Good also for melting snow for 10 peopleOriginally Posted by Mags
I backpack with this stove now:
The beef simmered in wine is divine...
Colorado Rob, I used a pocket rocket last summer on the CT. Perhaps I didn't set up in very good places. It seemed rather unstable with my 1.3 L TI pot when compared to the Alcy Stove (the adjustable-flame Featherfire) that I used for the entire PCT and all of the CDT. Also, the PR's efficiency seemed to be seriously degraded by even slight breezes. Do you use some kind of wind screen with yours?
For the OP, one advantage of the alcohol stoves is that they will burn denatured ethanol available in quart cans at hardware stores in the paint section or methanol available in the 12 oz. long necked plastic bottles at auto parts stores, gas stations, Wally World, etc. I found this fuel much easier to obtain, especially when hiking trails less popular than the triple crown trails, than either canisters or white gas. Have burned unleaded gas in a MSR Simmerlite more or less efficiently, so that substitute fuel is also readily available. Here's my stove-fuel plan:
No stove: Hot and humid summer hiking in the mid-atlantic states. (I normally crave a hot meal at the end of the day, but not when it's steamy).
Four-season trips (no fire bans): Featherfire Alcy stove (used in temps down to -10F) providing there will be flowing water sources.
Three-season trips with fire bans in effect: Pocket Rocket canister stove. (Won't work well below +10F)
Winter trips where melting snow for water will likely be required: MSR Simmerlite white gas stove.
Handlebar
GA-ME 06; PCT 08; CDT 10,11,12; ALT 11; MSPA 12; CT 13; Sheltowee 14; AZT 14, 15; LT 15;FT 16;NCT-NY&PA 16; GET 17-18
One thing to consider in comparing efficiencies of stoves is the real world performance, but even more important, and something it seems like most articles on alcohol/cannister fail to really be fair about is the stove/screen/pot setup, it's almost grossly unfair and biased, for example, a fancy feast, which is the least efficient stove I know of with alcohol, will be matched with basically either no screen or a totally randomly designed wind screen.
All of the gas or white gas products are industrially produced systems, so comparisons should be between thoroughly designed and tested systems, not between randomly selected stuff. As the somewhat legendary sgt rock told me when I was reworking his ion stove design, FOCUS ON THE SCREEN. And boy was he right, it's all about the screen if you are talking performance.
My final stove setup for example, in real world outdoors settings, is now getting roughly these number: tea water boil, near boil: 6ml usually will do it.
2 cups boil, about 15 ml to be on the safe side, but that usually gives me a boil of the food once I add it to the water in the pot. This is with a narrow pot. Wide pots will give better results.
Comparing apples to apples, I did the math, based on both my own findings, and the average of good performance claims for whisperlite and cannister.
One of the articles linked to above seemed to be using some fairly non true numbers for alcohol and deduced that in terms of weight, alcohol stops being lighter at 10 days. I was unable to get those numbers to line up, in my math, alcohol is always lighter, with an exception of the first two days of a non resupplied 14 day trip. Further, there's the question of weight carried per mile, a much more interesting number since that is what you actually deal with day to day. Alcohol, because of the very low starting system weight, again, is the clear winner no matter how many days the trip lasts.
Here's my numbers:
http://adropofrain.net/2013/08/fuel-...acking-stoves/
and a sample stove:
http://adropofrain.net/2013/06/make-...of-water-boil/
I have not yet updated that blog to note my last and I think final modification to the screen design, a low second external ring which I discovered because my test setup included an exhaust fan of sufficient size where it started creating real world use test conditions, ie, a light breeze crossing the top and bottom of the screen.
I found sgt rock because like most people, I'd first made the fancy feast, which I now would only use for very fast but super inefficient boils on a wide pot for more than 2 people, then I'd evolved slightly to the penny stove, a theoretically neat pressurized stove, but I just was not getting the simplicity and ease of lighting and efficiency I'd been hoping for.
The fancy feast I never considered at all for real backpacking because it's so awkward to light and prime, and while very hot, it's also very inefficient. One thing you learn while testing stoves is to recognize the strong whiff of unburned alcohol, which ALWAYS means you have an inefficient stove, that smell is non combusted or partially combusted fuel, like burning your car's engine with a too rich fuel mixture.
I believe zelph's starlight is one example of a stove that solves these issues, if it's coupled with a custom screen of the right width and height and air inlet surface area.
