heating shelter with hot rocks

[registror]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLfB4dBy-9I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TnUg_ywvAw

You want the rocks to be in pits, in a row, surrounded by wood ashes, to help you control the heat and keep the rocks warm longer. Then you can cover them with debris and lay right on them.

[grumpygremlin]

dont use rocks from a river they will explode.
personally I prefer a fire.

[registror]

it's not that they WILL, it's that they MIGHT and it can happen with any rock. If the rock has been where rain or snow sits on it, and it's at all orous or cracked, it can have water within it. If you SLOWLY warm the rocks, by having them close to the fire for a day, the odds of them exploding are greatly reduced. Once they've been heated red-hot, the explosion risk is gone, unless you again expose them to moisture (while they are cold.). Once you're cycling them in and out of your shelter, the risk is acceptably low. Given that you've got several inches of ashes and 18" of debris over them , the risk is small enough to make it well worth taking, in order to help you win the prize money of the Alone show (certainly).

[grumpygremlin]

actually heating rocks in a pit is how our ancient ancestors cooked their food in the days before cooking pots.

[registror]

amazing how something so simple is beyond the capability of every last one of the 70 competitors on the Alone tv show, hmm?

[grumpygremlin]

watch Ray Mears videos, he does it quite often.

[registror]

I dont need to cook that way. I can boil water in a pit, lined with a chunk of tarp, or use the cookpot. For the alone show, I'd make 3-4 one gallon each baked clay cookpots with lids, as soon as I got all of the netting made out of the rope hammock. However, I'd still take the metal cookpot, so I didn't have to bother with the stone-boiling of my drinking water and food during that initial 2 weeks. Might have to relocate and once the ground is hard-frozen, digging another such pit would be a big pita, too.

[grumpygremlin]

I'd only do it that way if I had no option, no pots, but as I've got all the pots and cooking equipment I need I wont. no point in making life complicated if I dont have to.

[registror]

there's two of the 1 qt canteen cups and lids in my BOB. One metal container is not enough, even if you do have plastic bottles and a water filter and water treatment. If you have to boil food, 1 qt of it is not nearly enough. You dont want to have to bother with cooking more than once per day. That's dangerous as hell as it is.