Stove choices

“This is an excellent site for comparing different stoves and their fuels.

http://www.kzpg.com/Backpacking/Stove/Stoves.htm

My personal Favorite stove is a Coleman Exponent F1, small, light, fast and more efficient than any stove in its class.

I've used and own a Turbo Bluet, two pepsi can alcohol stoves and an Esbit, the F1 is the one I choose every time over the others.”

“Hey StoveStomper, do you know what's in that HEET stuff? Their website only says "special additives and methanol". (For Iso-HEET, they list "isopropanol and a special additive".) Does that mean that HEET is mostly methanol (methyl alcohol, wood alcohol)?”

“thinkbubelz sez

According to http://www.allmeasures.com/Formulae/static/materials/61/density.htm, one fluid ounce (floz) of 100% ethyl alcohol (ethanol, 200 proof) weighs 0.82 ounces (oz) (probably at 20 °Celcius and sea level)............blah, blah, blah ad neauseum .........Now, the reality is that for a few fluid ounces, you're probably not going to notice the very slight changes in weight as the temperature and altitude change

[Rolling my eyes over this $hit.]

(even you ultralight hikers). :) You'll just need to take into consideration the concentration of ethanol you're using. Using the factors computed above, 10 fluid ounces of 100% ethanol weighs about 8.2 ounces, and 10 fluid ounces of 70% ethanol weights about 9.1 ounces.

Using the same concepts and looking up different conversion factors you can arrive at the familiar: 1 U.S. gallon water = 8.3 pounds.

While you're all splitting hairs over every 0.001 oz you can shave off your pack weight you might consider one other conversion factor for each fuel that is a helluva lot more important that how much the stuff weighs. It's the heat content or Btus/lb or oz that is important. If I had my tables at home I could give them to you, nevertheless I bet one oz. of white gas has twice the heat content as an oz of denatured alcohol.

This thread is all the proof I need to confirm my judgement about this ultralight rage. Ultralight is not about BPing or even the journey. It's all about the gear and how many miles you can all race each other every day. Why do you ultralighters want to turn BPing into a competition? Why not take up marathon running or drag racing? Wouldn't that be a better match for your mentality?
last edited: 5/24/05 5:47:07 PM”

“The link paige provided answered my question. It's mostly methanol.”

“There are two types of Heet. Isn't one preferable to the other?”

“And for the rocket scientist thinkbubelz who would have you believe that weight would change with altitude or elevation he's out of his f*awking mind.

Things may change density / volume with changes in temp or altitude but to increase weight the substance would have to increase mass. And since you can't make matter out of nothing it doesn't happen. No weight change period.
last edited: 5/24/05 5:57:03 PM”

“there is much anger in that one


{yoda voice}
last edited: 5/24/05 6:19:51 PM”

“No anger, just dumbfounded at the scientific and math ignorance one reads in some of these threads. I wonder where some of these people went to school?”

“The yellow bottle HEET is the only one I use. Burns clean and hot.
The Red IsoHEET will smut up your pot and stove big time.”

“No anger, just dumbfounded at the crass rudeness one reads in some of these threads. I wonder where some of these people were raised. Surely not in SC, the State well known for manners and civility. ;-)”

“Dude, did you miss the smilie in my original post? Do you know what a smilie means?

Oh, and thanks for the "rocket scientist" compliment!

How much do you weigh in outer space, solitary hiker? That's right, your mass (and matter) doesn't change, but the gravitational pull of the Earth on you does. You experience "weightlessness"; your weight is zero.

Weight is not mass. Weight is force. According to Newton (ever heard of him?), F=m*a. For weight, W=m*g, where g is the acceleration due to gravity which changes with elevation. Sure, it is an imperceptable change, and that's why I sarcastically poked fun at the ultralighters.

Now to be clear, simply changing the temperature will not change the mass or weight of anything. However, density does change with temperature -- again imperceptably -- so the mass of 1 L of water at 90 °C is not exactly the same mass of the same volume (1 L) of water at 10 °C. Does it make a difference for backpacking? Not at all. Does it make a difference to a scientist making a precise calculation? You betcha.

You, sir, are no rocket scientist.

I could go on to make rude belittling comments about your education, your state of mental health, and the human waste products your words remind me of, but I have some sense of decorum.”

“Some peeps spend WAAAYYYYYYYYYYY to much time in the Fuego threads. ;-)”

“Back off you two! There will be no Fuego in a Sarge thread!”

