Snow Peak Giga Power Stove with Piezo

I will be doing 6 days and 5 nights in Yosemite late August and was thinking of buying an additional stove (currently have a Primus Multi fuel heavy and old). There will be two of us and all we will be using the stove for is evening meals. Essentially boiling 32 oz water each night.

2 Questions:
1. Anyone have any bad experience with the Snow Peak Giga?
2. Anyone provide a rough approximation on how long the canisters last? My guess is I will need 2 maybe a 3rd just in case.

Thanks

We have had the Snowpeak Giga Power stove for years and years now. The peizo broke so we just light it with matches, didn't feel like replacing the piezo but you can.

We use the heat shield/windscreen with it and that extends the canister life. It will give us 15 boils of 2 to 3 cups per boil so one large canister will last us three days of dedicated stove use where wood fires are prohibited. It is a good solid stove.



We use the stove for all three meals, tea in the morning, noodle soup and then tea for lunch, freeze dried meal and hot chocolate for dinner as far as stove use goes. It is a workhorse.

I've had mine for about 5 years and it's seen use mostly during solo camping, though I've used it for a few duo hikes. I get about 12 single-serving meals out of it, maybe a couple more if I don't cook foods that need extra simmering. It's convenient and I like it.

The only bad experience I've had is that the piezo starter wouldn't work when the stove got soaked. My lighter also had a piezo starter that wouldn't work, and I had to borrow someone's matches.

So what I am understanding so far is save the $10 and get the one without the Piezo!?!

I heard you were not suppose to use the wind shield with a canister stove for fear of getting the canister too hot?

Is that the heat shield sitting on top? Is this an accessory specifically for this stove.

Looks like a pretty large pot is that a liter?

Great responses already becoming sold!

Yeah forget the piezo. That heat shield/windscreen is proprietary Snowpeak made specifically for that stove. It extends the life of the fuel canister. You will get more boils with it on the stove.

That is an MSR Titan Kettle. It is just under a liter, the perfect size for two people.

I've used/owned a Giga for several years. Great little stove.

If I'm reading your post correctly and my math is right you want to boil 4 cups of water/night for 5 nights. Nothing more. In my experience just one new canister should do the job under normal conditions. And I'm talking the small 110g one, not the large size. By normal conditions I mean the water was not just above freezing and the wind was not horribly strong, and you have a lid on your pot, and you turn the stove off as soon as the water boils. If it makes you feel better take two small canisters or one big one, but you certainly won't need 3.

When the canister nears the end of its life the flame output will be reduced and it will take longer to achieve a boil. This is to be expected. The total amount of fuel needed to boil per cup remains the same.

If you're not trying to purify the water or actually cook anything a full boil is not usually necessary. You can prepare ramen or even pasta with very little fuel and no boil.

Regarding the piezo, mine has been faithful to me for several years. It won't work if the canister is new and the fuel flow is too high. It lights best with just a slight hiss. I still carry a lighter as a backup but I would do that with any stove.

Here is a review by a guy who claimed 16 days of cooking on one large canister. But YMMV.

Great Information Trailrunner thanks.

Yes, you understand perfectly. I have the Snowpeak Titanium 900 which is about 30 oz. Filling this up and bringing it to a boil should make two of the 2-serving Mountain House Freeze dried meals (~16 oz each).

Two canisters it is.

Are there any disposing restrictions on these canisters? I guess I could read up on it but I enjoy the interaction.

I also just received this stove and would like to know if it is compatible with any other brand fuel canisters? It reccomends using only Snow Peak brand but I doubt I'll find them at each re-stock area along the AT.

For another version of the windscreen, see:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/00041.html

I have made something similar, seems to work pretty well, although it is slowly being degraded by the heat (over about 3 years)

Don

No bad experiences for me. I enjoy mine.
I've calculated a 16oz. boil to consume 0.3 - 0.4oz of fuel. (I weighed the canister before the test, boiled, then weighed the canister after the test.) Fuel consumption would increase with crazy wind, of course, but I've gotten very consistent results over the past couple of years with this stove.

I just weighed a brand new, large (8oz.) MSR canister at 12.6oz. An empty canister is 4.7oz... so 7.9oz of fuel on my +/- 0.1 oz scale. 7.9oz/0.4oz per 16oz boil = 19.75 boils / 2 people = 9.875 boils per person. This is perhaps misleading though. Once those canisters near the end of their life (probably the last 25% of their life), they consume slightly more than 0.3oz - 0.4oz per boil.

One of the downfalls of canister stoves is lugging around the extra fuel and metal canister... you just have to make a personal decision on how much fuel you are willing to carry. I always lean on the safe side because a good boy scout is always prepared. *laughs to himself for those type of weighty compromises* As always YMMV (or in this case: YBPCMV -your boils per canister may vary).

Yes, other brands of screw-on canisters will work: MSR and JetBoil for sure, that I know of. Whether they will store inside a given pot depends on the canister; for example, the MSR canisters are wider than the Snow Peak, and will not fit into the smallest Snow Peak pots.

I say definitely get the Piezo. For the ounce or two it adds, it's a great time saver. My piezo stopped working after a few trips, and I brought it to REI to see if they could fix it and they replaced it. This one is working great! I recently got the above windscreen for it, and it seems to really help. the windscreen fits right in my AntiGravity Gear pot with the stove and extra lighter.

I have had a Giga for probably around 10 years and it's still going strong! Definately get the Piezo. In response to some of the other questions:
1) Fuel Consumption, I once read that a Large Cannister (220 grams) will boil around 24 to 28 liters of water (3 season high sierra trips). I've used this as a guide and found it to be an accurate reference. One other note, in addition to using some kind of windscreen, is keeping the Fuel warm, it will increase performance. I usually keep the stove in my tent and on cold mornings I'll even throw the cannister in my sleeping bag to warm it up before using.
2) Differenct Types of Fuel, I've used MSR and Primus without any problems or noticable differences.

Hi everyone,

Wanted to thank you all for the invaluable advice. I ended up going with the Titanium manual( no piezo ) version. Of course before reading the last two posts, but I wanted to get it before the weekend as we are heading out for some car camping and I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for some practice runs. Also picked up the windscreen and Titanium 900 ml pot.

You really can't go wrong, piezo or no piezo, as long as you get a good stove. I had a JetBoil that I liked well enough but it was piezo-challenged shall we say. When I finally decided to get a little canister stove, I seriously looked at the one you got but opted for the Brunton Talon. I didn't even consider the piezo on any of the stoves I looked at as a selling point, though, I had been manually lighting my JetBoil for long I just didn't care anymore! Congrats on your purchase and enjoy your trip!