There's also a small issue of ethanol / methanol, and the energy contained in each type. SLX, which I resisted for a long time because it's 50% methanol, in fact works great precisely because it is 50% methanol. That means: easier to light, better at higher altitudes, little to almost no sooting, unlike ethanol. Some stove makers who will go unnamed use ethanol without really telling you, unless you push it and ask them directly, then make certain efficiency claims that you will never achieve using slx, you have to up the fuel about 15% or so with methanol/ethanol mix like SLX. SLX is good fuel in my opinion, I am sold.
With this said, here's the advantages of a GOOD alcohol stove/screen/pot system:
- Utterly and completely silent. I don't see a lot of people mention this truly heavenly and wonderful advantage, no idea why, I hate the roar of the carbon fueled combustion engines that are all gas stype stoves, I go backpackign to get away from that stuff, not to carry it with me. That's aesthetic and quality of life issue, it matters to some, not to others, but it's a massive and simply impossible to quantify advantage, no other stove system except wood offers this.
- Always lighter, no matter what badly done reports claim. Always in particular lighter if you use pound/mile math, ie, what you really carry through the trip. I've seen some real efforts to contort data, one big one is claims of boils per canister being inflated by simply only boiling 1.5 cups per meal. Hint: the same advantage applies to all fuel sources, boil less water, use less fuel.
- Incredibly easy to fill and light and setup. A good system is no harder to setup than a cannister stove, and has a real screen as part of the system. Bad alcohol setups, which I have used oin several week trips, are picky, hard to light, almost impossible to refill if they run out etc, and just generally a pain. It's a drag that sgt rock basically figured this out years ago, which is why he stopped actively pursuing research, I think the starlite too is another solution, similar but different in method. The point is the stuff has been solved.
- Bring the exact amount of fuel you want, always, each and every trip. This is slam dunk, only white gas and alcohol give this advantage.
- No disposable cartridges. I care about stuff like that. Alcohol because of how it's sold also has disposable containers, but it doesn't need to, you could easily refill from a 50 gallon barrel if we lived like that, there's nothing that forces alcohol to be sold in metal containers like it is. 1 quart is about 128 two cup boils, call it 64 days.
Since silence, ease of use, ease of supply/refill, and good / decent cooking times make the choice trivial for me, I am also not pursuing more tests at this point. Other people have different priorities, but the important thing to do is not to pretend that a choice that hits all the points you like or are important to your own style of hiking is then the 'best' choice, or to, even more common, just make up stuff to pretend that choice is technically the best in all areas.
For example, these do not matter to me, and so do not factor into my choice (but since silence is to me the winner no matter what, it wouldn't matter):
- 90 second boils. I don't care. A cup of tea takes me 5 minutes or less to prepare water for. As sgt rock noted with some wit in an email to me, if you're in such a hurry, why are you walking? That's a man who gets it. 2 cup boils, about 10 to 12 minutes. Fine, I like it where I am, always. If this is a priority, an inefficient stove can halve your cook time with alcohol, and will bring the trip weights closer to cannister. I chart this in the link above.
- Ease of setup? A good alcohol system is easy to setup, and has a much better screen setup than a top burner canister.
- Machine roar. If you miss it, you got it with gas fuels.
- Hotter, and easier to cook with. Definitely you want a canister I'd guess. You can do real cooking on alcohol, but it's harder, and not nearly as flexible. But if you are cooking, then efficiency is not the reason for the choice, so that's fine too, a very valid reason.
- Snow melting: forget alcohol.
- I had some bad data for wide pot 4 cup boils, and recently made a setup for a 1.3 liter evernew pot, with a 12ox can ion stove, with good screen etc, and was stunned by how fast and efficient it was. So my charted numbers for 4 cup boils on ion are way off, the efficiency is way better than I listed. Cook times, probably too long for some, about 18 minutes to boil 4 cups.
- Whisperlite by the way has some very bad data too on efficiency, it's actually quite competitive on very long trips or high volume boil trips or snow, if you learn to optimize it.
There's some essentially untrue claims made about alcohol however that should also be debunked: US ethanol is produced by high energy consumption agribusiness gmo mutant corn and essentially is about a 0 energy return over the oil based sources used to grow it and produce the alcohol in industrial ethanol plants (in other words, the total energy inputs, mostly oil based, required to produce one unit of energy in ethanol are quite close to the end energy yield, give or take, not to mention totally unsustainable farming practices required to generate the tonnage of corn / etc). Sad but true. The use of the term 'green' with ethanol is a weird thing, though alcohol exhaust emissions are less vile than carbon fuels for sure at the final point of burning. Methanol I believe is industrially produced from methane, natural gas.