“Dude! Save your physics formulas for someone who needs them. I never said weight was mass. I said the mass would need to increase or decrease for the weight to increase or decrease. Now I will say that the gravitational constant (Gc) here on Earth can change anywhere there is a gravitational anomaly. But then if you were to experience one of them (and there are some deep in the surface of the earth) then not only would your precious oz of alcohol "weigh" more but everything including you would "weigh" more. And the infintesimally accurate scale the ultralighters would be using would also be affected by this anomaly so they couldn't see the change. As far as the gravitational constant changing with elevation. Since Everest is at 29,028 ft. and you seem to have a lot of numbers at hand please tell us what the change in the Gc between it and sea level? I say your Canadian university website is inaccurate because I don't think the Gc is changing just the force experienced is altered by you moving closer to other massive bodies like the sun and moon. And any change they cause in the net gravitational effect on you is impossible for you or I to discern.

And for the same reason your weightless in outer space argument is spurious. In earth orbit you are not weightless. You are experiencing free fall in the same way someone parachuting out of a plane experiences it, just not with the wind shear and associated noise. Your orbit speed is so fast that you are overpassing the earth's curvature faster than you can fall to the ground. In true deep space you are only "weightless" because the gavitational constants affecting you are multiple. But you are being pulled along by the overpowering mass somewhere "near" you. Your accumulated rate of fall is still there, you just have a long, long way to fall. Hence you are "weightless".

Volume is the only thing I'll cut you some slack on. But when was the last time your quart of liquid fuel expanded because of elevation or normal backpacking temperatures so much that it overflowed out of your fuel bottle and lost mass to the point the weight of the fuel decreased? Or tell me when you filled a known volume with a liquid, at a known temperature, and then filled the same volume with the same liquid at a different temp and actually measured the difference? Therefore palm the "a scientist can...you betcha!" line off on the nerds over on the atomic clock site. This is a place of backpacking and even the ultralighters don't have those kind of scales.

As far as your smiley? Screw your smiley. And your math lessons too. :)

SS,
I learned a lot over on Feugo didn't I?”

“{cough}”

“I still like my sno-peak!”

“solitary, are you related to arclite? think makes very accurate statements here, and you go ripping it apart because you are having a bad life. Very sad.

Back to topic:
As for HEET - stay away from the iso stuff, which is 99% rubbing alcohol (Isopropyl Alcohol). Very poor heat content and sooty, which SS mentioned. You want pure ethanol or methanol. Denatured alcohol is 95% ethanol (think pure grain alcohol; drinkable) with just enough methanol 5% added to make it poisonous, therefore not taxable as a drinkable alcohol would.

Off topic, consider how much taxes and profits cost you when you buy a fifth of grain alcohol alcohol at the store...when you can buy a gallon of denatured alcohol at Home Depot for $9.95.”

“Sarge, Sarge, Sarge.....

No one 'owns' a thread on TT.
You merely started the thread. ;-)”

“It was supposed to be ironic. I gotta remember to use those smiley faces.”

“Sure Stovie, South Carolina. Manners, civility, the last state in the union to outlaw duelling, the state that led seccession, which led to the War of Northern Aggression, etc etc etc...

What a wonderful state.”

“Hush, yankee. ;-)
It IS a wonderful State.
Visit it and see.”

“I might be a yankee, but my roots run deep in the south. I have been to SC didn't get to see much. Besides I like all those things I said about it. Duelling should be legal between consenting adults. The war of northern aggression really wasn't about slavery, and southerners have ALOT more manners and civility than northerners. So you come visit me and I'll take you hiking, and I'll come to SC and hike with you.”

“I don't know what bubbleboy was trying to say but when he made this statement

Now, the reality is that for a few fluid ounces, you're probably not going to notice the very slight changes in weight as the temperature and altitude change

he implied to the majority of people in here that one could take a couple of ozs of anything, in this case alcohol, weigh it, and then change it's temperature and/or elevation and it would weight more or less. This is wrong. If he meant to address volume and density issue he should have stated it in a different manner. Since he was so precise in his documentation of conversion he should be precise with his wording.

And then this guy comes back with his physics lecture and his weightless in space BS? I'm not going to suffer this know-it-all fool. If he doesn't like my response too bad. Let him go over to the other site and cry to the Ray Way crowd and babble about oz of alcohol. That goes for you too TNT. Your crap about TarpTents being fully capable three season tents was classic. And I'm still waiting to hear about using one in Alaska or any of the other places I mentioned.”

“I responded on the NEMO thread immediately, regarding using one in Alaska in November. Still waiting for a response. If you had actually checked back on that thread you would have seen it.

No wonder you are a solitary hiker. Too bad you hate yourself so much that you need to lash out at others when they are having a civil discussion that doesn't concern you. You and arclite should hike together.”

“First a physics professor and now a psycho-analyst. Or in your case TNT, a psycotic anal retentive, I mean with you being obsessed with gear weight and all that.

I went back to that thread and your solution to a horizontally blowing wind, rain, snow was to change the angles of the "tent" poles so that the beak was lower to the ground. Yeah well, that might work if you stayed in the tent or stayed out of the tent but it wouldn't be very practical if you had to go in and out of the "tent" would it? No one in his right mind would use a TarpTent on a serious trip to Alaska.

