There's about a million woodstoves like this on the market: a little cylinder on its side, usually painted black, with a door in one end, spindly tube legs, and a telescoping chimney that fits inside. I don't know what American company made these first, but now there's several chinese companies making them and they're a regular feature at army navy stores. They're great for heating a large wall tent, or a small cabin, or part of your house/apartment in an emergency. In the past I'd always recommended the Camp Chef Alpine Wood Stove because it has a good reputation and was $150-200. As of this writing the price has jumped to $280 so it's time to explore other options. Vevor's 118 Inch Wood Stove is very similar to the Camp Chef Alpine in size and design. Vevor has several wood stoves right now but all are box design except this one, which is a horizontal cylinder design. I trust the cylinder more because it has a lot fewer seams to leak. The "118" Inch refers to chimney height. Odd way to name your stoves, but whatever. It currently retails for $166, but Home Depot had it for only about $143 shipped. This will be emergency backup heating for my home via a window insert installation (a blog post for another day).
Some quick observations:
Quite a bit lighter than the Camp Chef (54lbs vs 74lbs). This definitely isn't a stove for backpacking, but you could move it on a cart or by hand for short distances if you had to. Obviously much lighter than home sized cast iron wood stoves.
Wall thickness is .18" on the door, .14" on the cook surface, and .10" everywhere else. This is probably where they save their weight vs the Camp Chef.
Very tall: 29" height from floor to cook surface. Don't know what the Camp Chef height is but this feels way higher. If it's too high for you it'd be easy to shorten the legs with a hacksaw.
Legs, flue collar, and rain cap attach with hex head machine scews, as opposed to the big paddle thumb screws on the Camp Chef. Definitely more fiddly and easy to lose, be careful if setting this up in the woods.
Flue collar is detachable, held on with four screws. It's fitment is NOT great and is probably a bit leaky, but also means that the stove packs down smaller.
Flue collar points outward, not inward like on the Camp Chef. This gives you more useable firebox space because you won't bump into the flue collar when trying to insert logs.
Cook surface is 22.5" x 14.375". Each warming rack is 8.5" x 20.75"
Firebox interior depth is 21.5", which means you could fit some pretty long logs in there.
Comes with two generous vents on the door. One came installed backwards, but was easy to switch around.
Doesn't come with a proper handle, and the door latch gets way too hot. There's a hole for mounting a handle that is .24" diameter and .18" depth. I'm gonna try one of these handles and see how it goes.
It comes with a grate for inside the firebox, but it's about 4.75" shorter than the firebox depth, so stuff is inevitably going to fall beneath it. Fabricate a better one if you can.
The stovepipe damper it comes with is weird. Every other stove comes with the generic Imperial-style damper, but this one is stamped metal with a weird hardware setup. Seemed to work though. Inner diameter of stovepipe where it sits is 4.846", so it won't perfectly fit either a 4" or a 5". Stupid decision, not sure why they did that.
If you don't already know, ALWAYS test burn your new woodstove outside in a well ventilated area before installing it and using it for real. Install it in an open space outdoors, far from flammable objects, with 2-3 sections of chimney pipe. You'll want to get it lit and drafting well, then open up all the flues, and stoke it with as much wood as you can to get it as hot as possible. Run it like this for at least three hours. This will allow the paint on the stove to offgas its fumes in a safe area, so that there will be nothing left for it to offgas inside your house or tent. Remember: you're stress testing the stove, so you need to get it as hot as it will ever get.
So I loaded it up and let 'er rip. To be honest with you I'm actually used to stoves smaller than this, so it took me a few minutes to get it drafting nicely. But if you're used to working with wood stoves at all then you'll figure it out. I was surprised how much air it wanted even after heating up: I had to keep both vents in the doors pretty much fully open to get a clean burn (minimal smoke coming out of the chimney). But it heated up nicely, and eventually I was chucking 2x4 offcuts in there and it was burning them without issue.
When I stoked it full and got it hot enough, it started to do some serious offgassing. You can see it in the video below. Glad this got done outside and not inside.
I let it run for a while and about 1/3 of the firebox exterior turned from black to a medium gray, which is normal. That's just what a transformation the paint undergoes. After that I let it die down and emptied it out (tip: if you let the firebox cool and wear gloves, you can pick the whole stove up and shake the ashes out of it).
Since this stove is destined to be an emergency backup heat source for the apocalypse, I brushed of as much of the soot and ash as I could, coated every piece in olive oil, wrapped it in plastic, and packed it all back up into the padded box it came in.
Though I only did one test burn on it, my initial thoughts are pretty positive. It goes together well, is strong but not too heavy, doesn't seem to have leaking or drafting issues, and is definitely at the right price. When winter comes closer, I hope to do a video explaining how to install this thing through a window, so stay tuned. If you're a preparedness-minded wood heat appreciator who needs an affordable stove to heat your tent, cabin, or part of your home in an emergency, and the Camp Chef Alpine is out of your budget, I'd say this is a good option.
did it actually come with 118in of chimney pipe. I just received one and it is 75in of pipe. Customer support says 118in is a marketing error and they don't sell it in that length....
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