Winter camping with a tent stove is one of my favorite ways to get out and enjoy the back country in the off season.

My first experience was as a Canadian Ranger patrolling Canada’s arctic with the Canadian Armed Forces. I was a Section Commander and would take 10 Rangers, 5 canvas wall tents with 2 people per tent and patrol for weeks at a time.

Breaking camp everyday and then setting up again every day, somewhere else, in the dark and in the cold. I took that experience and applied it within the tree line in my personal life.

One aspect which is super important in winter camping, is choosing the best tent stove for your tent or camp. We are here to share our knowledge and advice for choosing the best tent stove for you.

Tent Stoves

I’ve seen a lot of wood burning stove designs.

Portable stoves, alloy steel, carbon steel, titanium tent stove, thin metal, lightweight stove, heavy duty tent stove, expensive stoves, cheep stoves.

This article is specifically discussing wood burning tent stoves and my application, is for a wall tent, camping in winter conditions.

What features make the best tent wood stove for cold weather? Lets get into it and help you find the best tent wood stove.

Tent Stove Features

When looking for a wall tent stove, most people are looking for a well-built stove with features that will make their time on the land easier.

You’ll want to choose a tent stove with solid heat output with long burn times. For me, weight isn’t an issue because when I switch to wall tent season, I’m traveling with equipment (snow machine, etc).

We are talking about the back country and here, in cold weather, we need the best tent stove as well as good camping gear and a warm tent.

Cylinder Wood Stoves vs. Square Wood Stoves

Lets start the top with the most obvious design feature: cylinder tent stove or square tent stove.

My preference is a cylinder stove that’s been cut with a flat top cooking surface. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve seen a lot of tent stoves and almost without fail, the square ones are warped.

The manufacturers are going to tell you not to get your stoves too hot. But the reality is, when you get back to camp from a long day you want to get that heat generating in the tent so you can get your gear off and get comfortable.

So you light your stove and open all the dampers, all the way. Your tent stove glows red and if it’s square, it warps when it cools.

Compare price: Amazon

Small Tent Stoves Vs. Large Tent Stoves

Truly, the most important factor when choosing a tent stove is the size. You will need to decide this for yourself, but for me, wall tenting isn’t about saving weight.

What matters, is that the heat will last through the night when I’ve closed all the vents.

That means, I buy the largest stove I can for the space I have.

Large Tent Stoves

My personal tent stove is 26″ x 18″ (65cm x 45cm). This is a large size and is perfect for me, who doesn’t mind bringing it around in the back country on a snow machine or boggin and setting it up.

I want the heat output that a large tent stove can give. Especially if I have kids with me. We want a warm, enjoyable experience with winter camping.

Those who want a small portable stove will need a smaller tent stove.

Small Tent Stoves

The smallest stoves that are incredibly lightweight are stainless steel, or a fast fold titanium tent stove. Just note that most stoves have a high melting point and will make for a great stove for burning wood.

Wood Burning Time

My advice is don’t believe the manufacturers burn times.

It all comes down to the size of the firebox and type of wood you are burning. You could compile a list of stoves you are considering and along side that, the manufacturers burn times. They will be all over the place.

If you have never done this type of camping before, you will need to adjust your expectations a bit. At night, your tent is not going to be very warm. You don’t need it to be. That’s what sleeping bags are for.

When you go to bed at night, the tent will be nice and warm. Turn your dampers down as much as you can. I close mine right up.

The goal isn’t to have a warm tent. The goal is to have wood still burning in your stove in the morning.

This way you can just reach over and toss a couple logs in, open the dampers up, jump back into your sleeping bag and wait for the tent stove to warm the tent up. Lighting a stove from scratch in the morning is a PAIN in freezing temperatures!!

Tent Stove Pro Tip #1

When gathering your wood for the stove, grab a few pieces of green wood. It burns longer and slower.

Fill your stove as much as you can before bed with one or two pieces of green wood. Your chances of having fire still burning in the morning will improve.

Here are some examples of different sizes of tent wood stoves for you to look at:

Good Large Camp Stove

Good Small Tent Wood Stove

Stove Cooking Surface

The top of your wood stove is your cooking surface.

I like enough surface that I can be heating water in a pot or kettle and cook food in another vessel at the same time. When I am out wall tenting with a wood burning tent stove, I’m generally not spending my day in my tent.

I’m enjoying whatever outdoor adventures I have planned and then I’m back at the tent when the sun goes down. I frequently get back starving for a hot meal and I’m usually with other people and my kids, all who want to eat right away!

For your cooking surface, make sure the stove pipe hole is in the corner of the stove top. This moves the stove pipe out of the way and gives you more usable surface.

Tent Stove Pro Tip #2

Don’t bring a lot of cooking tools.

Do bring:

• one kettle for water
• one pot with a lid
• one pan with a lid

This is truly all you need.

Pre-make your dinners. My favorite pre-made dinner to cook on a wood stove surface is frozen lasagna in individually wrapped tin foil containers.

Put a little bit of water in your pot to make some steam and drop your tin foil meals in. Frozen stew, pasta sauce, pre-made-up grilled cheese sandwiches, pre-buttered buns, these are all your friends.

Do your cooking and butter spreading at home and just bring your food ready to heat up. Its a lot easier to do that stuff in a kitchen.

When you are making dinner at home just make extra and freeze it for your camping trip that’s coming up.

This is a great water kettle for your wood stove top

And, this is a great cast iron pot and pan set

Stove Door

Your stove door needs to be “airtight”, which means it must have a gasket.

You can’t control your rate of burn without an airtight door. The door face is usually where your damper is as well. Make sure the damper can close off nicely.

