Thread: Cooking systems - Light vs cost

My maplefire 1L heat exchange pot arrived today, did a quick comparison with a normal (wider shaped) alloy pot. Both on the little BRS ti cooker on the same setting, though it wasn't on full power because I didn't think about that until I'd already started. 500ml of tap water.

Maplefire about 1 min 50s
Normal pot about 2 min 20s

So thats about 22% faster/more efficient, and the different probably would have been bigger if the cooker was turned up higher.

Maplefire weighs in at 187g pot only, and 220g including the silicon plastic lid.
My comparison pot is 162g pot only, but if you add its lid (which is pretty solid because it doubles as a bowl or frypan) and pot holder (because it doesn't have a built-in handle) you end up with 419g total.

So I'm happy enough.

One minor downside - the arms of the ti cooker were a few mm too wide to fit inside the heat exchange ring of the pot, but not wide enough to give a stable platform with the ring sitting on them. Problem solved by bending the arms in slightly to fit inside the ring.

Originally Posted by GravelBen

My maplefire 1L heat exchange pot arrived today, did a quick comparison with a normal (wider shaped) alloy pot. Both on the little BRS ti cooker on the same setting, though it wasn't on full power because I didn't think about that until I'd already started. 500ml of tap water.

Maplefire about 1 min 50s
Normal pot about 2 min 20s

So thats about 22% faster/more efficient, and the different probably would have been bigger if the cooker was turned up higher.

Maplefire weighs in at 187g pot only, and 220g including the silicon plastic lid.
My comparison pot is 162g pot only, but if you add its lid (which is pretty solid because it doubles as a bowl or frypan) and pot holder (because it doesn't have a built-in handle) you end up with 419g total.

So I'm happy enough.

One minor downside - the arms of the ti cooker were a few mm too wide to fit inside the heat exchange ring of the pot, but not wide enough to give a stable platform with the ring sitting on them. Problem solved by bending the arms in slightly to fit inside the ring.

Be interesting to try it against a 114 gram Ti comparison pot&lid. 22% less fuel or 100% less weight of pot, which is lighter?

Originally Posted by gimp

Be interesting to try it against a 114 gram Ti comparison pot&lid. 22% less fuel or 100% less weight of pot, which is lighter?

Depends how long the trip is I guess! With the normal pot I used about 40g of gas on a recent overnight trip (weighed the canister before and after just to be geeky, because I've never really checked how much I use) - there was a bit of wasted energy boiling the same water multiple times though after only using some of it.

If 40g/day is normal then the heat exchange pot might save 10g/day (rounded to 25% for simplicity), at that rate it would take 11 days to use 110g less fuel - the contents of 1 small canister, which weighs about 210g total. So for shorter trips than that the ti pot will save more weight, but the heat exchange pot will save more money. Obviously those figures will change a bit when cooking for multiple people and/or above the snowline etc, the more fuel you use the better the efficient pot will look.