Honest review of the solo stove bonfire heat deflector

hey i'm james from smoking dab barbecue and today i'm doing a product review on the brand new solo stove bonfire heat deflector i'm doing this for a couple reasons we love taking our solo stove on the road but we've got a camping trip coming up and that's part of the reason that i went out and bought this heat deflector is that i want to try and get some of that heat more out towards where we're sitting and especially down near fingers and toes soul stove does a great job you know heat is nice and prevalent up here but down on the ground or underneath on this deck ring there's absolutely no heat whatsoever so that means your feet often get a little bit chilly which is why we bought this but with all things camping it's about making decisions on how much space we dedicate to different things that we're going to take with us and i want to know is this worth packing or leaving at home so i've come up with a little test to see if the solar stove bonfire heat deflector does what it says let's get into it so to find out if this accessory deserves a spot on your next road trip i've come up with a little test i've just made a quick jig here out of some spare two by fours really so i can hang some cast iron the reason i'm hanging cast iron is i have a thermapen with an ir gun so i can beam down here where my feet would be and see that right now this is sitting at 93 degrees fahrenheit and right now the upper one is at 95 degrees fahrenheit so the game plan is to give this about 20 30 minutes of just sitting near the fire i've placed it sort of a distance that is comfortable for me to sit and the lower pan is representing sort of where my shins and toes would be and the upper pan is your upper body and so after about 20 minutes of letting this heat soak our cast iron i'll take temperatures throughout and find out what our peak temperature is then the game plan is to install our heat deflector accessory and if it does what it says it does and push that heat out more evenly that should be sending a bunch of hot air towards both our cast iron pans and more importantly hoping to see an increase on the lower one which is already reading just a little bit below the upper pan so let's build our fire break down a couple splits and grab a grill blazer grill gun which by the way i absolutely love using for lighting my solo stove it's got a nice long arm either the suv gun or the grill gun will work i take my suv gun just because it takes up less space but here at home use my girl blazer grow gun because i can get this fire roaring in about a minute's time i'll rejoin you after this has been burning down for about 20 minutes we'll take our first temperature then we'll install the solar stove heat deflector and get into our test okay so it's been about 20 minutes i've added some wood that's shot our fire up and it's now starting to burn back down into a coal bed so let's do another temperature check our lower pan here going about six inches away so that has not changed so we are still 92 degrees fahrenheit i don't know if you'll be able to see that or it's upside down so 92 degrees fahrenheit on our lower pan and our upper pan has warmed up to 106 degrees fahrenheit so that's stayed pretty stable to where it was now i did have this in place when i started the video so not too much change so i haven't been able to get any higher it hasn't really dropped any lower but we're getting you know about a 15 degree delta or so between our lower pan and our upper fan okay so using some high heat gloves i've dropped on the solo stove cooking hub now the deflector accessory comes with three little tabs which is what i actually used when we were camping and it's great when you're managing everything cool but i found it really tricky because they tend to hinge in to get it to place on the ring so when the fire is already going everything is hot i want some high heat gloves that allow me to reach in as well as the cooking hub doesn't have any moving parts so it's a little bit easier so i added the same three pieces same type of wood that i was using before and dropped in our ring installed the deflector accessory i can already tell my shins feel like on a warm summer day here they're going to catch on fires kindling soon so i can't wait to see if we actually register a difference here on our cast iron but just like before we'll give this 20 minutes early test here we go let's take a look we're about 14 degrees apart i've just installed this and sat down so i don't know if i'll have time to make a difference but our bottom pan here that's made a difference that's a 130 degrees fahrenheit on our bottom pan [Music] that's interesting 110 degrees fahrenheit on our top pan oh sorry 118. let me try a few more spots make sure i'm getting an accurate reading oh 110 111 is pretty accurate so this has kept it almost the same but it's dropped about three degrees and i can actually feel on my face uh not getting hit with as much heat but my shins this is almost too close to be sitting it's really hot and i'm already starting to see that in our cast iron pan which is now 146 degrees fahrenheit so already right there i can tell this is making a big difference i'm going to back up give it 20 minutes and take another reading i'll rejoin you for some conclusions okay it's been about 20 minutes just like before our fire has started to die down from a raging inferno so i'm curious to do another measurement here on our cast iron and sea if what we were feeling when we took this camping the first time is actually true in terms of distributing more heat to where people are actually sitting versus an inferno of heat going straight up so let's start with our bottom pan about six inches out and i am seeing oh my goodness 215 215 degrees fahrenheit that has gotten really heat soaked almost to the point i can start to season this with some oil if i want it's getting warm uh let's try our upper pan 116 119 121 degrees fahrenheit right in the middle so after this had some time to stabilize our top pan has recovered to i believe almost exactly where it was before without the accessory so there's no loss of heat for upper body but a noticeable increase of heat where your lower body is and i'm feeling this i have open-toed sandals i don't know if they're in the shot or not but i'm feeling heat all the way from my feet to my forehead so this has done a nice job improving the directional output of heat so does this get a passing grade is this going to make the camping trip this go around absolutely i think this is doing what we hoped it would and what we thought it was doing the first time that we played with it now i will make a couple tweaks i noticed that this for some reason gets very ashy or after it's cooled down and it's black on the other side now i didn't have a towel a bag or a carrying case or anything like that our first camping trip and so this made storing in the vehicle or in our camper very difficult so i will plan to have some storage that just won't get dirty or keep the dirt contained but in terms of those cold mornings or cool evenings does this make a huge difference absolutely this is throwing a ton of nice directional warmth my way and i can't distinguish any difference in the gradient from upper body to lower body so i'm really looking forward to going camping this makes the great i'm gonna bring it with us and i can't wait to be doing some cooking we're gonna be doing some camping out east and i'm thinking maybe we'll boil some lobster and a dutch oven on that cooking ring or something like that so stay tuned subscribe for future videos to see how we put our solo stove as well as our joe jr as some portable girls to work on the road until next time though i'm james from spokane bbq signing off and remember don't be afraid to fire it up you

Channel: Smoking Dad BBQ

Views: 38,485

Keywords: solo stove, solo stove bonfire, rv fire pit, solo stove fire pit, solo stove bonfire review, heat deflector, fire pit, solo stove review, solo stove campfire, solostove bonfire, camping firepit, best fire pit product review, solo stove firepit, smokeless fire pit, solo stove heat deflector, solo stove bonfire heat deflector, solo stove yukon heat deflector, solo fire pit review, heat deflector for solo stove, heat deflector plate, solo stove fire pit review

Id: X03UC89uczw

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 10 2022