Some come with a glass window and I avoid these because if it breaks, you have completely lost ventilation control. I find that after years of use, the door gasket can start to break away or come off the door. That messes with your air management.

Just buy new gasket material. Make sure its the thin stuff like this gasket material.

Camping Wood Stove Pipe

Your stove pipe or chimney, takes all the smoke to the outside of the tent. There are a few important feature to look for when considering your wood stove pipe:

Nesting Stove Pipe vs Straight Pipe

Nesting Stove Pipes: If your tent has a stove hole in the roof, you can use a nesting stove pipe. Nesting stove pipe designs allow the sections of pipe to pack inside each other.

Each pipe section is tapered and it packs small.

Straight Stove Pipes: Straight pipe is the same diameter for each pipe section. Straight pipe is required for tents that have stove pipe openings in side walls, because you will need to connect standard sized elbows.

Tent Stove Pro Tip #3: Chimney pipe or flue pipe

This is serious, DO NOT let your stove jack cover become loose and touch your chimney pipe!

This happened to me and it almost burned my tent down. Thankfully, we had not gone to sleep yet and saw the flames quick enough to run out and throw snow on the tent. Close call.

Spark Arrestor

I’ll be honest, I hate spark arrestors. All spark arrestors will become clogged with soot and ash and then suddenly there is smoke in the canvas tents. You’ll have to check your spark arrestor a couple of times a day if you are burning your stove for the day.

Using soft wood and lower temperature stove burns will cause the spark arrestor to be clogged sooner.

The upside is, they stop embers from landing on your nice tent and burning holes!

Rain Cap

I never use rain caps, but I do keep one with me just in case I get rain for several days straight. Your rain cap must be well above the top of stove pipe, or it will restrict flow just like a clogged spark arrestor.

Damper

A portable wood burning stove with a chimney damper in the chimney pipe, is a must have.

A damper in the stove pipe does not allow the heat to escape quickly which increases the stove heating efficiency 10-15%.

You burn less wood and have heat control.

Tent Stove Pro Tip #4

Don’t open your wood burning stoves door unless your stove pipe damper is open. Open up that damper, allow the smoke to clear from the stove box, then open the door.

Otherwise you are going to have a tent full of smoke.

Stove Legs

When it comes to the tent stoves legs, there are really only a few factors to consider. For certain, you will want legs that screw on and off the stove for easy storage, which is a feature of a portable wood stove.

Shorter legs will get your stove close to the ground where the cold air is, making your tent more comfortable closer to the floor, although there are benefits to stoves with longer legs for you to consider as well.

Here’s some benefits for longer stove legs:

• A taller stove is easier to fill with wood
• It has a better working height when cooking
• The stove pipe will stick out higher over your tent, adding some more protection from sparks.

A Stove Mat

You may also want to consider a stove mat to put your stove legs on.

I always bring one because when the ground is frozen or snowy, the earth thaws out under your stove which can causing the legs to sink into the ground.

A stove mat stops all of that and it’s also a clean place to put your wood for the night.

Here is a great one you can use as a stove mat, and this one comes in different sizes.

Stove Mat | CHECK PRICE

Side Stove Tray

The best tent stove will come with a tray mounted to either side of the cooking surface.

This is very useful, and can be a feature of cylinder stoves or even a small tent stove.

Water Heater

I’ve used the side mount water heaters plenty of times to learn that they are more of a gimmick then actually necessary.

Honestly these hot water tank designs do not make for a great stove. Rather, I suggest a wide bottomed kettle like the link below.

Here are the problems with side mount water tanks:

• they add moisture to your tent because they don’t seal (by design, otherwise you would have a bomb in your tent) and they are always boiling because they are not really designed to be taken on and off all the time.
• The spigot O-rings will burn out and leak if they get too hot
• They warp if the get too hot
• Once the metal heats up, the lids don’t tend to function well because the metal in contact with the water is boiling temperature or below, while the metal that is not in contact with water is scorching hot. This make the metal twist and warp because the temperature is different.

Tent Stove Pro Tip #5

Skip the hot water tank and buy a big pot or kettle instead. I use this one because it has a wide base that give lots of surface area in contact with the stove.

Wide Bottomed Kettle | CHECK TODAY’S PRICE

Camping Stoves Tips And Tricks

• Protect the bottom of your stove: Put an inch of dirt or sand in firebox to protect it from burning out. You could also purchase a protective grate like I did. Try this one and just remove the legs. Make sure the dimensions match your stove: Protective Grate | SEE IT HERE
• Don’t let your stove get so hot that the chimney pipe glows red. This will reduce the life of your chimney pipe.
• Don’t store your stove with ash in the firebox. The ash attracts moisture which includes dissolved oxygen, creating the ideal condition for corrosion.
• Pick up some good stove handling gloves. You NEED these. Not just for filling portable wood stoves full of wood. You may find that you need to disassemble it hot because you are breaking camp in the morning, and this involves taking chimney sections apart or putting side trays on and off. You will use these again and again. I use these ones: Stove Gloves | CHECK PRICE
• If you find you have smoke in your tent, its probably due to your damper being closed or the spark arrester being clogged.

Tent Wood Stove: Summary

• In the end, all of these features are a personal choice for how you are going to use your tent stove.
• Camp stoves with a large fire boxes are for larger tents.
• The fire inside your wood burning tent stove will keep you warm and dry your gear.
• There are plenty of resources out there for other applications like the best titanium tent stove, best backpacking tent stove or best military tent stove.
• Just make sure that flue pipe connected to your box stove doesn’t touch your tent material. Its hotter then you think!

Safe camping everyone!