Become an Expert

I am going to focus on small cooking stoves to illustrate the following point.

Become an expert on your preparedness plan.
What ever equipment you choose, you need to be very good with it. You need to be able to use it no matter what comes up in an emergency situation.

For instance in a "bug out" situation, say a wild fire drives you from your home, you may have to put up in a church or school until things resolve. How will you cook? You may be out in the weather only. What if high winds come up, or rain or hail? How will you cook? How will you keep your shelter/bedding dry?

You need to become an expert on your gear.

So to extend that idea into small cooking stoves, let's look at several types:
See the bottom of this post for image credits.

Which is best: Penny stove, Firelight stove, Aluminum Bottle Stove, Wood gasifier stove, super-cat stove, sterno stove, Rocket Stove, “Best Backpacking Cooking Setup Ever?”

Ok, so here is my experience with these:

The good news is most of them are home made so I didn’t put out a bunch of money. I have built most of these and in our garage or shop they all work great. Some burn longer than others, some are easier to light than others, some weigh less, some are more messy, etc.

BUT, when I tested several of these outside; far enough from my house that it was a pain to walk back for something I forgot, HUGE differences showed up. My first thoughts are:

#1 Where I live the wind blows. Period. So EFFECTIVE wind screens are vital.


#2 How much gap you have between the wind screen and the pot makes a big difference.

#3 In the wind, some of these stoves don’t have enough fuel to get the job done. ( I am basing this on the standard boil 16 oz/2 cups of water )

#4 Where I live, you need a lid on your pot or the water may never boil.

#5 Have ample fuel. You may need to re-light a stove to get those noodles cooked.

Notice I never mentioned a single stove or style in those conclusions.


So some general observations about particular stoves:
 


Rocket stoves work really well, but they operate on limited fuel. So you need to keep “tending” them or the fire literally goes out and your food doesn’t get cooked. DO NOT try to cook for a big group on a set of rocket stoves until you have successfully tried it before hand, several times. Have ample fuel on hand, and keep watch on everything. For a big group, this is a busy way to cook.






I am still trying to get happy about Wood Gasifier stoves. They are a really good, solid design.  You can refuel this style stove while you are cooking.  I like that.

But I have not found a pot stand for these that I like yet. I made a small “back packing” version that never did get the water to boil. I'll keep experimenting with this one.



More than once I have had to re-light any version of pop can stove (penny, firelight, bottle, etc) to get the water to boil. This can be tricky as the stove is very hot as it runs out of fuel. It is better to have a 2nd one already fueled up that you can swap out as needed.

They work well, they burn very hot. You must carry fuel with you.




I built a very small version of the aluminum bottle stove and it worked pretty well, but it ran out of fuel before the water was boiling. Time to build a regular size version.

These also work well, and they burn very hot.  You can make these taller and wider by choosing a larger bottle and cutting them higher.  By doing this, you can have more fuel per burn. 




The Firelight stove is trademarked, modified version of a pop can stove. It actually performed better in real use that in the test. This one likes the pot sitting right on the top, in direct contact with the stove. The size I built had plenty of burn time to get the water boiling. I will probably build a larger version to keep on hand.





Cooking Systems

I am leaning toward the Best DIY Cook Kit for Hiking Wilderness Camping as a cooking system. This is a simple system with lots of options. I really like how it can use several kinds of fuel. So if you take it on an extended packing trip, you don't have to carry fuel for every cooking use. In an emergency situation, this can be very helpful.

My initial build of this system is pretty small. I made it to fit an a small backpack.  There are no designs yet for this system, so I had to experiment a bit to get enough air flow in and out.  To use with a bigger pot, I will probably build a larger version.

It works well with any of the super cat, pop can, or firelight stoves I have. It will also work with Sterno, home made emergency candles, fuel tablets or wood found on site. So it works really well for multiple fuel/stove options.

So back to the premise of Become An Expert.. 

You need to be familiar enough with what ever equipment you choose so that you can switch to a different location, different fuel or even a secondary stove if your first attempt to cook your family a meal goes bad.

What other preparedness items require this much study and practice?  Post a note to tell us.

Image credits:
trailquest.net - pop can stove
bushcraftusa.com - gasifier stove
lastminutesurvival.com - rocket stove
hikelight.com - aluminum bottle stove
econo - https://www.youtube.com/user/EconoChallenge?feature=watch (screen capture)