And as far as me and arclite hiking together? I would be more than happy to walk with the man. He's a long time TTer and not some Johnny-Come-Lately know it all pilgrim with all kinds of ultralight gear words of wisdom for us. Now smoke that in your Pepsi can!!”

“Sorry Sarge, StoveStomper, and the other serious posters on this thread for the derailment.

Back to stoves!

Sarge, you wanted help deciding between a Jetboil and a DragonFly (or at least the types they represent). Everyone has an opinion about stoves, and stoves have been debated a lot in the past. Here is my experience.

I have a Primus Yellowstone Techno Trail stove (LP gas canister type), same fuel type as a Jetboil. As I understand it, the Jetboil is designed to be more efficient than my stove for boiling water. I chose the Techno Trail over a white gas stove like the DragonFly because it was less expensive, appeared easier to operate, and I didn't plan on hiking in cold conditions.

With a piezo lighter it just takes a push of a button to light. (I always bring matches just in case the piezo dies.) This is probably my favorite feature; no putzing around, just turn it on.

On the trail it has worked well enough. It can be tippy; I don't have a stand. A windscreen is a BIG "must". Probably the most frustrating thing for me is dealing with the windscreen, especially when trying to adjust the stove valve on windy days. (Jetboil users, do you use windscreens?)

One time when car camping it failed to boil a very full pot of water; there was a steady breeze from the lake and I had the stove on a picnic table without a windscreen. (It didn't matter because the Coleman propane two-burner stove I also brought worked just fine.)

I have to second DeoreDX; dealing with the fuel cans is a pain. I've only bought them at outdoor stores (are they available anywhere else?) and once they're empty they're a liability. I have a few half-empty cans in my garage right now, and for trips where we fly we have to get rid of them before getting back on the plane.

My only experience with white gas stoves is from watching other hikers. One guy had the airline lose all his gear so he had to buy new equipment just before the hike. He had a brand new white gas stove, not exactly the same as his previous one. It took him a while to set it up, and at some point he spilled gas; when he lit the stove the spill also ignited. Once he finally had it going, it was annoyingly loud. Sure, if he had his old stove he probably wouldn't have had any of those problems (except the noise), but it showed me that those stoves require a little more attention to detail to operate safely than mine.

Even though the burner is lower on a white gas stove, it still doesn't sit well on uneven ground. And I could run my LP stove on a layer of dry leaves without worrying about starting a forest fire, but I don't know that I'd trust a white gas stove after what I saw.

About the only scary thing I've had to deal with are cans that don't reseal after taking the (in this case) lantern off. We were car camping and I just left the lantern on with the valve shut.

You still need a windscreen for the white gas stoves. I imagine trying to get rid of leftover white gas on a fly-in trip is just as much a pain. (But white gas is more widely available?) You'll also have the extra aggrevation of making sure your white gas stove has no trace of gas in it to safely take it on a plane. (I've read that you should clean it out to be sure.)

I've never had the need to melt snow. I suppose when that day comes I'll buy a white gas stove. Until then, my LP gas stove is fine for the dehydrated foods we bring on weekend trips.

My wife and I have acquired an alcohol stove, but we have yet to try it. I haven't seen anyone use an Esbit stove yet.”

“I tried out that calculator that paige posted at the top of this page. Not sure how accurate that thing is - no matter how long a trip you enter (2 days or 7), the gas stoves never gain an advantage over the Esbit or alcohol stoves. At some point they should.

Or am I reading it incorrectly?”

“Thanks StoveStomper and techntrek for the info on HEET and other sources of alcohol.

I'm a little leary of HEET since it has unknown "additives" in it. Anybody know if the company feels the stuff is safe for use in a backpacking stove?

I think I'll give the denatured alcohol a try.”

“I have no problems with empty fuel cans. I just poke lots of holes in them and drop them in a lake.”

“Sorry Sarge, StoveStomper, and the other serious posters on this thread for the derailment.

Back to stoves!

So we were all talking stoves until you posted your treatise entitled "ounces (fluid) to ounces" at 12:30:58 PM on 5-24-05. Which I might add no one had asked for. Now you want to slink away from your weightless physics and change the subject back to stoves?

Not so fast bubbleboy. I want more of your "enlightenment" on these physics topics. And can you teach me about alchemy too? I bet you've got the conversion tables to do lead into gold somewhere? Post 'em and please note the smiley. :)”

“I thought I was the only one that did that? The way I figure it, if enough people did what wise BPers do then after a time the fish would have an artifical reef to hide in. And isn't increasing fish numbers all about saving the Earth?

signed,
Only one man but doing my part”

“Amazing that the discussion on fuel weight is directly related to stove choices.”