The 4 BEST RV Wood Stoves – Ultimate Buyers Guide [2024]

Choosing RV wood stoves can be a game-changer both for the heat they bring and the comfort of feeling like you’re at home on the road. We’ve got you covered in this guide to learning everything you need to know before buying a wood stove for your RV!

The leaves are starting to fall, and nights are getting colder. It’s time for campfires, inside and outside. Hopefully, you’ve already started chopping wood.

Now it’s time to find the perfect RV wood burning stove to bring your warmth mobile. 

If you live in your RV long enough, you’ll run into a few cold nights. The best propane and electric heaters can get the job done, but they’ll require paying for campgrounds or burning through non-renewable resources.

Let’s take a look at an eco-friendly way to heat your mobile home instead. 

A fireplace turns any RV into a home with a crackling fire, cozy warmth, and even a splash of cooking space. A wood stove can heat your night up just as good as a propane heater, and all you have to do is gather wood. 

That all sounds amazing but is installing an RV wood stove realistic? Space is tight, and nobody likes messing around with fires. We should all be a bit nervous about open flames, but we’re here to help quell those fears.

As technology improves, it’s looking more sure that a wood stove is a realistic and classy way to heat your RV. 

The best RV woods stoves can provide 15000 BTUs of heating with just 6 inches of clearance space. The best RV wood stoves will have you snuggling up safe, warm, and comfy through the coldest nights. 

It won’t be easy. Hooking up a wood stove will require a bit of remodeling and large upfront investment. But your hard work will pay off with years of free heating.

Read on to find out what the best RV wood stoves on the market are capable of so you can have all the information you need to warm up your rig the natural way.

The Best Wood Stoves 

We scrunched up the newspapers and put these wood-burning stoves to the test. The best of the best rose from the ashes by providing BTUs of warmth in cold locations without fouling up your RV with carbon dioxide.

These wood stoves are romantic, affordable, and warm as can be. 

Cubic Mini Wood Stove 

The mini wood stove for RV living has maximized every inch of space. A classy trim ensures the stove can fit in any living room, and 5 inches of cook space will let you roast some chestnuts over an open fire. 

Popular with tiny homes and fifth wheels alike, this cub is the smallest wood stove on our list and one of the most popular, thanks to the secondary combustion system that produces very little smoke.

Just don’t forget to cut your logs small enough to fit! 

It may be miniature, but these small wood stoves are ready to be your only heat source and keep your RV feeling toasty through cold weather.

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Dickinson Marine Newport

The Newport has made its name by making sure smaller boats stay warm in colder climates and that efficiency has come ashore and grown wheels. 

At only 15 pounds, it’s the lightest RV wood stove on our list and could be the best wood stove for anything less than 25 feet. 

When square footage is truly at a premium, any of these wood stoves will easily keep your camper van warm while producing very little smoke.

You don’t need anything more than this Newport, and the affordable stainless steel wood burner has proven itself to be a permanent heating solution.

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The Kimberly

The Kimberly is efficient enough to power a tiny home or large RV for 8 hours on one load of fuel – more than enough to get a night’s sleep with plenty of heat. 

There’s enough inside this flue pipe to heat your RV living in many different ways. Before you get too excited, don’t forget that All these EPA-certified options won’t come cheap.

The Kimberly makes the most expensive RV wood-burning stoves out there, and second place isn’t close. 

Travelers have proven time and time again their willingness to pay the extra money for a truly high-quality option, and Kimberly constantly exceeds expectations. 

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Black Bear Camp Stove 

Dancing flames set up a cooking surface that can cook meats, vegetables, and popcorn while it heats your campervan. All this space only weighs 45 lbs, as the stove and flue pipes are made from lightweight American steel. 

The tall legs are flexible and make it easier to transport your camp stove without being a fire hazard. There is no viewing window. Instead, a heat shield and enamel door keeps the burn efficient.

Rest assured, this high-quality furnace removes humidity and makes your RV feel at home through the winter months.

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Choosing the Best RV Wood Stove 

Still on the fence? There are a few different ways to heat your RV, and wood may not be the best for your rig.

Here are a few pros and cons of the technology 

Why you should think about using an RV stove 

• Free fuel!
• A crackling fire makes your RV feels like home.
• You can cook on some stoves. 
• Its a fully renewable energy source built to last for life. 

Drawbacks of RV stoves 

• You may have to wake up in the middle of the night to add more wood. 
• Installing these RV stoves requires a few afternoons and a few heavy bolts.
• To keep the air flowing, you’ll have to drill a hole in the roof of your RV. 

What to look for in an RV Wood Stove 

If you’re still reading, you may have just found your dream heat. It is legal, safe, and there is nothing quite like falling asleep to the comfort of a real fire. Your wood stove can bring that comfort into your RV. 