Ethanol in theory could be produced with less negattive ecological impact, but the stuff you will buy at the hardware store isn't. Methanol can also be produced from non carbon fuel sources, at some level, if you ignore the energy required to do those conversions, but it isn't.
Oh, I almost forgot, another common error or oversight I see when people talk about alcohol vs canisters, it's caused by engiish measurement units, and is instantly obvious when you change to metric. So you will see people say, ok, I use 1/2 ounce per boil (measured), so that's one ounce per day. Then they skip the fact that the specific gravity of alcohol is about 0.8, which means one fluid ounce of alcohol weighs 0.8 ounces. ie, 15ml of fuel weighs 12 grams, roughly.
I think this oversight or mental hiccup causes a lot of the false reports that alcohol weighs more, plus people using improperly screened fancy feast stoves, which can easily use up to an ounce to boil 2 cups, if you can even get a boil in wind. remote canister stoves aadd in some weight, but allow more normal heat/wind screens to be used, which is why guys like roger from bpl made his own version, light, but flimsy I believe, to get around that built in issue with canisters.
Anyway, it's always fun revisiting the stove question, but it's more fun when apples are compared to apples, ie, goog quality setups of any type, then the actual reasons for selection can be talked about and compared.
Thanks for the detailed analysis. I too have done lots of testing on various alcohol stove systems and have come to pretty much all the same conclusions. I would also add that you don't necessarily need to give up power (i.e. short boil times) for efficiency (i.e. low fuel volumes to boil 2 cups of water). I think my system meets all of your design parameters and will boil 2 cups with 13 mL fuel in just under 4 minutes.If interested, you might want to play with the Easy Capillary Hoop Stove by Tetkoba. It's an amazing stove and easy to make.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbHH...EAB1C5&index=2
Odd Man Out, I'll check that out for sure, I like to keep an open, empirical mind, to these questions. That's what led me to do the research and math. I hope that stove isn't all you say it is, lol, I had just settled in with the ion setup, which I really like. I'd say the reason you got the same or similar results as I did is that this is basic physics and chemistry, plus a bit of engineering to get to the desired efficiencies. Even though oil/gas fuels container more energy per weight unit than alcohol, you can heavily tweak alcohol stoves and screens to get very high efficiencies, another fact that is very rarely mentioned in comparison threads and articles. I was very skeptical for example of 50+ % efficiency claimed by sgt rock for his ion stove, but testing and reproducing it finally convinced me that it is in fact real.
If the 13ml / 4min times are true, and if ease of setup etc are correct,t then in my opinion, the only reason to use canister is either snow melt or real cooking with variable temps required. But we'll see how real world empirically reproducible tests do on that design.
I'd not heard of the Easy Capillary Hoop Stove by Tetkoba so I'll definitely check it out.
I want to correct one thing in my first post, re the exhaust emissions, I believe natural gas emissions are reasonably clean, I do not know about butane, and I do know that methanol is highly poisonous when burned, or even opened and breathed in, so the emissions thing I think I would remove from my statement pending hard data on the exhaust composition of each fuel type. Ethanol I believe is pretty safe but I can't be certain, and nothing we burn here in the USA is safe because of the toxic adulterants.
Watching those videos is interesting, that's well crafted stuff. One thing however I note, they are using 30ml in at least the main video, that boils 400ml water in about 5:30, which means about 500 ml in 7 minutes, but they are also not using a screen at all, so that will signficantly sloww the boil.
Some of the videos I watched in that series aren't showing how much water is boiled. Have you built this one yourself and gotten 13 ml 500ml water boil?
I think I'm going to check this stove out, but my guess is it won't hit the efficiency of the ion because of the faster burn.
Speaking for myself, I usually won't make a stove that requires redbull or other weird things I would never ever buy except for the can, but this one looks interesting enough to warrant buying the cans just for the materials, won't be the first time, I never drink the gunk in the cans I use, just pour it down the drain.
I'm wondering if this chs type will hit the other goal: reasonably fast boils without priming. I know from my tests that a properly made penny stove hits about 20ml boils, give or take, for 500ml, but it's a pain to prime.
There's some other factors I didn't mention, any stove that requires priming, particularly from the base up, is a fire hazard, my penny stoves all required using a small priming tray to get consistent burns, and that was right on the ground, well, I use an aluminum disk under the stove, but still.
