Keeping a tent warm?

I have tried candles and even small propane heaters, but do not have a good way to keep a closed tent warm in winter. Do you?

Never used any (down to 5F). Why would you need it? Just get a good downy sleeping bag and a good pad.

By the way, your tent may be 1 season only type (too much ventilation).

Same here.

Never used a heater, even when camping in the snow, and my tent is a 3+ season. With a 4 season or winter tent you should be even better. Keep in mind you most likely will not find any of these tents at wal-mart, sports authority or the like. You will need to go dare I say REI, or order online. Also, if it's just you get a single person, or a really small double.

Get a 4 season or winter sleeping pad, and a bag rated accordingly. My Coleman $60 wal-mart back raged to like -10 works good down to about 25 or 30, not something to hike with but for car camping it's great for the value. I have 2 nice wool blankets I keep just in case I need to put them on me.

MooseJaw has a nice bag for a good price:
Marmot Men's Pounder Plus 25F Sleeping Bag $160. These get super tiny, and are probably actually good down to 25f (I have not used it yet for that temp.). If you go down you can easily spend 2x as much too... this bag is already an ultra-light so it was good for us!

Here is a company that uses wood stoves.

https://www.kifaru.net/TIPI2009.html

Yes: A liquid fuel stove. Parafin or white gas. Effects above 1.5 kilowatt.

If it's a large tent such as a tipi: A wood stove.

A candle can to some extent heat a small shelter such as a bivi bag, but not much more.

Gas canisters: Unless you take special precautions AND have dedicated equipment and gas canisters designed for cold weather I wouldn't trust ANY gas canister equipment to work in the cold. (Unless inside a snug and warm shelter, that is... but it's hard to achieve that if you depend on gas canisters to warm the gas canisters so they'll work....)
See page 11-13 on this thread for a more comprehensive discussion on gas canister equipment:
Get home bag - thread

Unless you're using a set-up specifically designed for it (like a canvas-walled outfitter's tent and folding wood stove), this seems like a great way to die.

I've never bothered with it, even winter camping. That's what the down bag is for.

The down bag is your warm zone - a good inducement to rapid dressing when crawling out of the sack.

A balaclava is really helpful in staying warm, even inside a sleeping bag, but especially when you have just exited.

Combustion inside a tent is very risky - not a good practice.

A chunk of well done meat of your choice in the stomach 2 hours before the bed is also a very good bed/bag warmer

Beware of CO levels when using a burner/heater in a tent without proper ventilation. There are plenty of people getting a 'headache' in a tent by just cooking inside. (also try not to burn the tent down... )

For small tents, just get a good sleepingpad and bag.

For big tents, there are woodsstoves.

A double size down bag is a great way to stay warm - I will spare the obvious....

I was hoping someone had run across some miracle insulating tarp that could replace, or be added over, the rain fly. Although the double bag and cheerleader solutions have a certain appeal ....

What's your tent, by the way?

Louise and I camp in Death Valley occasionally over Thanksgiving weekend; temps in the high teens, low 20s overnight. We use our sleeping bag plus a down comforter in the tent. We also have a space blanket and have needed it, too. Our bag is a 3-season one, so we need the extra insulation overnight.

The tent we use, is a 4-season tent from Mountain Research that's no longer made. I have an REI thermometer, and it shows about 10 degrees warmer in the tent than outside with only the heat our bodies provide.

Heating anything by flame may cause a problem unless you have special ducting. The hot air rises, of course, but this brings in cold air from outside as the hot air escapes out the top of your tent unless you have the flame ducted so that it brings the air into the combustion chamber, not the tent. There are some who say that having an unducted stove or fireplace actually makes a house colder than not burning a fire.

You may have a warm area at the top of your tent, and a puddle of cold air in the bottom brought in by the candle or other heater. Next time use a thermometer and check this out.

the obvious

Tarp? What about the electrical options? I think a 12V powered blanket can do the trick. At 25 Watt (quite warm surface) your average car battery should take you through 2-3 nights on a single full charge (45Ah/10h/2A).

First, tents are pretty bad as insulation. Pretty much what you would expect from a thin piece of nylon. The physics of raising the temperature is that you have to gain more units of heat than your losing to raise the temperature.

