Stove Newbie Question: Vargo Triad vs Jetboil

>"Vargo Triad vs Jetboil"

Uh… It is impossible to compare these two with the same weights and measures because they are completely different.

Nothing wrong with your math as far as I can see. But if instead of your jetboil you used a small cannister stove that weighs 2 or 3 ounces you would obviously save even more weight.

I thought about that a while ago.

With my Snow Peak 700 weighing 4.25, a Gigapower stove at 3.75 (3.25 sans piezo), and the 110g canister at 6.8, I would save 6.2 ounces but would lose the insulated mug.

It is tempting, and if I went with a Lightmax at only 1.9 ounces…

I have never found an insulated mug worth while. My coffee is usually too hot!

The Jetboil is a triumph of marketing over rational design. yes, efficient, for sure – but also slow and very heavy.

Cheers

I think your math is along the right lines. There comes a certain point where the amount of alcohol required causes even the lightest alcohol stove to be heavier as a system when compared to a canister stove + fuel. I usually figure about 5 person days; you're coming up with 4. That sounds about right.

For some of us at least, time is also a factor. For solo trips, an alcohol stove is fine. With two, you can get by; I can go either way although I lean toward the canister stove. For 3 or more persons, I definitely prefer a canister stove.

As Roger points out, a simple upright canister stove is lighter than a Jetboil, but if you've already got a Jetboil…

#0: Math error

Right way to think about it.. but there is a math error.

12 cups per day requires 4.8oz of fuel. Remember the .8 was for 2 cups not one. So the number is more like 4 days with a partner and 8 days solo before there is a cross over. At some point you will need another canister which could push the crossover point out even further.

I don’t recall how many boils the Jetboil can get out of a canister. My Snowpeak Gigi Power could give me 7 1L boils reliably from 7oz canister in my typical alpine conditions.

#1: real world might make the triad less efficient

You should expect that in the most real world conditions (more wind, colder air temps, colder water, murphy) the Triad will use more fuel than you test. There are stoves that are more fuel efficient than the Triad… some will have even slower boil times.

#2: There are more efficient alcohol (and esbits) stoves

There are stoves that are more fuel efficent than the triad. With a stove/pot system than can weight less than 5oz… alcohol can be the lightest weight system for any number of days. If you aren’t in a rush, the ion stove systems which can boil 2 cups on .3-.5oz of fuel. Of course, this stove is even slower than your experience… 15 minutes for the boil. There are other high efficient stoves which are faster. There are people who report getting 2 cups to boil using just .25oz of esbits (I have never been able to get these results… the best I have seen is .5oz of esbits in an UL Caldera Cone + gram cracker stove to boil 2 cups).

#3 too much weight removes fuel efficiency advantage for a typical trip

I haven’t run tests, but several others have comparing the more fuel efficient jetboil to an efficient canister with life weight pot. They found that it was numerous weeks before the jetboil was a better options.

#4 doing more than 2 cups at a time can change things

I found that when doing larger amounts of water (>=1L) that the canister stoves start to pull away. First, there is the practice issue of how long it takes to boil with alcohol. The other issue is that when boiling a large amount of water there are forces that are cooling the water at the same time you are heating it. Sometimes the cooling is sufficient to keep the alcohol stove from efficiently finishing the task while the canister is generating enough BTUs to achieve a boil. On group trips I take a canister.

#5 Don’t forget total carry weight

Not only should you think about day one carry weight, but you should also see what happens when you sum over each days carry weight. You will find stove weight can have a significant impact. There are a couple of web pages that attempt to explore this. such as thru hikers 14 days and hj’s stove calculator

–mark

Re: efficiency, my Ti-Tri uses less than 0.5oz of alcohol. With just a bit more tweaking, I'm pretty sure it'll be using ~.35oz (or, now is easily 15ml, expect down to 10 or 12ml).

Second point, Jetboil is a heavy overall system weight. In other words, if you find that after 8 days it works out better in terms of fuel efficiency, well, you'd have a system that weighs an ounce or two less for a couple days, then you'll spend about a week carrying the extraneous weight of the JB. Those steel fuel canisters aren't light.