Stoves that sit right on the ground without a base of some type can get VERY hot, I can show a picture of a test wood board I use in tests that is covered with small black circles where baseless stoves were used.
Another consideration is the use of a pot stand, which I now insist on, or the other alternate, using the screen plus rods/tent stakes for the stand too, personally though I don't get that one, if I'm carrying extra stakes for cooking, then I might as well just use a stand. Using a stand is much safer in my opinion than setting the pot right on the stove, if you bump the pot, the stove can go over, and in these dry times, that's just not worth it.
http://adropofrain.net/2012/05/makin...alcohol-stove/
pot stands can be made super solid out of stainless steel rod or bike spokes, out of what's called 'music wire' from Ace hardware's hobby metal rack, where you can also get the aluminum connector tubes.
The CHS stove is quite similar in concept to the ion, with the exception of the inner insert, it's small, simple, relies on top holes to create the flame, is easy to fill, easy to light, and basically removes all the issues people might have with less well designed stoves. For me now, for example, I wont' use a stove without a pot stand, or one that requires priming, or that does not have a custom screen to fit the pot being used. Screens have to be very precisely fitted to the pot, that's I believe one reason caldera cones work decently, it's not the cone, which I also tested and dropped because it's so hard to pack, and so awkward, and such a pain to pull the pot out of if and when it warps a bit, but rather the precise sizing to the pot that I believe creates most if not almost all of the advantage. But you can get most of that advantage from a cylinder screen that is custom sized/fitted to your pot, and that matches you stove.
Thanks for the ideas though. There's some specifics too that are very important that I did not see mentioned but maybe it's in one of the other videos for t6he CHS thing, height of pot over burning area, that's a very important one too. Also with a screen for a higher output stove like this, may require changes, particularly in diameter, but it may not.
I have both a Jetboil and an alcohol stove.
The Jetboil really is an efficient machine, boiling water in about 2-3 minutes. It's a bit heavy, IMO, for a thru hike though, at about 1 lb.
My alcohol stove (good ol' fancy feast) is equally awesome, but in different ways. It weighs next to nothing, has no moving parts, and is 100% fail safe. If it bends, I just bend it back. Downsides are it boils water in about 6-8 minutes, and is really ONLY good for boiling water, not simmering or actual cooking. Also as mention alcohol has much lower potential energy than isobutane so weight-to-energy conversion is much lower. However, you are saving so much weight in the system as a whole it's still a win.
I like both, and it depends on your preferred style of eating on trail and your weight preferences. Those dudes at the gear shop sound like pretentious yups.
And for specifics, My jet boil boils 2 cups of water in about 2:30 @ 5300 ft elevation. Alcohol stove boils 2 cups in about 7 minutes, using 1 ounce of fuel.
Wülfgang, as I've tried to indicate, the notion that there is 'an alcohol stove' (ie, one thing that is that category) is just false, just as false by the way as saying there is only one type of canister stove, there are specific setups, with massively varying efficiencies. you yourself for example are not comparing alcohol per se to all canisters, you are comparing it to one specific and very expensive setup, your jetboil. Try to see that point. I would and do consider 2 cup boils requiring anything over 15ml/1/2 ounce liquid of alcohol to be failures, unless I'm looking for fast boils, then 20ml is the max. 1 ounce is what you get if you don't do any work or testing, and just sort of whip something together randomly. Anything over 20ml is not even worth using in my opinion, because it's simply not a well designed system. 1 ounce is 30 ml, that's about if I remember right, a 25% efficiency in the setup, ie, absolutely terrible, about as bad as you can possible get. That's not unlike taking a drill and trying to whip up your own canister top. It may if you lucky work, but it will be so bad and inefficient that you'd never use it, yet for some reason, there's a tendency to do such comparisons anyway to justify (I'm guessing that's the reason) things like a jetboil purchase.
A decent stove, alcohol, with a simmer ring, can do basic lower temp cooking, but I would never suggest it's as easy to do or use as a canister stove. Fancy feast stoves are durable and simple, but they suffer from some pretty major drawbacks, one of which is the ground temperature sucking the heat out of the alcohol until the stove won't even boil water, something I discovered one colder day in winter testing one outside, that's when I stopped using them for anything but testing. You can make an easy base for fancy feasts because it is the stand, so the base has to be so solidly attached that it doesn't wobble.
