Solo Stove Bonfire Review - Is It Worth It ???

alright guys this is Jason with the primal outdoors Channel and today we are out in a beautiful area here in Southern Oregon and I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you a few thoughts I have about the solo stove bonfire that I've been using here recently on the channel a lot of you guys have been asking a lot of questions about it and so I'm gonna try to address everything in this video so the first off I'd like to talk a little bit about why I wanted this fire pit in the first place first reason is it's advertised as being a smokeless fire pit and we'll go into that a little bit more detail further in the video the second reason is as that I wanted something that would help me Leave No Trace when I'm out camping a lot of times I would come out to a location and I'd build my own fire pit and that would require kind of digging around building up some rocks doing all that and then when I wanted to leave I'd have to disperse all those rocks clean up the fire pit and try to make sure that it was there was no indication that somebody had a fire there the other reason that I wanted is a lot of times I come to locations that have pre-existing fire pits like this particular location I'm in and they're fairly disgusting you know they've got a lot of garbage in them I've seen everything from nails batteries women's products you know fast-food bags the debt you name it you know I've seen it in a pre-existing fire pit and I just really don't want to be burning on that because I don't know what kind of chemical could be emitted from that fire pit from the smoke so those are the main three reasons why I wanted this fire pit and so far I have to say that it is working well for that for those purposes now go into a little detail on each one like the pros and the cons now first of all a little bit about this fire pit is it is a double wall fire pit so what that means is it takes in air from the bottom so you get air cut rising up to help your wood burn but then you also get air that's coming through this double wall and that air is being superheated and when it hits the smoke that's starting to come your wood it will reignite that smoke and help give a more efficient burn so that you get less smoke out of the fire pit now as far as it being absolutely smokeless that's really gonna be determined by the wood you use in it and how you feed the fire that the wood into the fire pit as you can see right now it's pretty much emitting very little smoke out of the fire and that's because I've got fairly dry wood in there and I'm keeping the wood below the holes in the inside ring if you load this thing too full and you get wood up stacked up above it that wood is not going to get it's not going to hit that superheated air is not going to hit that wood and that's gonna smoke just as bad as any fire pit also if you put very wet wood in here that wood is just gonna create a lot of smoke and even even as efficient as this is it's not gonna be able to burn off all that smoke just because you know the the wood is very wet so kind of keep those things in mind but it's but on a whole this thing definitely does reduce the amount of smoke that comes out of the fire pit which really I really like because a lot of you guys know I like to have a fire right out in front of my awning here and smoke typically wants to draft right into the awning area because that's where the warmer air is and so a lot of times it's very hard for me to enjoy sitting inside the awning where the typical fire pit because a lot of that that smoke will draft right in there so having this particular fire pit that's creating a lot less smoke to start with makes sitting in front of the awning under the awning with the fire pit out in front of me a lot nicer now as far as the tight a lot of people have asked how well it heats that is one of the kind of small cons of this fire pit that I have found all the heat really Rises right straight out to the top as you can see I have my hand within just meters centimeters of the side of this wall and I can actually feel cool air all the way around my hand now the fire pit itself the ring itself is extremely hot so you can't touch it but I can have my hand up to this close and not feel any heat off the fire pit whatsoever so kind of keep that in mind in the fact that a regular you're gonna get some radiated heat out away so I have my concerns on how well I think this fire pit is gonna work for me in the wintertime as a as a heat source you know because you have to be very close to it like this in order to really get any heat off it now the heat off the top is very intense so kind of keep that in mind it does work great for like late spring summer early fall it's nice for that because of the fact that you're maybe just wanting a fire pit for ambience and this does work very well for that and it also gives you like all the benefits of the Leave No Trace and and those things now as far as does it burn wood faster I do believe it does I mean I don't have any like scientific proof that it does but in my opinion just like burning lots of fires and regular fire pits versus this I do believe that this goes through wood faster than a typical fire pit you have a lot of air coming through and it's just like if you think about a regular wood stove at home that wood stove you have a dampener that you can open and close the more air you let in the more intense the fire is but the faster you go through your wood and if you close that damper the more you know it doesn't burn as hard but it also burns the wood more efficiently so you have a lot of airflow coming through this so that it does burn through the wood fairly quickly so keep that in mind that you might need a little bit more wood than you normally would have for a regular fire pit the other kind of con to me with this and its is the fact that you need to let this thing burn completely out before stowing it away you can't just go and dump water into it because it is a product made out of stainless steel and it has welds and joints and stuff like that and it's very hot if you go and dump water in it you're going to risk warping it or but you know we're cracking the metal or cracking the welds and and destroying the product so you do need to let it burn out completely and so that it can cool down slowly so that it doesn't so it doesn't get destroyed so if you're like me a lot of times on the last day of your camp I'd like to get up in the morning and maybe still have a fire and then when I'm ready to leave I just douse it with water or whatever so that I can put it out and clean it up but I find using this and I just don't have a fire on the last day because I don't want to wait for this to burn out and what if it's burning if you've got a good fire going in there with coals and everything it can take a good couple three hours for it to completely extinguish itself I would say actually I wouldn't say three hours but I would say an hour and a half to two hours you can figure that it would take to completely extinguish itself so that's something that you want to be aware of overall I do like the fire pit it has been a nice a nice addition to my camps and in and for the reasons that I stated earlier as far as Leave No Trace not having to use an existing fire pit and a reduced amount of smoke I am happy with it like I said I do have my concerns about whether or not it's going to be really efficient for keeping me warm in the winter but I do I am very glad that I that I have the fire pit and it is working well now keep in mind that at least here in Oregon with our burn ban regulations that you still would not be able to have a fire in this during burn ban this would not qualify as anything that would allow you to have still be able to have a fire during the burn ban season so keep that in mind as well anyways if you have any more questions about this product that maybe I didn't answer or didn't touch upon please leave those down in the comments and I'll do my best to try to answer any legitimate questions about the product if you found this video informational and helpful please do leave a like and I'll catch you guys again outside you

Channel: Primal Outdoors - Camping and Overlanding

Views: 892,083

Rating: 4.8938184 out of 5

Keywords: Solo Stove Bonfire, Solo Stove Bonfire Review, Solo Stove

Id: 1b5RpEQj1x8

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019