Thread: Cooking systems - Light vs cost

I've had trouble with them this week at a mere 1400m (it was snowing, ice on the outside of the canister). Slow as. Didn't have the meths cooker to compare sadly. Might take it up tomorrow, going to be at about 1900-2000m the next 2 days

Keep the canister in the tent or at bottom of sleeping bag when sleeping and it will be good to go on the coldest mornings

Be curious to know if a neoprene sleeve or something would help?

i think about minus 5 is when it really starts to make a difference, as said above, keep it in your sleeping bag etc over night. my msr reactor should arrive tomorrow

Originally Posted by Nibblet

Be curious to know if a neoprene sleeve or something would help?

Off the top of my head I don't think it would - its a while since I studied thermodynamics but essentialy the evaporation of liquid to gas inside the canister requires energy, which it has to absorb from the outside to maintain operating pressure. Thats why the outside of the canister feels cold when its running, and can ice up even when the air temp is well above zero - its the temperature drop inside thats cooling the outside. Some people use little heat packs which you can stick under the canister if it gets too cold, simple solution but seems to work as it doesn't take a lot of heat to keep it the gas evaporating. Even wrapping your hands around it (which obviously gives you cold hands) or sitting the canister in a pot of slightly warmed water can sometimes be enough to get it cranking.

Liquid fuel stoves don't have that issue because you pressurise the fuel bottle with the pump to make the liquid flow, and then its the heat of the stove that evaporates the liquid to gas (which is why you have to prime/pre-heat them to get started). IIRC they're also a fair bit more efficient/cheaper to run, a 1l bottle of fuelite/white spirits for will give a heap more use than a 230g gas canister and not cost much more. If you're burning a lot of fuel doing things like melting snow for drinking water then it can make quite a difference.

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.

On a cold morning if you do have some liquid water in a small bowl and sit the gas canister in it. It will make a big difference.

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.

I use my meths cooker mostly too which is cheap as heck to run, a couple of bucks a litre

Originally Posted by gimp

I use my meths cooker mostly too which is cheap as heck to run, a couple of bucks a litre

Where do you buy meths?

tbh I haven't in a while and don't remember exactly what it costs, I recall it being something like $6/l

Originally Posted by gimp

tbh I haven't in a while and don't remember exactly what it costs, I recall it being something like $6/l

yea I use it in my fish smoker and am sure its more like 6-8 bucks not "a couple" per liter at the gas station i use.

I consider 6 bucks to be "a couple". linguistic nuances


e: It's clearly grammatically incorrect, I clearly don't care

Coffee-wise, I got one of these the other day and it does the trick. Weighs 17g, the (pretty pointless) lid adds another 9.

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