It would be nice to see people begin to realize that a non designed can burning some fuel is not at all comparable to some industrial engineered stove like all canisters and white gas stoves are, particularly not the most expensive and engineered, and expensive, of them all, the jetboil. That's like comparing a home made gocart with a prius, it's a silly comparison, why people insist on making it is truly beyond me. If you like your jetboil,l which you had better like, lol, it's the biggest and most expensive thing you can use, be happy and like it, but don't try to make false comparisons to justify it, just enjoy it and note you have never used a real alcohol setup so there's nothing to say there. I've never used a jetboil, and never will, since it's not the way I want to backpack, so I have really nothing to say about it beyond that it seems very inflexible and clunky as something to carry with me backpacking, but that's just a preference.
If you like canisters just enjoy them, but there's this tendency to make up bad data or bad testing or whatever to further justify that subjective preference, that's what I am pointing out here in this thread, if you are doing empirical apples to apples testing, ie, fully designed and tested systems (such as jetboil/pot setup) against fully designed and tested systems (such as cone/starlight, or ion/custom fit screen), then the numbers don't add up. Repeating, if you are in such a hurry, why are you walking? I'm already where I want to be when I'm out there, so I don't find myself rushed, though I certainly like dropping the fiddle factor down, that's what made me pursue the question of alcohol stoves in the first place after my first raw tests with fancy feasts and other low tech solutions.
Odd Man Out, I remembered I have two redbulls I found in recycling bin, so I only need one more to make that stove, it's worth a test, I'll post my results briefly here, or in a new thread if that's more appropriate, just to see if you can get a similar efficiency to the ion but faster boil times. To my mind, if you get say, 6 to 7 minutes, in the real world, that is so close to 2.5 minutes for a jetboil that it's almost absurd to pretend that 3.5 to 4.5 minutes matter when you are backpacking, there's something very odd in that situation to me but I won't try to understand the mindset behind that, to me it just sounds like justifying something. Just be happy with what you like is my suggestion, stick to real facts and apple to apple comparisons and it's a lot easier for people outside reading discussions like this to actually get real information to base decisions on. So to those people reading, when someone says they need one ounce of alcohol to boil their 2 cups, just move on and read the next person, that's not useful information. If the amount is closer to 1/2 ounce liquid, ie, 12 grams, you're in the ballpark and tha tsystem is a real one that has been developed and tested, just like all the industrial gas systems have been.
I see what you are saying about generalized comparisons, but try being less of a prick when you disagree.
I was comparing two discrete systems within two much broader categories. It's just an anecdote. That's kind of what forums are, a collection of anecdotes. I'm not purporting to have any highly controlled apples-to-apples data or definitive system comparisons. My preference for the FF stove is purely based on weight. I love the Jetboil (a gift), but it's just too much stove to justify when you're hiking 15-20 miles a day. I personally don't lose sleep over an 8 minute boil time or 25% fuel efficiency. I know there are literally HUNDREDS of alcohol stoves out there, and no doubt many (if not most) are more efficient than the FF stove. I like it just because it is simple, super light, readily available at any supermarket, and fail safe. If I come across a better one with comparable durability and ease of replication, at a decent price, I'd buy it. But I also haven't put quite the level of obsession you have into researching backpacking stoves.
The first stove that I ever made was a fancy feast cat can. This was in 2011. Since that time have hiked over 1000 AT Miles with the same original stove without a single failure, not one. The can is showing her wear, but still in form and fires correct pattern every time. Gear box has many stoves, but the simplicity/wt of this one has just been a pleasure to hike with, just one hikers opinion.
I'll present a hypothetical to illustrate my feeling about this:
Let's say I'm offered two alternatives ONLY: #1 a Supercat, with a windscreen of my own design. #2 the latest-greatest Hope-certified, agreed upon by all experts to be the most efficient alcohol stove ever designed and built, of all time; but with a random/typical windscreen.
I take the Supercat every time. The differences between alcohol stove efficiencies are not nearly as substantial as the effects of the windscreen, and (to a lesser extent) the pot supports if the stove requires one.
To paraphrase William Shatner "People, it is just a backpacking stove! Go out and hike! "
Paul "Mags" Magnanti
http://pmags.com
Twitter: @pmagsco
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The true harvest of my life is intangible...a little stardust caught,a portion of the rainbow I have clutched -Thoreau
Oh, I didn't know the Capt. was a hiker, Cool.
