Wood Stove in an A-Frame Trailer - Part 2

I know some of you watched the first of the series on the wood stove in my trailer and thought the video was a little bit short and it was so to make up for it the second part is a lot longer as a matter of fact it's the longest video I've ever done and the reason being is that I spent six days and four nights in the wilderness trying out this wood stove and it turns out I had a lot to say I want to make sure I documented all the good things as well as the bad so sit back and enjoy I also appreciate all the tips that I got from my viewers especially the one about making sure the cookie sheet is a little bit more secure now I'm past the testing stage I will look into things like that and make sure nothing can jiggle loose or that I'm going to trip over things and all that it will be addressed and you will see those results later on but now I have to do this disclaimer to put a wood stove in a trailer that is not designed to take a wood stove is an extreme risk so please before you even think of doing it consult a professional see if it's even legal and just be safe you know really I don't want anybody to hurt themselves because they're trying to do something I did I'm a risk taker but really I'm an experimenter and consider this an experiment view this video for its entertainment value and it's not a step-by-step instruction on how to kill yourself oh and now that I got that over I can put it in the trailer well here we go folks it's the live test not the damper open smoke is my main concern right now more than anything else because it's always at the beginning is when the smoke happens okay it appears to be going but to be honest with you I had to shut the camera off for ten minutes because I was gonna run out of mic my battery for my camera but it took a awful long time it took about ten minutes with the blowtorch to actually get it started it's quite apparent the initial burn send smoke out the pipe but has any escaped inside the trailer see I don't see any smoke coming out I don't smell it so so far it seems to be going well that means all the seals and gaskets are working to direct the smoke out as planned okay so 15 minutes in we've got a lot of flame going now so I'm gonna close the door here I don't want to get too hot but I do feel there's a little bit of heat you can still see my breath but the stove is definitely warming up okay so the test is basically over because I ran out of fuel it worked but that two scoops wasn't even two scoops was really only good for about you know 20 minutes I'm just gonna let her cool and then I'll start it over again now some people will really think this is dumb but I'm using my little portable Coleman propane stove to cook with why am I not using my wood stove you ask it's not my intent to use this wood stove 24 hours a day I use it when I need it and right now I need it when it gets really cold no it's not that it's not cold now as you can probably see my breath let me just figure out what temperature it is right now alrights minus 4.2 Celsius twenty four point four Fahrenheit to me that's not super cold I'm kind of used to winter camping camping in a tent is what I did for decades and as long as my hands aren't freezing I'm okay I've got a nice winter coat but there is a time or it gets a little too cold especially when I'm sleeping that I want that warmth and that's the whole purpose of the wood stove so it's about quarter after 8:00 at night and the temperature has dropped considerably it's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit or about minus 8 Celsius but this one says it's minus 10 Celsius which is about 15 let's go to the digital thermometer which I had to warm up because it was too cold even work and what is it telling me it's telling me minus 18 or zero Fahrenheit so I don't know what I can trust all I can tell you is it's pretty darn cold anyway I'm tired of talking I'm freezing so let's get her cranked up now of course the propane torch doesn't have a lot of pressure either at this temperature so it might be a little while before I actually get this to burn well it seems like it's going pretty good now so I'm gonna close the door now some may be concerned well isn't it going to consume all the air in the trailer all the oxygen and yeah that's kind of a concern with me as well so what I did is I rigged up in my door bent a little bit of flexible hose and that's what the cans for as long as it's still going now it's not getting the air from inside the trailer it's getting it from outside and I know this is a little awkward this is a silly place to have it but this is still an experiment if this works then chances are I won't be putting it across a trailer like this I probably have a hole in behind where the stove goes but I just wanted to make sure it would actually suck in the air and it seems like it is so I don't have to worry about suffocating at least now I just need to worry about am I actually gonna get warm the big benefit of wood pellets is that they burn extremely clean in full burn there is no smoke out the stack whatsoever well half an hour in it seems to be pretty consistent but let's see what the temperature is now it's really hard to determine what I should be measuring but I'm going to go with the curtains in the background here and they're saying it's fifty seven point nine degrees Fahrenheit or just under 15 degrees Celsius it's definitely warmer in here very comfortable I can I can certainly live with this temperature we'll see if it goes any higher up I also have I'm doing a few little things with insulation which I'm still experimenting so that might help keep the the hot air in but it's going to take a little bit more to really make any conclusions I've got one window this window here has plastic over it but it's just clipped in this window doesn't have any plastic over it at all