Wood Pellet Conversion for Wall Tent Stove????

[sneaky]

Please let me know of a diesel heater that’s safe to use all night in a tent! I’m all in!

Look up the Espar diesel heaters

 

[Pelagic]

Alright, so I've got a couple nights use now out of the Pellet burner attachment for my Cylinder stove, and here's my thoughts so far.

My use was doing some winter camping at home, around 600 ft elevation, with temps in the 20s at night. I'd start the evening off burning wood splits in the stove, let that get down to a bed of coals, then close the front vent off and fire up the pellet burner before turning in to bed.

The 1st hour or so, it would heat the tent up to an uncomfortable level. Like, sleeping outside my bag hot. This happened even if I shut the air intake down to about 25% open. I have not tried it without a bed of coals in there first, so maybe that's why it gets so hot.

Then, since I have to shut down the air intake so much, after a couple hours, it starts to cool off quite a bit in the tent. The stove doesn't shut down, but it is operating much cooler than at first. So I get out of bed, poke around at some of the ash buildup, then open the air intake to about 50%, and it kept the tent at a consistent and ideal temp of 55-65 degrees the rest of the night.

I need to try it without a bed of coals in there and see if that changes anything. But, I'd like to be able to burn through a bit of wood split first so I'm not needing another half bag of pellets each night to burn from dinner time through bed. Maybe it'd be worth it to get a consistent temp regulation, though.

I couldn't get Lignetics brand near me, so I used Magic Spark, and so far I think they work just fine. Not too much ash, and I've gone through about a bag a night. I picked up another different brand as well that i have yet to try.

Here's a video recap:

 

[Travis Hobbs]

Great video! Those pellets definitely look like they are throwing off some serious heat!

Do you know what they are made from?

Out of curiosity, what average length would you say the magic spark pellets are? They seemed to feed ok even when your feeder is closed pretty tight, i sure wish there was a way to thermostatically control that feed rate!

 

[Pelagic]

Do you know what they are made from?

On the bag it says the material is a clean hardwood fiber, 3.5% moisture, and 0.5% ash. Doesn't say the type of hardwood, but the manufacturer may be able to. Looks like they are manufactured by fiberby-products.com.

Out of curiosity, what average length would you say the magic spark pellets are?

I would say a half inch to an inch at the longest, with the shortest ones a little over a quarter inch. A good mix of that range.

Yeah it would be nice to somehow have the option of hooking up some contraption to control the feed rate. I've got a smoker that I hook a little fan to, set the temp I want the smoke chamber to be, and the fan blows air in to burn the hardwood/charcoal accordingly. Something like that would be nice.

One other thing I forgot to mention before is that this thing can produce a fairly significant amount of noise when that flame is going, compared to burning logs. Some may like the white noise effect, but I had trouble tuning it out. Just something to get used to I guess.

 

[Brettkazz]

Does anyone have a recent update? I am looking to go to a pellet burning unit but don't know which way to turn. Have been thinking about possibly building one. Thinking I could get it to run off a milwaukee battery, use a dimmer switch to control speed of the auger? Would rather buy a proven unit rather than do all this experimenting.

 

[PNW bow hunter]

I have a Clary gravity fed pellet stove. Works great.

I made an extension out of metal flashing for the hopper so it can hold 2 bags of pellets. On a week long hunt it runs 24 hours a day. We use 1.5 to 2 bags of pellets per day.

Having the heat going 24/7 really dries the ground out, and wet clothes from the day before get dry while your out hunting, or over night.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO TARP THE ROOF OF YOUR WALL TENT TO KEEP HEAT FROM ESCAPING THE ROOF

If you do this you run the stove with damper closed all the way, and it will be comfortable in a T-shirt in the tent when it’s 25 degrees outside.