A handy trick, if weight and bulk aren't too much of an issue, is to erect a tent inside a tent. Possibly both those inside another tent. The wall of a tent is pretty poor insulation but two or three tent walls with a space between them starts to add up as insulation. Siberians have been doing this tent within a tent thing for hundreds of years with hides. Hides are much more substantial than your typical tent material but then again they are fighting temperatures 40 below zero and fifty mile an hour winds. Three tents with one inside the other and a small fat lamp keeps temperatures in the forties.

Which brings up the other point; what is "warm"? If the outside is forty below keeping the inside a few degrees above freezing might be as good as it gets.

The principle of a shell within a shell is very useful if people are trapped at home in a blizzard. Shutting off most of the house, taking care to empty pipes so they don't freeze, and retreating to a small room can go a long way toward keeping warm. If you set up a tent in a small room you can gain even more.

Hint: the 'hook' portion of Velcro will grip most carpets and allow you to 'stake out' a tent and prevent it from wandering if bumped. A 4by4 piece of Velcro with a D-ring sewn in, prepared beforehand, will work on most commercial carpeting.

If you can isolate a small area and get good insulation between it and the outside temperatures your well on your way to being able to raise its temperature using a small heat source. A well built igloo, sometimes snow caves, might be raised to just above freezing by a candle or two even though the outside may be 20 below zero.

REI Hoodoo 3: http://www.rei.com/product/761889

It is a 3-season tent, I think. I use it for privacy only during good weather and just use a bivy sack if I am away from folks. In winter it is primarily rain and wind protection.

I was thinking about hanging a space blanket liner inside but am pretty sure condensation would make that a bad plan. So then I began thinking about hanging a wool blanket inside, but that is pretty heavy.

I have good sleeping pads, sleeping bag(s), and clothing so I survive just fine. But as I am looking at camping out again this winter, I was just wondering if someone had invented a better mousetrap.

Edit: I also have acquired a 12 x 12 silnylon tarp [with 4 adjustable height poles to make a summer sun shelter] that I might just lash down over the tent.

The tent keeps the wind out, the fly keeps the rain off, and the sleeping bag keeps you warm. A good down bag is a lot more effective than an electric blanket. My winter bag is a -20F or so Northface, and it's quite toasty at 5-10F. To insulate an entire tent to that level would require several feet of thickness of insulation - it would fill the back of a pickup truck. (If the square footage goes up 10x, the insulation thickness would need to do the same, for the same heat loss, so the volume of insulation would be 100x.)

If you are going to use a tarp set it up on sheer poles or guy lines over the tent but not touching it. It has to be far enough away not to let any water or frost freeze to your tent.
You want to avoid the plastic bag effect where condensation just drips back onto you.
You might find banking snow around the bottom of the tarp helps insulate you, but you still need to vent the tarp enough to breath and get rid of moisture.

I don't use down bags, especially in fall or winter.
The problem is that down gets wet and then it is cold and clumpy. I recommend a decent synthetic bag instead. Even when damp the better grade synthetics are still giving some insulation value and they do dry a lot faster than down does.

One trick is to buy a small bag and then a bigger bag and use one inside the other for winter.

Put plenty of stuff under you. It does not matter what it is just as long as it is insulation. You need at least twice as much under you as you put above you.
This is after the weight of your body packs it down. (Foam pads are good here, but use plenty)

If you are allowed a fire setting your tent and tarp to take advantage of external heat can work. I usually just ended up cold with holes melted in my tarp and tent from hot sparks when I tried that and was better off with an open tarp lean-to instead of a closed tent.

About tarps:
Silnylon is pricey. I would think about getting a cheap poly tarp for winter use and keep the silnylon for summer. (Not that there is anything wrong with the nylon, just that I tend to wreck tarps when camping in winter.)

I find winter camping is about bulk more than technology, and I seem to end up packing big bags of stuff that are more air than anything. I have been toying with the idea of bubble wrap ground sheets again.

I haven't done much winter tent camping, but what I did on the few occasions is gather lots of leaves and pine needles and make a pile, then put down a space blanket as a footprint and setup my 2-person backpacking tent over all this. The tent is 3-seasons so I setup the fly without the ridge pole to lay flat on top of the screen to cut down on airflow. Then I drape a sil-nylon poncho over the top and tie it down for a little better air tightness.

