The Dakota Fire Hole (How to make one and why I love it)

[Music] everybody in save with divas masters calm the Anna coming to you with another video today today I would the water visionary a little video about something I was reminded of in terms of its usefulness while camping and you see my videos before I've seen some of my other other video another video I did on my meskan it's just a basic you know your generic six dollar Walmart mess kit and I really like this mess kit I mean it's cheap it is aluminum but for the price you really can't go wrong and and I was backpacking with some students a few weeks ago in the Allegheny National Forest I was reminded about something that I just kind of wanted to pass along I talked about my mess kit in another video I also talked about this stove in another video and showed you how you can make that this is an alcohol stove and these work really well but this isn't my go-to stove in the woods and in fact this is my backup stove I use this in situations where it's really cold or and I really need a sure way to get fire I also use it in situations where if I'm in the woods and it's been raining a lot can't find dry wood this is what that's for but mostly you know I like to cook my fire just because it's that's what's there you're not wasting you know resources that you may need later for for doing that and so I was backpacking with some students a couple weeks ago in the Allegheny National Forest and I was reminded of the usefulness of what's called a Dakota fire hole I'm gonna talk a little bit about that show you how it's made and I'm gonna do a little burn test and just show you how fast and efficient this thing is that boiling 2 cups of water you could be pretty surprised at how awesome this thing is so it's the ground okay I'm actually here with my buddy Alec Newberry kids there you go say hi my neighborhood body anyways so basically with a Dakota fire hall what I did was I dug two holes okay one that I'm gonna cook with and one that I'm gonna use as a vent hole and when you dig this thing in the second hole this is my first hole this is the hole I'm gonna use primarily for cooking the second hole I dig I dig it as deep as the other hole and I dig it out at the bottom so that the holes meet and in the end you get sort of a u-shape in in the pit one side you filled with wood one side you leave open and what I really really like about Dakota fire hole one of the things is just it takes a lot less wood to get the job done it burns a lot more efficiently and it's extremely low impact if you do it right when when all said and done nobody knows that you are there so again basically just dig a hole down depending on how long you need it to cook I also want to find sticks that are as deep as your hole see those are those go a little bit in the hole I'll show you I'll show you why I did that and talk about that a little bit but you want your sticks to kind of be level with the ground so you want to process the sticks down to be about the size that you need and basically here's why I make them this is why I really prefer this method you know in the woods as opposed to other methods first of all it cooks hotter when I like this thing on fire once it gets started what happens is all of the air inside of the hole gets superheated by the hot by the heat and it's coming off the flames as that's happening all of that air because it's hotter it's rising so what it actually does is it forms a natural suction that sucks air oxygen in from this hole goes to the bottom of this hole that air is heated and shoots up when I fire it up and you listen to you notice it makes a different sound than just a normal campfire and so what happens is the heat is actually concentrated because it has this it has this constant supply of oxygen coming up through the bottom not only that but the radiation from the heat is also constant you know it's trying to escape but it escapes straight up so it makes it a very efficient fire and alec wall I'm talking you want to put those little pencil sticks in between those sticks just kind of shove them in there anyways another thing that's really awesome about it is it cooks longer with the amount of wood that you have because it's contained inside of the hole what happens is it uses the wood more efficiently so it cooks longer it takes less wood as you saw it doesn't take much wood to do what you need to it it's semi stealthy this is another really cool benefit when we like this thing on fire once it burns down a little bit what actually happens is the flames are underneath the ground so if people are looking from a distance they really can't see it as well as an open campfire it's also a low impact on the environment that's a really important thing because when you're in the woods you don't want to just leave a campfire open you know a lot of people say you need to bury bury your fire in order to put it out douse it with water and that sort of thing with this it's real easy you know I keep the dirt right here and when I'm done I just push it in in fact I'm gonna push the sod back on top - you won't notice it was even there so it's really low impact on the environment you don't know it's there semi stealthy it's easier to put out because you just shove the dirt in and it's done and you know I've heard it right you know read some blogs yeah I won't even need it just push the other ones in there I've read some things online that even say that it smokes less I don't know if I don't know who that is whether it's most less or not I just know that I really like this this for cooking so what I'm gonna do now alex probably sticks in here is I'm gonna take it I'm gonna light it on fire let it burn a little bit and then I'm gonna start the timer on my iPad here and just show you how long it takes to burn or to to boil 2 cups of water with it get an extremely efficient way to to cook one I use this thing well I use it when I when I want to leave less of a trace in the woods you know I don't want to make a new fire pit every time I go in the woods to camp because it's just ugly to have a camp you know I would the forest littered with camp rings you know when you don't have a lot of wood to work with as you saw it took a lot less wood I can find that much wood