How To Keep Your Tipi Tent Warm

Due to their size and being located in the great outdoors, it is important for both your guests and the longevity of your canvas, to keep your tipis heated, especially during the colder months. Here at The Tipi Company, we have some top tips on how to heat a tipi tent that are tried and tested to keep your tipi tent warm and cosy all year round. Continue reading this guide to learn how to keep your tipi tent warm.

How to heat a tipi tent

After working with tipi hire businesses and tipi venues for many years, we know one of the best methods of how to keep warm in a tent at winter is by using an indirect fan heater, closely followed by the more traditional method of using a fire pit. Below we detail how to warm a tent safely using these two heat methods:

  • Fan heaters
  • Firepits

Fan heaters

The most popular and heat-efficient way on how to keep a tent warm is to use an indirect fan heater. This is a great method that works by heating the tipi using the heater that sits outside and blows warm air through ducting under the bottom edge of the canvas. Depending on your preference, these can be either diesel-powered or gas-powered. 

If you are a tipi hire business, it may be more convenient for you to hire these on an “As and when” basis from a 3rd party supplier based in your local area. Such suppliers can also provide you with your generator for your temporary outdoor event too.

Alternatively, if you are a semi-permanent or permanent outdoor tipi venue, you can purchase your own indirect fan heater. For diesel-powered heaters, we recommend browsing the Thermobile website for its reliable range – in particular, the ITA45 Robust model is their most popular item for tipi hire and tipi event venues. For gas-powered heaters, Bullfinch provides durable and high-quality options that are bound to meet your needs.

how to keep tent warm - tipi heater

Fire pits

The benefit of our outdoor tents for events, such as our Big Hat Tipi, is that we have designed them so that you can light a Fire Pit inside to create a cosy atmosphere. This is ideal if you are wondering how to warm a tent safely as this allows you to have a fire inside your tipi without worrying about the dangers.

When lighting a Fire Pit, ensure it is placed in the centre of the tipi, and the Smoke Hood is fully open and secured. We would also recommend you use Smokeless Logs to reduce the smoke build-up during the lighting process.

However, it goes without saying that if you light a fire in an enclosed room, the smoke will eventually stain the sides of the walls – even if you open the windows. The same is to be said of the tipis – even though you open the top smoke hood of the tipis to allow the smoke to leave the space, the smoke from the fire will, over time, stain the canvases. To counteract this issue, a lot of our tipi hire business clients tend to allocate one of their tipis in their fleet to be the ‘Smoke Canvas’, so that the same one is used for every job that requires a fire lit inside. This means that the rest of their fleet remains unaffected and as a result, the canvases last a lot longer.

Alternatively, most of our clients encourage their customers to have an Indian Fire Bowl outside of the tipis instead, to create a central outdoor gathering spot during the event.

Another option you can consider if you are wondering how to keep warm in a tent at winter is a Bioethanol firepit if you have reservations about using a traditional fire pit. This has the look and feel of a traditional Fire Pit but is much cleaner and leaves no mess or smell.

Indian Fire Bowl

Tipi tips at The Tipi Company

If you’re looking for a tent that will retain heat and minimise risk, consider choosing an event tent for sale in our range. We design our tipis to work safely with heat sources such as fire pits so that you can create an event space with peace of mind.

To find out about the many different tipis available, such as our little hat tipi, get in touch to discover how we can help you achieve your business goals. Contact us today at 01204 860 738 or email us at info@thetipicompany.com.