On one occasion my son and I spent two nights like that in temps that went down to the mid teens. Our sleeping bags were synthetic lightweight mummy bags rated for 20*, and we had regular thermarest pads. Filled our water bottles with boiling water and used them to pre-heat the foot of the sleeping bags, then wrapped them in our extra set of underwear and used them like a hot water bottle.

We had small, single-mantle gas lamp and backpacker's stove, but didn't use them in the tent at night for fear of setting ourselves on fire or getting CO2 poisoning. We did burn two candle lanterns, but I don't know if they really did much for heating.

It wasn't toasty inside the tent, but it felt at least 20*F higher than out in the wind. We slept in our clothes, thermal underwear, double layer of wool socks, gloves and hats. We also wore our rainpants and extra shirt, and draped our jackets over our legs and feet and used our second poncho on top to try and catch some of our body heat. We were actually pretty comfortable in our bags.

The worst part was getting-up in the middle of the night to pee. And waiting until we got the fire stoked the next morning.

We didn't have chemical heat packs then, I don't think they even existed. Today I'd bring a bunch and place them in my sleeping bag for warmth. Or better yet, just make sure the batteries are fully charged in the camper, turn on the furnace and plug-in the heated mattresses. Holiday Inn on wheels!

On one occasion wwe measured a temperature five degrees warmer underneath a tarp (basically a military poncho) compared to the outside, No significant wind.

The location of your tent matters. Avoid cold air drainages.

I've learned that if the tent rainfly goes to the ground in all corners then it will be much better for winter.

Next tent deployment is fixed in an open pasture srrounded by mixed pine and oak forest. I can only use what I bring to insulate, rainproof, or windproof the tent - no foraging or alternate site selection. It is forecast to rain for the two-and-a-half-day event and for temperature to range from the low 50s to the low 30's.

The good news is that I have a full-ride scholarship to the survival skill session!

I may be spending a night in a debris hut.

[Why do I keep thinking of pom-poms?]

Another thing for the cold weather is a down air pad, Exped makes an awesome pad, expensive, light weight,built in pump,very compact, durable and very warm. If you have a good down bag like a Western Mountaineering or Feathered Friends and a good down air pad like exped, you can be really comfortable when the temps pull down. I'm currently visiting up in the smoky mountain area right now with temps dropping down to 14 degrees here and everything you can do to limit heat loss definitely makes life bearable.

I've tried a colman propane heater in the tent but at low temps, it was useless. I only had one of the hand held ones, I know Northern tools sells bigger ones that may work, but then you get into serious Carbon Dioxide Poison if you are not careful. I can't remember what we used in the military but we rented a big propane burner from special services and used it in a 10 man tent and it was -5 F outside and 90F inside but it was big and bulky and consumed a lot of fuel.



http://www.rei.com/product/780366



http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200332707_200332707

I run a "sheepherder" type tin wood stove in a 14" x 16" wall tent when moose hunting. If you are not careful it puts out so much heat that you cannot stand it.

I have used double layer Canadian Forces Artic tents in very cold weather, the double mantle naptha lantern takes the chill off until it was time to sleep. We also run a naptha stove inside to cook but the tent is well vented. The sleeping system is excellent and I always slept well, unless I rolled off the pad onto the tarp over the snow, then it got cold fast.

Mike

I really want a kifaru set up.

A supertarp with annex and a small stove.

i talked to a fellow at a canoe group meeting who had done some winter treks thru canoe country in winter at sub zero temps.he said they just found a sheltered place to camp and kicked up a wind break and slept under tarps without making fires.meals were simple and cooked on camp stoves.the sleeping pads and new bags were all they needed to stay warm.he said if you made a fire you hung around it too long so they had quick breakfasts and moved out on skis and that kept them warm.a friend who i did some hut camping with in cold weather had also winter camped with just a tarp set up as a lean to.he also felt that the modern sleeping bags along with poly fluff pants,soxs and shirt were enough to stay warm at sub zero.he also liked the idea of being out in the open,the only "bad" part he said was the early darkness as you can only hold up in a sleeping bag reading for so long.
for survival i would make a snow cave where the temps inside can be well above freezing..think igloo-however--with sleeping bags only rated for summer/fall temps and without true winter clothes i would want whatever i could get into a tent to warm it up.most tents have a vent so you could run a stove or lamp and tents were made with cook holes in the floor for a stove...this is running on--so as a last bit at 1:20 AM i'll say that i have done the hot rock trick.on a very cold fall canoe trip with sleet and rain i heated several bread loaf size rocks very hot and put them on top of a few small rocks to get them off the ground inside the vestibule of my tent with it closed up and the door open and that warmed the inside enough to get comfortable and pull things together before getting into the bag fully dressed in fresh dry clothes..i have to stop doing these posts so late at nite--more and more thoughts run past me----

