Space heating
Cab heaters
These run on LPG or diesel but also need a reasonable amount of electricity. It’s frustrating to hear them slow down as you run out of electricity when it is a long time until bedtime. They make a noise that is audible outside the vehicle too. Manufactures include eberspacher and webasto. Waste vegetable oil fills these heaters with sludge and makes a smell like chips frying. It is legal to use or heating diesel or red diesel. This has to go in a separate tank though because you have not paid fuel duty on this fuel. It is available from some petrol stations for 72 pence a litre.
Solid fuel stoves
The only heater that is safe to leave running when you go to bed is a stove. If any of the others malfunction or are sabotaged you may never wake up! Wood varies in price dramatically. Petrol stations are worst. Scavenging pallets if free. I get mine from a man who is an ice cream man during the summer and sells wood and coal in the winter. Coal is £6 for twenty kilos.
If you want to break up a pallet just for firewood. It’s best to saw the planks off the chocks leaving the nails where they are. If a chock is too short large to fit in your stove a short chop with a hatchet along the grain should sort it out.
It’s best to ask for permission to remove pallets. Usually this is no problem. Take the employee's name and write it in your diary. If the police want to make trouble for you, it will help.
The holy grail of solid fuel stoves is one that you can turn down (reduce the air supply) to a point that it smoulders all night and then comes back to life when you open the vents. Another good point is a removable hotplate. Pans seem to heat up two or three times as fast when you expose it to the heat, even if the flames are not directly under the pan. Prepare to get a sooty bottom though.
Buying a used stove should only be done by experts. The cast iron ones develop cracks that close when they are cold. The crack will get bigger when hot and you will have no chance of controlling it then. The doors should also close tightly for the same reason.
I have a frontier stove. It is described as portable which it sort of is if you don’t mind getting soot on your trousers. It has a removable hotplate. You usually have to pay several hundred pounds for a stove with one of those. For the bad points: The chimney is only 60mm and needs clearing at least once a week, also it is going rusty, but I am seriously misusing it. A water jacket that fits the chimney is available.
There is enough room on top for a one large and one small pan. I have cooked a pork roll and a leg of lamb quite well on in a casserole dish on top of the stove. If it begins to fry rather than roast stand the casserole on some tuppence peaces to reduce the heat. Don’t listen to anybody who says you can do baked potatoes in the embers. You will either get a handful of cinders or a raw potato in the morning. However if you want to bake a potato find the flattest side and shave a bit more off with a sharp knife . This is the bottom. Wrap the potato in aluminium foil meeting at the top then stand the potato on the stove. It may be cooked in as little as half an hour. Test it by skewering it now and again. I did some chestnuts in piece of aluminium foil and when I picked them off the top surface it was glowing red. Steel glows red at 800 centigrade. No wonder I was too warm.
The removable hotplate really speeds thing up. Note that the top surface is rusting. But as I have mentioned before I am seriously misusing it.
The office fan grille is used to dry fruit, vegetables and meat.
Pictured is my frontier stove with my five litre pressure cooker based still . It also has two office fan grilles that I use for drying fruit, vegetables and meat strips.
The soot on the pressure cooker shows that I have not done particularly well regarding clearing this inside of the chimney.
www.windysmithy.com
This guy makes stoves to order. They look as though they are up to the job but I have not tested one. He will add a removable hotplate for £30.
www.modernstoves.co.uk
These are cheap but not attractive. The Milan is the cheapest with a removable hotplate at £479. The condor has a back boiler, to run a central heating system, and is £699.
www.valedopaiva.com and search for “fogao"
These Portuguese stoves look a lot nicer and are not expensive. There is a water boiler on the side and the doors are edged in chrome so that they can be seen in poor lighting conditions. A long way to go though. I can’t find a supplier in the UK.
General stove issues
Used Solid fuel stoves such as AGAS, Rayburns and ESSE, are very cheap on a popular auction site. You would think with the cost of town gas and heating oil they would be expensive. Moving one of these takes four strong men, two wooden beams, two adjustable straps and a van with a tail lift. Perhaps this is why used stoves are cheap.
Cast iron stoves are much heavier and need fire bricks to stop the heat damaging the iron. Steel stoves are lighter and usually less ornamental. They generally don’t need fire bricks.
There are some stoves on a popular auction site with very narrow flues. Some with angles in the flue too. In my experience the flue will need cleaning out very frequently and this would be particularly difficult with a narrow and bent flue.
Your chimney should be the highest point on your accommodation by at least one foot. Turbulence can cause a down draft that causes smoke to come down the chimney. The same can happen if you drive under a bridge whilst the stove is on.
The simplest way of lighting a fire is to splash paraffin on some wood and light it. Paraffin is £8 for four litres.