You're correct re windscreen design being a big deal. And the fancy feast type stoves are ok on wide pots, they don't really work on narrow pots that well, which is of course a big factor. Stoves that work well on narrow pots will just be more efficient on wide pots, like the ion or this CHS.
I personally don't like the priming of fancy feast/supercat/penny type stoves, with a stand and basically free standing stove under it, it's much easier, fill light put pot over.
To me all the alcohol stoves are winners in one way or the other as long as you stay aware of the potential negatives with any type, it's just so easy to fuel up, plastic bottles, etc. My goal is always up to 10 days unsupported, though I don't usually go that long anymore, age, etc, make it harder, but 7 days for sure.
I didn't say supercats (by the way, I'm glad you gave jim wood credit for that stove, since he developed it) didn't work, though, I said they aren't efficient, and they aren't. they are ok on wide pots, and certainly give decent performance once you adapt to the way you have to light them. It's just that you can do better if you want. If you don't want, then it's fine of course since you like it. In the sierras and increasingly dry west coast, I really wish however that people would not use those types of stoves, they are not stable with wide pots, stove on ground, pot on stove, they aren't as safe in non careful hands, and will cause fires at some point I fear due to the room for error they allow.. It's the non careful hands that cause the fires in most cases, not the experienced users who are mindful and aware, that's personally why I dno't want to recommend stoves like that.
Here's my first results of the CHS stove, I whipped one up and tested it a few times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbHH...A305BB19EAB1C5
Given I've never seen this stove before, never seen the design, and never tried making it, I'd say my results are indicative of what most people could get. I'm using a 4" tall screen with about 1" space between stove top and pot bottom, that's 2 7/8" high stand, I just whipped one up out of coat hanger. Height over stove matters, my first try was about 1 1/3 inches over, and it didn't work very well, flames up the sides, always the sign of wasted fuel..
The screen is not optimized for this type of stove, it's for an ion, about 1/4" space between screen and pot all around, with air slots cut out along the bottom edge of the screen, the screen is held up by cut out nubs on the bottom edge, leaving spaces between for maximum air flow.
The results are decent, with 20 ml, 2 cups of 72F water boiled in 6:30, and kept boiling for 2 minutes, and went out at 8:45. With 15 ml it didn't quite boil, it did hit 208 briefly just as it was going out, at 6:30 or so, so it's a bit less efficient than the ion, which is no surprise, speed or high efficiency, pick one when it comes to alcohol. That's roughly what I would expect from a faster boiling stove, but this version is way easier to light and fill than the penny, which has comparable performance, so I would call the CHS another winner.because it's fast, easy to setup, easy to fill, does not require priming, uses a pot stand, and is about as efficient as you'd expect for that boil time. It strikes me as too tall though for single user cooking in the version I made (40mm or so, plus a base), so I might try making a shorter one and see how that works.
Wülfgang, I'm not sure it's obsession, interest maybe, curiosity, a rusty background in science I like to keep somewhat excercised, a desire to sort of refresh my chemistry knowledge, I was pretty much done with all that since I hit all the targets I wanted to hit with ion/screen. Also living on the west coast, fire danger is very real, and I realized that the penny stove I was using was just too dangerous to use anymore, plus being such a pain to light, and not being very efficient (my goal was say, 5 cups boiled a day, a touch over 1 fluid ounce per day, so say, 8 ounces for 6 days, ie, a 7 day trip. Whether that goal is reached depends on how much tea I want to have daily, heh. All I can tell the fancy feast fans is that it's such a joy to not have to prime, simply fill, light, put pot on, wait. I never liked that "hmm, is it vaporized enough to put the pot on yet? with the fancy feast stoves, though of course obviously over nights you get pretty good at judging it. the CHS also by the way meets this requirement, and it's not particularly hard to make, not easy, but not hard. Thanks for the tip on that one, I think it's a good one for two people setups, way better than penny and probably about as fast as fancy feast, so worth checking out.
Some guy burned down a big chunk of forest here in southern california some years back with an alcohol stove, and when I read the description of the guy, it was almost certainly someone who had just whipped up some stove then tipped it over or something like that, which of course led to a ban on all alcohol stoves in parts of the sierras, that's the reason for avoiding certain types, or at least avoiding recommending them.