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger!

I know the bottom line is keep the bod warm and all will be well. Maybe I will try the tarp, lean-to thing this winter; that's what I started with many years ago and it worked fine. Only problem I see is that I was used to using a fire to reflect heat into the lean-to and most places I go you cannot have open fires anymore.

The army used to use a "yukon stove" to heat it's 10 man and more tents.

It's essentially an "any" fuel stove. The tent must have an appropriate vent for the stove pipe to go through.

The stove itself is the height of simplicity. It's essentially a large steel box with fron legs, the back is supported by the stove pope which goes to the ground. If you are using kerosene or gas a burner is included as well as a fuel line. Fuel stays outside. Heats the tent rather nicely as I recall.

If you run out of liquid fuel, you take the burner out, close off the hole it sits in and you can burn wood,charcoal, coal, dirty sox, whatever.

The standard 5 gallon jerry can would last about a day if the stove was used minimally during the day and shut off about 8 at night. You more or less must have a fire guard awake and in the tent while the stove is in operation.

Not suited to backpacking. Weighs a ton, as does the fuel.

Sorry for not making that clear: Heating the tent is NOT for sleeping, it is for making life enjoyable and dry. One of the great comforts of life is drying your clothes after a long day... starting the next day with dry clothes.

When sleeping, I agree the winter sleeping bag takes care of the comfort.

I suppose the "great way to die"-comment is related to carbon monoxide. It poses a very real threat, but that treat is eliminated COMPLETELY by making sure there is ventilation - and it is not a good idea to "leave the heat on" when you go to sleep. That rule applies to ALL burners and stoves (wood, white gas, parafin). Doesn't matter what fabric the tent is made of, ventilation is ventilation.


Lots of other good advice in this thread. (Get adequate sleeping pad + sleeping bag, a nice, warm meal before bed time and so on).


I really don't understand what appears to be standard tent in America: A separate rainfly which goes over the proper tent (which is not waterproof). Must be a bastard to put up that rainfly in high winds... and doesn't really lend itself to being the most windproof design once erected. But hey, that's probably just because I've never tried it.

The rainfly arrangement works quite well, and has done so for years - one of the reasons it is so popular. Most fit quite tightly, and are not a problem in high winds. They give solid rain protection, good ventilation, and just a smidgen more insulation.

I am talking of the full coverage rainflys, not the dainty handkerchiefs that some cheap tent provide.

Some tents now have the ability to pitch the rainfly separately from the tent, if weight is a concern.

The tent is to keep off wind, rain and snow. It won't imsulate well, so you still need to keep warm inside. I second the comments about being very careful about CO gas in a tent. Personally, I would not use any fuel that burns, unless you do the cooking right at the moth of the tent and the gases can exhaust outside.

To stay warm: Buy yourself a very good sleeping bag, and then if you are still having problems with cold - put something warm inside the bag. You can get those heat generation pads from an outdoors store, or boil some water (outside the tent) and put it in an old-fashioned hot water bottle.

the other Pete

> I was thinking about hanging a space blanket liner inside but am pretty sure
> condensation would make that a bad plan.

Yeah, if we pull the space blanket over our heads in the winter, our breath condenses so much moisture on the underside of the space blanket that it soaks our bags. Those blankets are impervious to moisture. Same with your tarp - if it's outside your tent, be sure there's a gap so the tent can breathe and not have the moisture collect on the underside of the tarp. If the tarp's in contact with the tent, condensation will wick through there. I've had that happen in a rain storm. Not fun.

