Please critique the safety aspects of my setup for cooking in the tent

PostedSep 27, 2009 at 10:14 pm

Heading to New Zealand with a new tent and a new stove…looking for feedback on how safe my proposed system for cooking under the outer (fly) is. Seems well-ventilated to me, but I am worried about carbon monoxide, and I have no experience in this area.

Things to know before looking at the pics:

– I'm used to Esbit under the stars in the desert, so I really have no experience with remote-canister stoves, cooking under cover, or with this new tent.

– stove is an MSR WindPro
– pot is Evernew 1.3L
– windguard will be pulled tighter to pot than in pics, about 1/2-inch to 1-inch gap
– fuel will be NZ equivalent of MSR IsoPro 220g

– morning cooking is bringing 1L of water to a boil (coffee for 2)
– evening cooking is the same (tea for 2), as well as bringing a small quantity of water to a boil for a dehydrated meal (twice)
– no other cooking

– tent is a Macpac Celeste
– two doors
– two exterior vents
– six sides, more or less (see pics)
– pitches outer-first, inner easily hung from within when ready

– NZ trip from November thru late-March
– assume at least 1/3 of cooking will be in significant rain, more if we're unlucky

– all pics are in "battened down" mode; the zipped doors could obviously go higher in light precipitation, but I need to guage the safety in a worst-case scenario.

Finally, since we'll mainly be camping low, near water (i.e. river valleys, flats, etc), not on the tops, I'll guess this means not much wind, so let's figure there's no helpful breezes to assist ventilation.

OK — a tour of the inside first:

1) Below you see half of my side of the tent. The pack would be thicker with more stuff in it, but otherwise this is the view to my right.

2) Below you see the other (left) half of my side of the tent. I would be sitting on the Z-Rest. That's the tent inner folded behind me, ready for later. The orange dry sack is a stand-in for my wife's boots.

3) Now we're looking across at my wife's half of the tent. The blue dry sack is a food bag. The red Compack Chair represents where my wife would be sitting. The NeoAir stands in for my wife's ULA pack, and the stuff on top of that would be another food bag & her stuff.

4) Continuation of the slightly chopped view above.

5) I forgot to measure how high the ceiling is, but I'm about 6'0" and can easily sit where the pot is without brushing my head on the inner, much less on the outer. And I don't have to slouch to do it either. I am hopeful this is enough clearance. I have played briefly with cranking up the MSR, and holding my hands out over the pot — no significant heat is felt at all at just a foot or two above the pot. Anyway, the pic below is the best I have at conveying the ceiling height. FYI I had not yet staked out the vent…

6) Below is an interior pic of the door to my right, when battened down.

7) Below is the same door from the exterior. The triangular opening is about a foot high at the apex, 1.5 feet long on the sides, and about 2.5 feet across the bottom.

8) Below is an interior pic of the door to my left, when battened down.

9) Below is the same door from the exterior. Forgot to measure, but the interior layout allows this door to be a bit more open.

10) There are two identical vents. Below is an interior shot of one of them. The rectangular mesh dimensions are approximately 6" x 18"

11) However, the vents are more constricted on the exterior. Below is a shot up & into the outer 'scoop' of the vent; this scoop is about 10" wide, and only about 3" high at it's short apex.

12) Below is another exterior shot of the vent-scoop; there's an identical one on the other side.

13) Finally, we'll finish with a quick tour of the exterior at ground level. These dimensions will vary with the pitching & terrain, but in this case we've got: Below you see that side-1 was about 2" high all the way across…