Your stove will be a permanent installation, a heating source that will last as long as your RV. 

With that in mind, we want to be sure you’ve found the right stove. Here are a few ways RV wood stoves differ.

You won’t find any stove that has everything, so it all comes down to what you want to drill into your mobile home. 

Different Styles

These styles won’t necessarily define performance, and no one style can provide better heating than another. It all comes down to style, function, and the vision you have for your own project. 

Cookstoves

Get you a wood furnace that can do both. Cookstoves are not practical enough to rely on for full-time cooking, as we don’t expect to start a fire every time we want to boil water for coffee in the morning. But they provide great value. 

If you choose a heater that doubles as a cook stove, any time your wood stove is heating your RV, you can sacrifice a small amount of efficiency in the name of wood-fired appetizers. 

Window Doors

While there is no practical benefit to window doors, if you’re going through all the trouble to install a fireplace in your RV, you might as well enjoy it to the fullest.

Windowed wood stoves mean you get a clear view of your furnace. A window door will make your wood stove feel like a fireplace, and you’ll be able to keep an eye on things.

Furnaces

Sleek black boxes, furnaces like the Black Bear Camp Stove take up the least amount of space in your RV and your pocketbook.

You won’t get the full fire experience from these windowless heaters, but you’ll feel plenty of heat in the efficiently burning boxes.

Heat Output

Heat output is hard to precisely measure in this particular style of RV heating. The most significant factor that defines output is the size of the stove. As long as you can fit more wood into your heater, you can pump out more heat. 

Your exact heat output will vary night to night, as even things like the quality of the wood your burning will impact your BTUs.

Unless you plan to travel into frigid climates, every stove on this list will provide more than enough heat to warm up a 50 square foot recreational vehicle. 

The best stoves on our list reach outputs up to 40,000 BTUs, but that’s an extreme example. Anything around 10,000 is a great range. 

Safety

Usually, we like to slip in a budget option to our buying guides, Just in case you don’t need the very best technology and want a cheap and quick fix.

Not today. When it comes to starting fires inside your RV, safety comes before price. 

Every woodstove on our list is incredibly safe for recreational vehicle use, as long as they are correctly installed, vented, and maintained.

That goes the same for any propane or electric heater that you can permanently install into your RV. 

You should already have a carbon monoxide detector in your rig, but if you don”t, make sure to hook one up before you start lighting up your wood stove. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and soot are byproducts of clean-burning wood. 

That may sound scary, but it’s still better than burning propane gas in your rig all night. 

There are plenty of adventurers who stay in the mountains year-round and are first in line on powder days, thanks to the warming power of wood stoves.

Look at the individual safety requirements of your chosen stove, and don’t cut corners during the installation process. Then you won’t have anything to worry about! 

READ MORE: Check out our guide to the best accessories for your RV to see what else to add to your rig to feel more at home on the road.

Installation

Before we get any further, if you’re feeling hesitant about installing your own RV wood stove, please seek professional help.

Any stove options will come with a detailed installation guideline, but hooking up your wood stove is literally playing with fire. Why risk burning your house down over a few hundred bucks?

Most of the work comes before your stove arrives. Measure out your reserved stove space so you can understand what size stove can fit in your rig before you order the deluxe model.

And remember, the stove has to do more than just work. It’ll also need room to breathe. 

You’ll have to make sure your stove has a chimney pipe that prevents too much carbon monoxide build-up and a blockade that prevents air from flowing the opposite direction through your chimney pipe while the car is in motion, blowing ash across your RV.

To establish a safe space for your fireplace, you need to pick a spot well away from walls and furniture and lay down special fire and heat-resistant materials to contain the blaze. 

Your stove will ship with the parts necessary to bolt it down, but the process will involve drilling holes in the walls and roof of your RV. Don’t forget to layout a space to store some firewood before you have locked everything into place.

Finally, read through your stoves manual before your first fire. Subtle changes make significant heat-resistant differences when we’re talking fires, and RV wood stoves burn differently than a fireplace you may be used to at home. 

We recommend starting a small blaze and maintaining a constant burn without flames leaping out of your stove.

You will be surprised at how quickly your wood stove will heat your RV, so there is no need to start a bonfire. 

Conclusion 

Let’s put some water on this thing and get off to bed. We’ve covered the warmest, classiest, most affordable, and most efficient wood stoves out there.

Anything from our list will bring welcome relief to your rig, but there is one great, safe choice. 

Thanks to its beautiful aesthetic, viewing area, and safe burning flame, our editor’s choice Cubic Mini Wood Stove is ready to heat all sorts of smaller RVs. 

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