I was happy to see that MSR has taken seriously the design flaw of too close of pot clearance.
This causes premature cooling of the flame and the carbon monoxide from the first stage of combustioon will be less inclined to pick up another oxygen to make carbon dioxide.
Yep.
However I have noted in the past that even an empty, or jammed BIC lighter will still spark adequately to light a compressed gas stove.
Yep.
BUT saying that the piezo is so much faster than flicking my BIC that it saves fuel is really stretching it.
That's not quite what I'm saying. I'm saying with a piezo, you can start with the pot in place. You can't with a conventional Bic type lighter. You will definitely save
some gas by starting ignition with the pot in place. Will this savings be meaningful in any practical way? Probably not, but I can't say for sure. Depends a lot on the style of the person. But probably not.
You want real world testing? Go outside in a snowstorm and test your stoves, or maybe a cold windy day with the sprinklers turned on. Most all stove/pan/windscreen testing is done in really nice weather. I've seen cold windy winter weather where if you didn't dig a small snow cave for your stove and pot, you didn't cook. It can take as much as ten times longer to heat water in cold and wind, especially with an inadequate heat source. THE LARGER THE HEAT OUTPUT, THE LESS FUEL IS WASTED TO THE ENVIRONMENT.
Absolutely true. A stove that might be very efficient in fair weather can be useless in foul. Would that I could command the weather to precise specifications for testing, but I cannot. I would have liked to have climbed higher yesterday to test the piezo at greater altitude, but I ran out of mountain and didn't have time to do another. 8038' and cold but (relatively) calm will have to suffice.
By the way, as the fuel in a cannister is consmed the volume of gas above the liquid increases. The vaporising gas from the liquid enters this space and has to bounce around until it finds the output of the bottle. This essentially lowers the effective gas pressure and this is why you always have use a fresh full fuel cannister to take data.
Jim
Which is one reason why you won't see my trying to publish precise figures for boil times, heating efficiency, etc.
My blog is just a hobby, and I'm already spending too much time on it as it is. If this were my living, that'd be different, but this is just for fun.
I do hope I am able to convey the sense of the stove even though the time I can allocate is limited.
HJ
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