“Teepee” Fire
This is the most common fire and the majority of people have seen it. Basic idea is to lean pieces of wood together in the shape of a teepee with the kindle in the center. Light the kindle, it catches the wood over it aflame and, boom, you have a fire. Pros: This fire is quick. Cons: This fire is quick. What I mean by that is this: The fire is easy to set up and get some flames started. The problem is that it burns out and loses heat quickly. This happens because of the shape/layout of the wood. Since it is teepee shaped and the wood is leaning against each other, it has to be perfectly balanced. When the wood burns the shape collapses. You have to constantly rebuild the teepee, poke the embers, and add more wood. This is a time consuming and wasteful process that doesn’t give you a fire that lasts through the night. When you need to make food, setup your tent, etc. you don’t have time to waste on a crappy fire.
The “Upside down” Fire
This fire layout is the way to go. For the same amount of wood used in the Teepee fire, it will burn longer, you will have to mess with it less and it will give off more heat. The key is in the layout of the wood. The upside down name comes from how it burns. In the teepee fire, the kindle is on the ground in the middle and burns the wood from the ground up. In the upside down fire, the kindle is set on top and burns the fire from the top to the bottom; hence the upside down idea. The other big difference is the wood layout itself. In the teepee, the smaller wood is in the center near the kindling and the larger pieces are leaning against each other on the outside. In upside down fire; the biggest pieces are on the bottom and each crisscrossed “layer” of wood gets a little smaller and a little closer together until you get to the kindling and tinder on the top. The benefits of the kindle being on top, the layers coming together at the top and the bigger wood on bottom are huge.
Benefits of Upside Down Fire
1) For the same amount of wood used in a teepee fire, the upside down fire burns longer, burns hotter, and holds it shape.
2) Burning hotter means it burns cleaner. This means there is less smoke so your fire isn’t as noticeable during the day due to heavy black smoke associated with lower temperature fires.
3) Since you don’t have to mess with it and add wood as often, you have a fire that will burn longer through the night and you won’t have to worry about banking your fire to make it last until the morning.
4) The layers burn through each other stopping all the wood from burning at once. The reason the layers get closer together at the top is so when one layer collapses, it falls on the slightly bigger one below and ignites that wood. That layer burns away and the pattern continues. By the time you get to the bottom layer, you have a huge pile of hot embers that ignite the logs at the bottom, which eventually make even more hot embers. These hot embers make it easy to start a quick fire in the morning to cook food or warm up.
Here is a video of a guy showing a perfect example of an upside down fire and how long it lasts. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing I’ll give you the summary. 3 layers with kindle and tinder on top, burned through the night and he was able to add some more logs to the embers in the morning to start another small fire. 10+ hours later he made ANOTHER fire. That’s legit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjBfzyz-xM8&feature=related Skip forward to about 1:00 to see him start building the fire.
Heat Reflection
Last thing I want to go over is how to get the most heat out of your fire. This is especially important if the temperature drops at nighttime to freezing or below freezing. Quick lesson on heat from a fire: They emit IR or infrared waves. Those waves hit us and we feel heat. However, some of the IR waves only hit the side of us facing the fire and a lot miss us completely. Something you can do to warm your backside is to hang a heat reflection blanket behind you. Heat reflection blankets have a foil like side that reflects radiant energy (body heat) back to the person it is wrapped around. You can use this to reflect the radiant energy from the fire as well. You can do this by hanging it from a tree or mounting it between poles/tree branches. This will reflect all of the IR waves back that missed you and it will hit your backside. You are now being warmed from both sides. This will also block the light from your fire a little bit more keeping your campsite from being seen from a distance as easily. You can build up rocks on the other side of the fire to reflect heat on that side back to you and shield the light some more. http://www.rei.com/product/407106/space-all-weather-blanket
Thank you for making it through the first TMIT. Like most things that are over looked while preparing, this is a simple and intuitive idea, but it will save your life. Surviving an emergency situation isn’t all about having badass guns or crazy armor; It’s about being prepared for anything, including Mother Nature. If you can’t stay warm or feed yourself out in the wild… how do you plan on doing anything else?
Be Prepared. Be Smart. Be Incognito.
(8bit) Brandt
No comments:
Post a Comment