Our tent:

The tent and fly are integral. You run the poles through, and the whole thing is set up in one swell foop. Makes it hard to clean, though, after a week at Burning Man.

I've only setup a tent in moderate winds a couple of times, most of my camping is in forested areas with little wind. It's really not that bad, though, you just need decent stakes. Once it's up, at least on the tents I've had, the wind doesn't get under the tent, the risk is of the wind blowing the whole tent over.

The idea of the fly is that the tent itself is only waterproof for the bottom couple of inches of the floor, to keep water out. The rest of the tent is breathable. That is, not windproof, not waterproof, just lightweight nylon fabric. The fly goes on top, and at least on mine is staked out just a few inches wider than the tent itself. The fly is waterproof and non-breathable. The whole thing was developed before breathable waterproof fabrics existed.

The reason is that for a small tent - mine is an old Timberlite - you don't get condensation build up inside, and you also stay dry from the rain. It's comfortable in the summer and the winter. A fully waterproof tent would be dripping wet inside from condensation and you'd be cold because of it. A bonus is that you get a little vestibule area by the door, where you can keep your pack and stuff dry outside the tent. Mine is a two person if they're very friendly, a tapered a-frame shape.

On down bags - When I was first camping the tent I would borrow had a leak, and it would always rain, so there would be puddles inside the tent. This was annoying. Down isn't as bad as you might think, though, if you keep the bag on some insulating pads and out of the water it's fine. If you don't you have some cold wet spots, which is the annoying part. In winter, it's much less of a big deal because there's no rain to worry about. My down bag was actually an old korean or wwii surplus army set, a bit tattered but worked great. In winter the worst thing about a down bag is that you do not want to get out of it in the morning.

"the worst thing about a down bag is that you do not want to get out of it in the morning."

Yup.

No that not the worst, having to pee during the night and no pee bottle is worse.

No that not the worst, having to pee during the night and no pee bottle is worse. [/quote]

Yeah that's a bad one.

Years ago I advocated a double wall inflatable frameless tent. I think they even make such a beast. IMHO, this would be a tremendous thermal advantage in extreme cold conditions. Imagine three pieces of rubber coated canvas seamed so that it has baffles that overlap (like HD corrugated cardboard). It might be bulkier, but it'd be tough, and it should, in theory, be awesome as a cold barrier. Very low thermal conductivity, waterproof, windproof, crushproof, and built in air mattress to boot.

A tent designed for heating (not the modern backpack tent) can be wonderfully warm in the winter. I have lived in tents of several designs (most of them double walled) including wall, wedge, tipi style and the GI large tents. Heaters have varied from Coleman lanterns or stoves to box heaters and large wood stoves. In the Antarctic I have had reasonable day temps and fine sleeping down to about 65 below F.

The key is that the tent be designed for the job. The Kifiru is the only modern tent that I know of that is designed for the job. If you want to know how it can be done, read Paradise Below Zero by Calvin Rutstrum. Some moderns call him old fashioned, but you can still go out into any weather and enjoy life using his techniques.

One of the big problems with today's tents is that they are all designed for backpacking. In the winter you don't need to carry it, so like canoeing you can carry a little more so that a tent need not be so light.

The open front tents like the forrester and the Baker are great down to well below freezing if you are willing to keep a fire going all night in front of them.

The best,

Jerry Fountain

Another strategy I have seen for heat is getting a pile of rocks hot in an outside fire and bringing (tin) pails of them into the tent.
A bucket full of hot sand or stone radiates a decent amount of heat for a few hours anyhow. Just be careful about getting fabric against it. Rocks can easily be hot enough to melt or even burn fabric.
Come to think about it I guess it could give you a nasty burn too if you touch it when it is real hot.

I had an experience with hot rocks in September of this year. I took part in a Sweatlodge ceremony with a First Nation instructor as the conclusion to a week-long Native Awareness course. The rocks were so hot they were beyond red, almost translucent. I have never been in a place so dark, so hot or so spiritual in my life.

Mike

When I was a child growing up in the mountains of Idaho, our family lived in a tent for about 6 months while we were building our house. The hot rocks in a metal bucket worked fairly well, but I was always sorely disappointed to wake in the morning to find them all quite cold...right when I wanted the heat the most!