UKH

My niece has a medium size caravan in mid Wales on some land she is cultivating, and is looking for an inexpensive solid fuel (wood) stove to install with flue to keep it cosy through the long winter months. It need not be particularly light - it won't need to be moved after installation - but she had asked me about those teepee style tent heaters, about which I know nothing other than they exist!
 

Anyone had practical experience with this? Apart from buying a carbon monoxide detector, is anything else needed? I suspect plenty of van/caravan experience oh UKC  

Thanks in advance, 

b

Make sure it's installed by someone who knows what they are doing, and she knows how to use it safely.

I was on a campsite last summer and a neighbouring group had two brand new bell tents with wood burners installed in them. They looked like a factory made setup. We saw the top of one catch fire, and by the time I'd run across the site it had burned to the ground and gas bottles were exploding out of it. 

For a caravan which is essentially static there's no issue installing a proper hearth  (paving slab), flue and small wood burner rather than a solution designed for tents. Not done it myself but seen it done in a live in van.

Edit, meant to reply to the op, who might perhaps look at the hobbit stove.. 

I will have a look, thanks. 

b

I would have thought that was the best idea too, just buy and small stove that suits and get it installed properly, you see them in shepherds huts etc, something like this:

https://www.directstoves.com/tiger-cub-eco-multifuel-stove.html

Thanks - that’s a good way off her budget sadly. 
 

b

If budget is the main factor and you have transport then you could look second hand, they go cheaply on e-bay because they are heavy and hard to move. Obviously you will have to make sure they are up to the job and may have to fix a few fire bricks and replace door seals. Otherwise, Machine Mart always have cheap wood stoves for sale. Probably not the highest quality but they'd come with a  warranty and would probably do the job. One issue I could see is that the smallest general stoves are usually +4 kW, that's a very warm caravan.

Alternatively, you could consider a cheap Chinese Diesel heater and run it on heating oil (essentially Diesel) or red Diesel if you can get hold of it. It doesn't have the idyllic cosy feel to it but it has to be cheaper than burning gas and much easier and cheaper than the initial install of a wood stove. Running costs obviously depend on whether she has a free supply of seasoned wood to burn.

This is definitely worth thinking about. A few years ago I spent some time living in a small touring caravan which had a DIY gas bottle wood burner. It was way too powerful and would overheat and force me to open all the windows after about 30 minutes.

Last year I lived in a yurt with a really nice small burner with an integrated oven that worked really well for pizzas etc. Unfortunately I don't know what make it was, but despite the firebox being pretty small it got the largish yurt really toasty even in the coldest months.

Plenty of cheap options, that was just the first small stove i thought of.

As above 4kW in a static caravan is going to feel pretty warm, i have a 5.5kW in a 3 bed terrace, our living room is pretty large and it gets bloody warm at points.

Try a Google for micro stoves. I used to have something like this in an attic room:

https://www.google.com/search?q=mini+pot+belly+stove&oq=mini+pot+belly&...

Which was diy installed by pushing the flue through a hole in the chimney breast (not advisable but it worked!).

Edit- that's never 6.9 kw. It was just the right size for a small, uninsulated attic room.