A Wood Stove For Extreme Cold

[floridatoalaska]

My husband and I have been looking at wood stoves for our full sized Thomas. The inside should be about 300 square feet. I’ve seen that most people opt for the miniature wood stoves, but we plan on being parked in Alaska next year and I know the area regularly gets to -20 degrees F. Is a miniature wood stove going to put out enough warmth to be our main source of heat? Should we opt for slightly bigger? Any recommendations?

[Drew Bru]

You'll want something bigger. We have the Grizzly, it did okay in our full size bus down to the teens but it wouldn't have handled what you're going to be facing. It also requires reloading of wood on an hourly basis. We ended up using it for daytime heat with a diesel heater for overnight.

[beachtomountains]

Agreed with previous reply, just wanted to add that if you're going to be stationary in those temps for awhile you want to think about how much time and energy you're going to devote to chopping wood down to the size you'll need to fit into your stove of choice. The minis lose their appeal very quickly with the work needed to fuel them. Side note, I've seen lots of good deals on larger size stoves on Craigslist and FB marketplace. You could always switch to a mini later if you start traveling after your Alaska stint.

[TaliaDPerkins]

Originally Posted by floridatoalaska

My husband and I have been looking at wood stoves for our full sized Thomas. The inside should be about 300 square feet. I’ve seen that most people opt for the miniature wood stoves, but we plan on being parked in Alaska next year and I know the area regularly gets to -20 degrees F. Is a miniature wood stove going to put out enough warmth to be our main source of heat? Should we opt for slightly bigger? Any recommendations?

From my research about them and my intent to have a tightly sealed bus with 3" of closed cell about everywhere, pains taken to avoid thermal bridging -- you'd need two of those mini-stoves to be comfortable. What are your plans for skirting? For keeping any under floor tanks from freezing? For keeping down radiative and convective losses out of the living area through the big glass in the front? Are you keeping the original windows at all? I'm only keeping the originals in the driving area, the rest are mostly wall and the new windows are triple glazed.

From your description of the temperatures, depending on skirting and wind, you might need two of the diesel heaters. You are about 40 degrees below the coldest I need to plan for in VA as a general rule -- I only see below 20degF overnight about 2 weeks total of the year, and negative F maybe I see that once a decade and -20 never.

I hate to phrase it this way, but can you afford to build a sheet metal box and ducting to enclose a regular wood stove and duct air to it from the bus and back, while protecting over all from weather? Covering the metal and ducting with fiberglass batts? Kind of an external boiler wood furnace but air handling instead of hydronic? I'd want to do that and have the wood stove stuffed to the gills and damped a bit before retiring for the night. Surely if such can heat a 2400sq ft home in WV (the situation I am remembering) with temps regularly in the single digits and windy, it can heat a 300sqft bus.

[Timeline]

Those tiny stoves are way too small for sub-zero weather. Making firewood is painful and it's dangerous too! Check out a wood pellet stove, they do require 110v to operate though. Life would be much easier and safer with a pellet stove!


A pair of diesel heaters would be great as well.

John

[HamSkoolie]

Don't forget to check in with Insurance agencies to see if you can even get insurance with a wood stove installed.

And unless you're willing to risk a total loss followed by a denial of coverage, don't even think about hiding the fact that you have a wood stove from the insurance agent/broker/company.

[Rucker]

Welcome to the forum.

Use the search box in the upper right corner to find other conversations about wood stoves-there are a lot of them, and a lot of good information.

Also, feel free to complete your profile, which helps people know what rig you have.

Are you still building your bus?

[jimmy649]

My insurance won’t cover fire, because of my wood stove. Every 4 to 6 hours…reload. Messes with your sleep. Diesel furnace is better. I’m switching. Want my stove and chimney?

[Iceni John]

Just buy three 5kW Chinese diesel air heaters (they're cheap enough), use two and keep the third as a spare 'just in case'. Actually they're perfectly reliable as long as they have the correct air-fuel ratio and always maintain at least 120C burner temperature to avoid sooting up. There's no way I would use wood stoves in a bus in AK in the winter! It's a lot easier to buy a few gallons of diesel per week than to be constantly chopping wood into tiny pieces.

John