so I'm kind of half and a half I think I can improve on the insulation I'm just trying to figure out what's the best way ok well it's getting late it's close to midnight it's still going the amount of pellets it's about here right now so reality it's probably got another hour so yes it will burn for hours but the bad news is it's so cold here it's just not keeping up and it's a little cooler than I'd hoped for I mean right now and this might not even work ok so it's saying 1.2 so it's reality just above freezing yeah it's about 35 36 degrees Fahrenheit I had hoped it was going to stay around 50 but at this point it's not happening whoo that's a cold one it is now it is now 7:14 in the morning the stove went off at seven o'clock the last flicker so it actually hey I warned the camera by putting it on the stove it's only about 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the top of the stove right now but actual temperature and I I was sleeping with this is inside is minus seven point six Fahrenheit which is 22 below zero so inside my trailer right now is 22 below zero the sun's just start and due to light light up the horizon outside so as I warm last night well I layered like crazy I've got two sleeping bags two sweaters long underwear two pairs of socks I really wish it wasn't this cold because I wasn't intending to have this experiment in such extreme cold I was really only thinking was only going to be about minus 10 Celsius but anyway I'm gonna flick on the there I flicked on the propane furnace I'm hoping the propane is gonna ignite sometimes it won't when it's this cold but I gotta get it warmer in here just for a little bit so I can I can warm my coat up at least since this is a test I made sure I had plenty of backup plans the propane stove was just one of them okay morning has come it's light outside it's 7:30 7:00 in the morning and I've put the this the furnace on the trailer propane furnace on and it's having a hard time warming up in the meantime the stove is still on actually I better take that off I'm just warming warming my frozen water and the thermometer so hopefully with the stove and the onboard furnace I can get it warm in here again because it was really really cold one thing is really clear the windows that didn't have the plastic covering over them definitely frosted up more then the ones that did after a night of extreme cold and failure to reach my goal I decided to take a walk and gather my thoughts decide if I really wanted to continue this experiment but being with nature always boosts my confidence and it gave me the inspiration to carry on okay well it's night two so I get another chance to try out the stove hopefully it's not going to be as cold as last night but for all I know it could even be colder but let's start out and see what the temperature is here right now and it is 2.2 degrees Celsius which is 36 degrees Fahrenheit so it's just above freezing now what I'm going to do this time is last time I tried it I had difficulty lighting it so what I'm going to try this time I've just put a small amount of pellets in at the beginning and I put little bits of paper so we'll see if that's any easier to get it started and if it is then I'll just add the other pellets later on [Music] well it's really running hot now and I'm gonna leave it running hot I really need to know what the capabilities of this stove are it's been about 15 minutes and I really got a good heat right now 63 64 degrees Fahrenheit which is 17.6 Celsius and I can feel the heat but the issue is is it going to stay that way as it gets colder at night last night it didn't but let's just see what happens tonight okay now that it seems to be running at its peak let's get some temperatures on the stove and everything else so the hot spot is usually right there and that's reading 538 degrees Fahrenheit 282 degrees Celsius on the plate it's reading 441 degrees now the stovepipe because that's quite important at the base of the stovepipe 300 degrees that's pretty hot but what's happening up top a hundred and eighty four degrees Fahrenheit so it is cooler up there which is good because I don't want to melt the side of the trailer and in the middle 202 so most of the heat on the stove pipe is right by the stove which is not really much of a surprise now I should be able to boil water pretty quickly tonight 45 minutes in ooh the water is boiling why is it working better tonight well first of all I've added more insulation around the vent I've added a another plastic sheet on the far window I only had it on this window so I've tightened up on the insulation it's not as extreme cold outside yet but that is pretty cold five degrees Fahrenheit well it's now around 10 o'clock so the stoves been going for almost five hours but the good news is it's still nice in here it's really comfortable and I found out a few things that I did differently that are certainly working first of all when I filled it last time I filled it right to the top and I just let it you know go down gradually and then I'd fill it up again what I've done this time is I'm just filling it up halfway and once an hour I get a little skewer and I juggle around there sort of stoke up the coals and it comes alive again the other thing I did is I've got the the Titan fan up on my curtain rod and it's bringing the hot air down because right up at the peak it's actually quite warm it's probably like 80 degrees up there but the floor is just above freezing so you need that circulation so I'm really happy identifying the problems and resolving them made it a lot easier to sleep at night well it's morning it is about 22-8 the sun's coming up I filled up fully at midnight right to the top and I was supposed to fill up again at 3 o'clock but I slept in and so at 4 o'clock it was starting to get cold again filled it up to the top and then just poked around the coals