http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2010/12/couple-pics-from-tipi.html
That link leads to an earlier post showing pictures of the tipi I lived in after I got out of the army. You can use it for reference.
A tipi is an interesting case of solid practical engineering.
A tipi is heated with nothing more or less than an open fire. It works rather well and most people are surprised to find out that a well run tipi is not smoky inside because of some pretty good practical engineering. Let's look at the bottom. You can see that the outside skin is not fastened to the ground. That's because the liner inside the tipi is fastened to the ground. Any winds or drafts that hit the liner are forced up and that creates a pretty good draft to pull the smoke up and out through the smoke hole. It's evidenced in the top two pictures.
The snow line you see in the top two pictures is where the inside liner ends. It only goes part way up.
Now lets go to the top picture and the upper part of the tipi and you'll see the smoke flaps. The top part of the flap is controlled by a lodge pole and the bottom part is controled by a rope. You can see the rope on the top photograph.
The smoke flaps also control the draft and create a mild suction that draws the smoke up and out of the tipi.They are arranged so as to cause a draft.
The door faces east so for a wind out of the north the north flap would be sticking straight out and the south flap would be peeled back against the tipi itself. Blocking the north wind would create a vacuum on the leeward side of the flap which would help draw the smoke out of the tipi.
There are any number of ways the flap can be adjusted and after a relatively short time it becomes instinctive. Back in the day this was basically woman's work and primitive women became pretty good instinctive engineers.
The system works pretty well at drawing the smoke out of the tipi. It's rather surprising how relatively smoke free the inside of an open fire heated tipi really is.
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