That ban is being modified, but just one mistake by one person is all it takes now, that's why I use a stove base to keep temp down on ground under stove, as well as insulating stove from ground temp, an aluminum fuil type 'floor' under that base, a real screen, and a pot stand, and why those are all absolute requirements for any stove I bring into the drying forests, I don't want to be 'That guy'. Call it obsession, that's fine, heh, it's been worth it, alcohol stoves for me have been the single biggest jump in quality of my trips of any gear changes I've made I think, particularly non priming ones.
I'm glad I posted in this thread, I was actually wondering if there were new things worth checking out, and now I have a fast cooking stove too for when that matters. 6.5 minutes no priming, that's cool. Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to revisit the question, and to double check performance, I like to check that now and then to make sure nothing was missed.
grr, double post, I can't find a way to delete or edit it, sorry.
BTW, some other cans that will work for the eCHS stove are the small V8 juice cans, small Starbucks cappuccino, and Ocean Spray Spakling Juice. Maybe you will like to drink those? The V8 juice is good for making meat loaf ;-)
I am using an Olicamp XTS pot. It is a bit heavier because it has a heat exchanger, but I have communicated with others using a plain old KMart Grease pot with similar results. The Olicamp is a 1 L anodized Al pot with a 1:1 height:diameter ratio, giving it a maximum volume to surface ratio. This cuts down on weight and helps it retain heat when cooking in the cozy.
My pot stand is a 3" tall cylinder of stainless steel hardware cloth. I have tipped over pots and lost my dinner when using a narrow sideburning stove that doubles as a pot stand. I optimized the height my making a stand that was obviously too tall with 1/2" hardware cloth and kept cutting off 1/2". Performance went up and then down as the pot stand got shorter, with 3" about right for my pot.
My wind shield is a cylinder of Al flashing. I fold tab on the ends to overlap so I just snap those together to set up. Pop them apart and put it in the pot for storage. I make it the same height at the interior of the pot so it fits perfectly. I think it goes about 1" above the bottom of the pot. I made it so there is about a 1/4" gap between the pot and the screen. On the bottom I punch holes with a 1/4" diameter paper punch. To optimize air flow, I tested the system with no windscreen. Then I tested it with minimal holes and got poor combustion. I punched more holes and got better results. When I was getting performance that was about the same as without a wind screen, then I figured I had enough vents and the stove was no longer starved for air.
As for the heat on the base of the stove, I have a small square of Al foil (double thick) as a heat reflecting base. The surface gets a little warm, but not at all hot. The eCHS stove works differently that other stoves in that it doesn't require the pool of alcohol in the bottom to boil in order to force fuel out the jets. The cold fuel is drawn up the sides by capillary action due to the close contact between the two walls. The small indentation around the perimeter of the inner piece (where you drill the holes) forms the hoop. This is where the fuel is vaporized by thermal feedback from the burning stove. Because only a small sample of fuel is vaporized at the top of the stove, it primes very quickly (about 10 seconds for mine). Also, because the fuel in the bottom doesn't have to vaporize, the bottom of the stove is cool. In the videos you will see him holding a burning stove in the palm of his hand. Eventually (as the stove burns out), I find the whole stove gets a bit too hot to hold, but you can hold it when it is first lit.
By making the opening in the top of the stove smaller, you will lengthen the priming time and lower the power (possibly increasing the efficiency), so you can adjust your build to suit your preferences.
Just a few points of clarification. The supercat stove is a Fancy Feast can with two rows of 3/16 or 1/4 inch holes around the edge. There are other stove designs that use this can, and they are called, variously, Fancy Feast stoves, Facee Feest stoves (Zelph's design and his copiers) and cat food can stoves. Some times these same terms are used in posts to describe the supercat, which makes discussion confusing at times.
The so-called simmer cat, which is what I use exclusively, is a variation of the supercat with only one row of holes, in my case 16 holes of 3/16 inch. I use a 5" wide pot; anything smaller loses efficiency and 6"+ would be a little better. I use a windscreen extending a little more than halfway up the side of the pan, very tight, less than 1/4 inch which, among other advantages, makes it very difficult to tip over the pot. When tired, hungry, maybe getting a little chilled, I am as clumsy as any creature on earth and I have bumped into the stove many times while reaching; it has jiggled but never gone over. Kick it (or just about any stove) and you may have a problem.
I really don't prime the supercat, as such. I light it (and I don't understand why some say this is difficult) and immediately hold the pot 2-3 inches above the flame, which is not yet jetting, for a few seconds. I then start slowly lowering the pot closer to the stove edge (which is the built-in pot support), eventually setting it down. This heats the stove, fuel and bottom of the pot so they kinda "mesh" and the blue flame shoots through the jets. The whole process takes maybe 7-8 seconds, a little longer if it's cold, and has become auto-pilot after all these years. Very little fuel is wasted during this priming.