even in wet conditions chances are I'm gonna be able to find that much wood even if I have to process you know in fact the baton would down to that size so if you don't have a lot of word to work with it's great when you want to cook with a pot easily my pot will fit right on there I can even put a you know a semi-wet stick or a fixstick across to to kind of balance it over the flames and that's pretty easy and if you need to cook away from camp this is another thing when we were camping in Alleghany there is a fire ring at the lean-to we were to stay at but it was bear country and it didn't make sense to cook your food where you're gonna sleep you want to cook away from camp so this gave us an easy way to cook away from camp efficiently and to leave no trace of us having been there so I'm gonna light this thing up and we're gonna give it a little ball tester so stick around to use this fire you know this is it's a great for cooking and all that stuff but there are a few instances when you don't want to use this fire and the first one is you know when you are wanting radiated heat for warmth you know if you're in a hypothermia situation obviously or if you're in a situation where it's cold at night this is not the best fire to get your group warm because a lot of the radiation is actually under the ground in a sense the radiated heat it's coming straight up as opposed to as opposed to spreading out like a normal firewood so when people need to get warm and it's not the fire that you want to use also I would not use it for a signal fire if you're in an emergency situation again because it's stealthy it's Underground your flames and your embers are underground it's not going to produce any light and it's not going to person to produce as much smoke to signal if we're gonna light this thing up now and show you what it's all about get a little boil test to stick around because I'm going to use one of these to start my fire with this is a cotton ball soaked in Vaseline you can watch another video I made on how to make these and these are just a great way to to keep them in a little mental Mentos container I think you start about 40 I'm sorry 40 20 fires - probably cram about 20 cotton balls in that yeah I'm just gonna light it with my Ferro rod my does its part it's catching on fire what do you buy them spinach I got this one at Dunham's usually it's got a sporting goods store or a camping store Gander Mountain sells them walmart sells camping you know this kind of camping okay so now that it's uh it's going a bit here I'm gonna put two cups of water in this guy I'm gonna start the timer and just give you a little indication of how long it takes to boil so got my stainless steel water bottle here one of the neat things about these these mess kits have also figured out that two cups is almost exactly where those rivets are at so I'll fill it right up to those rivets right there put the lid on you know like you see my iPad right there there's a little triangle on it would you push it you see it on the bottom I'm gonna start the timer go for it all right just let that sit there one thing I will say about about this setup you kind of if you set your pot on like this you have to be really careful because as a wood burns down that woods gonna shift and your your pot can actually tip over and go into the fire and therefore get you know put your fire out with you know whatever liquids in there so you know just kind of be mindful of what you know where the sticks are at you know how their are how they're cook in there you don't want the stick to collapse on you and then spill the water inside your fire put the fire out sometimes what you can do too is take a stick that's that's wet or whatever stick it across the fire and balance it between you know between put one side of your pot on the rim the other side on the stick here and to just make sure that it you know it stays in an area where it's going to stay safe it's not going to fall in and tip the water out and put your fire out subsequently [Applause] there it is five minutes and let's say 15 seconds there it is I'm about five minutes 15 seconds and you're at a boil even with those alcohol stoves you know it takes about about I think about five or six minutes to start those and to get a good boil in it so so five minutes 15 seconds it took to boil that and get a good rolling boil on that that would have burned a lot longer but I you know put the fire out with the water there and and now you know really just to be done with it it's gonna shove the ashes in here I'm gonna put the fire out to put out the fire now even to get rid of the smoke this pile of dirt and it's out really quick easy way to pull off fire and I just really appreciate this method of cooking in the woods in fact I prefer it you know that's my first my first go-to takes a lot less wood again you're using a lot less energy collecting wood you know I would say you got to be kind of careful where you where you put the fire just because if you're if you're on a root system it makes it harder to dig but otherwise that's the Dakota fire hole basic basic Dakota fire well thank you so much for watching I appreciate your appreciative use and I really appreciate your likes on Facebook Sand your follow us on Twitter and all that good stuff if you've used these and you've been successful or have a story to share about you know how you were the Dakota fire hall has been useful to you please leave a comment I love to hear from you guys in terms of tips and ways that I can even learn you know I just I just love being outdoors and learn and all that I can about all the cool things you can do outside so thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time with another video take care

Channel: David's Passage

Views: 4,793,361

Rating: 4.3352189 out of 5

Keywords: Dakota fire hole, dakota fire pit, dakota fire, David's Passage, survival, camping, hiking, wilderness, woods, forest, fire starting, fire, dakota, hole, bushcraft, davidspassage, backpacking, bush craft, Survival Skills (TV Genre), How-to (Website Category), Outdoor Recreation (Interest), Summer, boy scouts

Id: ffldYo4EVCg

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Sojio]

Would there be an issue starting underground fires?