), and dry fleece toque, balaclava and ear band for my nose).

Bladder - totally normal to have to get up, sometimes several times, if you misjudge the rehydration at night.  Way better to be over hydrated than dehydrated!  In sleeping clothes its never a problem for a couple minutes to check out the stars and aurora.  Just tuck that campsite into the bush out of the wind.

Here in N. Wisconsin, we've got access to loads of real hardwood.  I've had numerous instances where I've stuffed the stove at 10 pm with oak, maple or ironwood, closed the air vent and damper, and awakened next around 5 am with the temp around 40 or 50 inside, and the outside temp in the single digits below zero. 

Hi Pablo.  That's a great wood supply you have there.  I can only dream of coals lasting that long.  Our boreal softwoods burn to ash very fast.  Its amazing how quick the landscape changes from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Biome to the Boreal, in a north-south gradient of just a few km's.   We do have some red maple as an understory species creeping around in the very south boreal transition, but its not where I travel.  I edited my above post to add that I forgot to mention black ash as our primo boreal firewood species (how could I forget  ).   But its very hard to find unless you happen to be by a black ash swamp, which tend to be few and far between. 

[crooked knife]

Being in the hardwood region myself, we will usually save a few pieces for shutting down overnight.  When I use my 4 dog stove, which is a heavy beast and I no longer bring out on trips with any distance to them, I could load up with hardwood and even shut it down too much.  I'd wake up in the morning to find charcoal and very little coal left.  So we would always have to keep the vent cracked just a bit for a smoldering fire.  With my kni-coe stove it isn't air tight enough to do that anyways, so usually just waking up once to put hardwood on at 3 in the morning is enough to keep it going and stay warmer anyways. 

I beleive that it all depends on what wood you're using.  If you've got nothing but softwood that is nice and dry it takes WAY TOO much energy to get up every few hours to load the stove anyways.  But, if you want to do that and you have enough people doing it through the night it's not a big deal.  It also depends on moisture and resin content of your wood (or conditions outside as HOOP was mentioning with snow bombs going on).  In January when we were in the BWCA everything was wet and soggy from warm up and wet snow/rain that occured.  Even while it was burning nicely in the evening there was a ton of resin dripping down out of the pipe connections, especially at the elbow and damper.  This was a "watch out" situation.  A risk of fire for sure if all the wood suddenly dried out and flared up while you were sleeping.  I will do both, load wood at night and also let the fire go out.  It all depends on the situation.  Of course, I always say, if you just bring a friend who has a colder sleeping system then they'll do all the work for ya anyways .  This last trip in Jan we were lucky enough to find a bunch of black ash that had been cut down by beavers so we just used that at night.  And as far as red maple is concerned, it really isn't all that "hard" of a hardwood in my book.  Not as many BTU's as one would think.  Then again, i'm spoiled with sugar maple, yellow birch and oak here. 

Joe E

[pablo]

Or... one could try the technique Elliot Merrick describes in his book "True North", about a trip he and his wife took with a group of trappers in Labrador in the 1920s... Whoever had "first watch" on the fire laid down to sleep only in their clothes instead of wrapping up in a blanket.  That way, they'd be the first to wake up shivering, and would be a able to stoke the fire before it was too far gone...  Who needs sleeping bags anyway!! 

And yes, we are spoiled here with our wood supplies... I moved to WI from Colorado about 6 years ago... I know your pain all you boreal forest dwellers, believe me!

[Soledad]

My dog gets cold first and will wake me up to feed the fire.  In past years there has always been enough cools still burning to get some smaller kindling to ignite.  Last year wasn't cold enough for her to bother.

[DMarrone]

I almost always keep the stove burning at night. Sometimes I feel it is more out of habit than need, but other times I truly appreciate it.  I use MEC's budget winter bag, the "Hybrid -20", which is sufficient, with clothing, for most anything we encounter here, but sometimes its nice to not be so bundled if you don't have to...

My system is that we swap the role of 'stoker' each night, they sleep next to the stove and it is that person's responsibility to keep the fire going... of course if any one gets up to pee, they are obliged to refill the stove.  If I'm the stoker I keep my sleeping bag unzipped, and that is usually enough to wake me before the coals have burnt out.  Then it takes just a moment to throw more wood in and fall back asleep, generally a max of three refills, even with softwoods, and that can be reduced if you brew your tent mates an enticing tea before bed...

Advantages, beyond simple comfort, are that everything that was hung up is completely dry the next morning, and you usually don't have to spend time drying moisture out of sleeping bags. 

I now always lash the stovepipe to a couple of poles (or a tree) and would not feel comfortable burning the stove at night otherwise. 

[Scott]

Generally I let the stove go out overnight.  I have MEC's -20C "Asgaard" down bag and have used this to temps below -30C with no problems.  I've found that I get a better night's sleep without having to wake up on purpose.  I'm also a warm sleeper and like it best when it's -20C or colder so I can zip up the bag and hood completely and be comfortable. 

Having said that, on a trip this February in the Temagami area my buddy found some perfect standing dead maple and we piled a load in around midnight and closed the stove and damper completely and it smoldered all night and provided some heat.  Not much heat but it was defintely not ambient in the tent.  The great thing was that at 7:30am we had coals left and threw in some pine and didn't have to mess around getting the stove going.  So if seasoned hardwood is present again I would not hesitate to do this, it was great.  I was actually pretty impressed with my Kni-Co stove.