and it got back up to about 50 degrees so it was really nice warm and cozy I didn't need to layer anymore not like the night before where it was really really really cold you can see I don't have any any smoke coming out of my breath or anything like that so I learned a lot I think I know how I can make it work it will heat a small trailer like this one of the disadvantages of the a liner or at least mine is there's so much aluminium trim so it just sucks out the heat well it's time for round three folks I'm back in the woods first two attempts were pretty good first one was a little cold and I didn't have enough experience to know how to make the stove work at its best second night was a little bit better but it wasn't as cold now this is the third night two weeks later and that's why things look a little bit different and that's because we had a phenomena that only happens locally called a Chinook and what that is is not a schnook a Chinook is a west wind that's a little warm it's a warm front that comes in from the Pacific and it makes everything warm you know sometimes it'll be 20 or 30 degrees warmer when a Chinook blows in unfortunately that Chinook is now over and it's going to be cold again tonight there's a cold front coming in so I got here before that happened it's around I think right now it's about freezing it's about zero degrees Celsius 32 degrees Fahrenheit the sun's just coming going down and it's going to be colder so I think that's a perfect night for round three of how the stove works on my trailer well before I put the sides up in the trailer I wanted to show you a few improvements I've made for insulation and one thing that I did which I think is working really well is instead of the original weather stripping I had on the sides I've taken it all out and replaced it with wraparound foam they use for pipes you know for heating and the house and stuff like that keeping them from from sweating and freezing over and that's all it is is pipe insulation and it wraps right around the side it's got self adhesive strips on it you just peel that on and peel that off and put them in and they hold well in place it works really good the other thing I did was because I was having issues with the sweating of the aluminum I've covered it up with reflectix now this doesn't come self adhesive I had to spray it with a spray adhesive but I put it all along the sides on both sides and a little bit this side so this should help keep the heat in immensely so as you can see I've got the stove set up already I did it the exact same way so there's no point in showing it twice but I've done a few little things just to make it a little bit easier first of all there's no point me showing you that digital thermometer because when I looked at the videos nobody can see what it says anyway so I've got a dial thermometer here in the back if you look at it now you'll see it's about 2 degrees Celsius 36 degrees Fahrenheit so it's cool in here but it's not super cold but the Sun hasn't completely gone down yet so it will get colder so I'm just gonna use that for reference now as far as modifications on the stove I didn't really do it awful lot one thing I'm going to try to do is I'm not using that quarter inch plate a hat on there before I'm going to use this cast-iron frying pan instead probably do the same thing but contain things in that area the damper was a little too long and it was getting in the way so I cut that back and I just bent it up so I can still operate it still works the same way it's just not interfering with the frying pan and the only other thing I did is this here and what this is I had a deep fry basket lying around so I took that and I put it on Luna rods there's two quarter-inch rods there and that just suspends this up it's attached on the back similar to the way I did the legs here but the reason I got that is if I want to keep something warm or dry I can just put them up there like my gloves or socks or whatever and it'll keep them from they're not going to burn but they're going to be very warm and dry so that should work other than that Oh new thing of propane full canister no don't start off with halfway because it doesn't work so that's about it I'm going to use these little triangles of junk cardboard to help start things but other than that I think we should be ready to get her started I really appreciate that some of my viewers and first video were really concerned about my health and safety thank you very much for that but as you can see I made it back I'm happy I'm healthy there was no major issues but one question that keeps coming up was did I bring a carbon monoxide alarm and the answer is no why because all through the design of this stove and the whole system I had that in mind and I took a lot of steps to reduce it I couldn't eliminate it but I did reduce it to a point where I was comfortable with it or I would have not continued the experiment I would have ended it right there and then it doesn't mean it's not a good idea as a matter of fact I have a carbon monoxide alarm and I'll probably use it in the future just so I can measure I also made a rain cap with a spark arrestor from an old can of dog food it's a little tricky to erect with a broom but with a little practice it's doable one other thing I forgot I bought a little humidity dial and it's just magnetic so I can put it on the back there and right now it says 60% humidity so I'm gonna leave that there we can monitor it what happens when the stove really gets going right now I'm just gonna take my little bits of cardboard and I'm gonna put those in the hopper just before the pellets and that will just give me a little bit of space and I'm thinking that'll help the pellets heat up just a little bit quicker well I'm almost ready to start so let's just see what a rat right now it is 5 o'clock it is just below freezing yeah let me