esbit stove

About the same, unless you start with snow-melt!

Well….technically less. Since the boiling point of water goes down in temperature the higher you go in altitude….it will take less energy to reach "boiling".

One question….are you using a GramCracker? We have seen better performance than 1.25 tabs on 2 cups with the GC. Closer to 3/4 of a tab with cool river water and both wings in place.

Rand

Just got back from our trip in the Winds. Using the gram cracker and caldera cone I averaged just over 1 1/4 tablets
for a nearly full SUL 1100. My only problem was difficulty
starting the esbit tabs at times. I was really happy with the esbit tabs as it was my 1st time using them.

Hi Rand

> Well….technically less. Since the boiling point of water goes down in temperature the higher you go in altitude….it will take less energy to reach "boiling".
Well… using extensive calculations on one of NASA's supercomputers, it is possible to show that the drop in boiling point due to altitude is almost exactly matched by the drop in the starting temperature of the water … :-)

I was bailing snow melt out of a creek in the mountains a few days ago. That water was colder than the local 'cool river water'!

The coffee tasted good, but it sure cooled faster.

Rand,

I am very impressed with this setup as I returned with extra esbits from my 4 day bushwhacking trip. Bravo on such a versatile and efficient design. It achieved two near boils from one esbit tab with the snow peak solo setup. I did not measure the water temp, but the air temp was in the mid 30's and water was taken from area creeks.

Since this was my first esbit trip, I cheated and used a very small dab of fire paste to help light the esbit. (Packaged in a small balm container-just remember not to put on your lips)

You may have more customers comming your way as they were impressed too.

Dave

I like the idea of fire paste. I was going to stay w/ the REI storm matches on my future trips.

1 1/4 tabs (assuming they are the 14g or half ounce tabs) is very impressive for boiling what I am guessing was ~1 litre of water. That's less than 20g or 0.6 oz per litre!! I have seen similarly good fuel economy with this setup. I carry a small squirt bottle of methanol to get the tabs going, and use two tabs at a time, then blow them out and reuse the leftovers for my next boil. Very efficinet!

I recently tried a butane lighter I picked up off a gimme card at a convenience store: a refillable blow-torch lighter that starts Esbit easily under the nastiest conditions – even restarting reused tabs that have collected moisture.