Some time ago I started using a small piece of thin cardboard wrapped with a single layer of aluminum foil to set under the stove, to improve performance in colder weather. I found this further improved stability and provided some additional insurance as a fire/scorch break so I now use this all the time. Though a huge weight burden of nearly an ounce and a half, I feel this makes the stove very safe.
Can't edit my mis-type in the above: Zelph's stove is obviously the Fancee Feest, not the Facee Feest.
My numbers add up just fine, all in a spreadsheet with field testing and years of experience. I carefully weigh my fuel canisters after each trip noting the usage. I've tested an alcohol stove on two previous trips and basically gave up due to MY personal lack of patience and the minimal, or depending on the trip length, non-existent "weight savings".
This last trip consisted of exactly 6 3-cup boils in my jetboil Sol Ti, and I used 1.8 ounces of fuel, weighed to the nearest 1/10th of an ounce on a calibrated scale.
You talk about using either 15ml or 20ml of alcohol per a 2-cup boil, and in weight terms that is either .42 weight ounces or .57 weight ounces. My tests with a cat stove show right at 0.5 weight ounces, so in the same range. somewhere in this thread someone mentions that alcohol stoves "weigh next to nothing", not a very precise statement as everything weighs something, my cat stove and minimal windscreen and small alcohol bottle (0.75 ounces) all weighs 2.75 ounces. My 0.9 liter Ti pot weighs 4.5 ounces. Sure, there are UL pots that would save a couple ounces, and one of these days I'll get or make one.
Anyway, for a short one-person trip in strictly weight terms, boiling 18 cups of water, my alcohol setup including fuel would weigh 11.7 ounces. My "clunky" (????) Jetboil if taking a full canister boiling the same amount of water would weigh 14.0 ounces. I took a partial canister (I have bunches of them) that saved 1.2 ounces so I'm at 12.8 ounces total water heating weight for a full 3-day trip, which is 1.1 ounces heavier than the equivalent alcohol setup. I gladly pay that teeny weight penalty for the much great convenience and speed of the Jetboil, and if I happen to have the right canister handy (with exactly the right amount of fuel left in it, plus a couple grams of margin), even that is less.
So yes, for short trips with one person, an ounce or two can be saved using alcohol. Just hope it's not windy. If my wife had come on this trip (exactly twice the water boiling), the alcohol setup total weight would have been 16.2 ounces, the Jetboil setup total weight would have been 15.6 ounces, a weight savings.
Perhaps you're referring to the old-style Jetboil being "clunky". There is nothing "clunky" about the newest ones, and there is no fiddling, instant "assembly" and instant on. My Jetboil Sol Ti weighs exactly 8.9 ounces, including burner, pot and igniter, not "1 pound" like the older ones. I don't carry that silly and useless little cup nor do I carry or have ever needed the pot stabilizer (meaning I've never spilled a pot in hundreds of days of use).
Never ever understood how alcohol stove users think a Jetboil is at all difficult to use. The two times I used an alcohol setup there was zero additional ease of use, I don't care how many times you use it, you have to get it out, set it on a level rock, fill it, arrange wind screen, light it, set pot on top, wait 6-8 minutes. With a Jetboil, you open it, screw on canister, set on level ground, turn valve, push igniter, wait two minutes. What on EARTH is "clunky" about that????? The mind boggles at what some call "subjective justification" !
The Jetboil system including pot, burner unit and a canister all fits together in a <4" diameter, <6" long cylinder. "Clunky"?????? Not. don't even need a lighter (0.5 ounces) like with an Alcohol setup, though in case the Piezo igniter fails, you better have some sort of backup. I always carry a small fire-starting kit for emergencies that includes a couple dozen waterproof matches (and trioxane fire starters), and those matches serve as my Piezo backup, though I've never had to use them yet for the stove. The trioxane (solid alcohol, I think) fire starters also serve as a backup for stove fuel; 1/2 ounce of a trioxane "brick" placed under the jetboil pot heats 2 cups nicely. I used this once on the AT last year, worked great.
Yes Mags, the debate rages on, HYOH! Maybe it's regional, but the Alcohol users are understandably few and far between out here in Colorado, and I don't think it's just because of fire bans, etc.
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