focus in on that it's 70% humidity no I'm gonna go outside I can't get the door light outside it is I couldn't read it while I was filming but it says -6 Celsius or 21 degrees Fahrenheit those first pellets ghosts I filled it up only 2 there at the start I don't want to put too many pellets in so it's not too compressed definitely starting easier I think we have ignition let's just check still going well hopefully you can see that but at 6:21 over on the wall it is 20 degrees Celsius which is 68 degrees Fahrenheit so yes even though it's super cold outside I did make it to room temperature don't need the coat just have my hoodie it's just so incredibly comfortable right now and although I'm boiling water the humidity has gone down to about 30 percent from 70% so you can really tell there's no doubt this is a dry heat well now the top of the stove is available I can try another experiment and that's my homemade stove fan I made the stove fan from parts of my old cou Letran cooler instead of draining energy it now creates it well here's a little toy that I bought about a year ago but I never had a chance to use it's called a flame store charge with fire converts heat into electricity I figure hey if it can work with fire hopefully it'll work with the flame of the stove now I've got ventilation coming from I've got my own electricity for my fan here why not see if I can also charge a phone or batteries for a camera or something like that so what I believe it's telling me is that this blade is the part that's supposed to get hot it's supposed to go above the flame but what I'll do is I'm just gonna put it on top of the stove like that and that way I've got the USB cable on the side so it shouldn't burn or anything like that and the only other thing I need is water right here just to fill up that reservoir there we go give it a few minutes and we'll see if it does anything so what I did is I put the flame store underneath my fan so it's got good contact with the top of the stove and you can see there's a little bit of water it's starting to get really hot it's starting to boil but there's a little indicator that says green which is supposed to mean charge so I'm gonna hook up my battery charger look at that says it's charging awesome my wood stove now makes electricity I can charge my batteries I can heat my trailer now if you notice but it's getting really hot in here too hot as a matter of fact so I'm gonna turn it down I can cook with I can bake with it I'm really pleased I couldn't ask for anything more it's not perfect but for me it's good enough and the fact is now I can go out and boondock in the middle of the winter and I don't have to worry about plugging into a landline or generators or propane furnace I used a little bit of propane and a torch that's it and I chances are I can find another way to start that as well so yeah I'm as happy as a pig in JH so in conclusion does this don't work for me perfectly no problem however it's not the concept of well you just fill up the hopper and you just go to sleep for five or six hours and expect everything to be warm and toasty because that will not happen you can fill the hopper every three hours but you also have to stoke the coals so no there's no free ride you have to work for it it has to be maintained now it doesn't mean you have to stay up all night to do it but it's reasonable to say that in three to four hours after you've gone to bed you'll have to go up and at least do a little jiggle in the in the coals to keep things warm well that's not bad now at this point it looks like I'm just reading a book and if somebody is skimming through the video and they've missed the really important part because this is where I give my results so the first one is I'm going to look like I'm taking a big drink of some phone me drink but this is actually the amount of pellets it takes for one hour so if you want to know how much you can heat a room to room temperature in one hour it's this much right here that translates to one pound of hard wood pellets per hour with a 40-pound bag using the stove twelve to thirteen hours a day you're good for at least three nights or - glad you paid attention so here's the winter camping hmm must be fermented in oak well I think that's a night for me it's about 20 after 11 it's right now it's about 15 Celsius or just around 60 Fahrenheit I've let it just go down a little bit I don't really need it super hot anyway I could keep it up to room temperature if I wanted to but it's just burning fuel it should be a little cooler at night and it's considerably warmer even though it is actually still quite cold out right now I think it's about minus 15 Celsius which would be about five seven degrees Fahrenheit so there's still a big differential between the temperature outside is and what it is inside but I filled it up to the top it should be good I still have to every if I do wake up in the mellah night all I'll just take my little la poker and poke the ashes a little bit just to liven it up but hopefully I don't have to put any more pellets in it until say three or four o'clock anyway that's it for me good night it's morning actually a lot later than it should be it's around 8:30 the coals were still hot it was still 10 degrees in here so added a few more pellets and now I'm ready for pancakes I'll leave you with the sound of sizzling pancakes and the promise that the testing is now over stay tuned because the next video will be a lot more on nature cooking and travel please subscribe

Channel: Slim Potatohead

Views: 542,650

Keywords: Aliner, Avan, Chalet, Rockwood, Flagstaff, Camper, Trailer, Camping, Wood Stove, DIY, Adventure, Wilderness, Winter Camping, Cold Camping, Slim Potatohead, Survival, Boondocking, Off the Grid, Flame Stower

Id: 6o98gbDwDm8

Length: 37min 29sec (2249 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 10 2018