Stock Jetboil weighs 15oz, plus around 3oz or so for empty fuel (IIRC). Roughly 18oz for Jetboil. Ti-Tri w/Evernew Ti pot, fuel bottle weighs ~6.5 oz.

If you assumed that I boiled 2 pints a day, I'd have to burn roughly 1 fl oz of alcohol, which weighs ~0.8oz. So to make up for the difference in weight (18oz vs 6.5oz), I'd have to boil 0.8oz/day x 14 days= 11.2 (mass) oz with the Ti-Tri to even get to the Jetboil base weight, not including fuel for the Jetboil. That doesn't even include the weight of fuel for the Jetboil. For me, there's just no comparison. (Edit: FWIW, a pint boils in ~6 min in the Ti-Tri IIRC.)

Fuel efficiency increases when boiling larger quantities of water. Fuel consumption isn't linear; if I boil 1 pint with my Caldera it takes ~15ml of fuel, but if I boil 2 pints it doesn't take 30ml, it takes more like 25ml. At least in my experience…

This then goes into the idea that doing several boils in the smaller Jetboil "pot" will be somewhat less efficient than boiling all the water at once… but if you went with the Group Jetboil system, then the weight goes up even more.

> Fuel efficiency increases when boiling larger quantities
> of water. Fuel consumption isn't linear

Good to know that the caldera cone is up to doing larger amounts of water. There are some stoves that don't generate enough heat for larger amounts of water and become less efficient.

–Mark

"Good to know that the caldera cone is up to doing larger amounts of water."

Yes, when I originally tested the Caldera system against other systems, I used 5 cups as my benchmark as this is what we often boil in the real world. I noticed I got much better fuel efficiency at 5 cups (per cup), and also eventually discovered that if I over-filled the stove for two cups of water (ie added say 30mls then boiled two cups) and then snuffed the stove and recovered the unused fuel, I also got better fuel efficiency. So it would appear that the Caldera system is actually more efficient, fuel wise, for larger volumes. Note that all my tests were done in a 2 litre pot, and I suspect that the larger surface area of the pot bottom was part of the increased fuel efficiency (as judged by tests with other stoves). So not sure if this would apply to 700ml systems or not.

http://www.zenstoves.net

I am now using the short Caldera cone with 4-gram esbit tabs and the BPL 550 ml titanium cup.

I can efficiently boil 2 cups of water with 8 grams of esbit — sufficient to my needs. Even at 12 cups of water, that still comes to less than 2 oz of esbit per day, a pretty low number.

Stargazer

I'm surprised Roger didn't cite his article in this Ezine:

"Heat Exchange Stove Shootout"

Which pretty much proved that the heat exchanger stoves' excessive weight negates their fuel efficiency gains. You might check out the video archive at minibulldesign.com. There's some info thereabout vastly reducing the weight of a jetboil system for those who have moderate metal working skills and tools. The above reference to zenstoves.net is spot on. There's a wealth of backpacking stove information there.

If you really want weight reduction, buy or build one of the ultra-light leave-no-trace wood stove designs. My cooking solution weighs 4.5 oz. and remains virtually constant over the duration of a week long hike.

Hi Keith

No point in citing it: trooper doesn't have a subscription so he couldn't read the article.

Cheers

Comparing the Vargo to the Jetboil is like comparing a VW to a Porsche. Plus the Vargo is extremely inefficient.
I use alcohol based stoves: lots to choose from, there's Whitebox, Brasslite, Starlyte, all of which are very good stoves, extremely light and quite efficient.

"No point in citing it: trooper doesn't have a subscription so he couldn't read the article."–Caffin

…Made me chuckle because I thought the same thing. One day I'll have a subscription. It is just a matter of time.

I have read over your website comparing stoves and fuels though. After reading it and some calculations of my own I've decided to keep the Vargo for short solo trips, but the best balance of convenience and weight for my needs is going to be:

Snow Peak Litemax at 1.9 ounces coupled with my titanium 700ml mug at 4.25 ounces and a 3 ounce canister for a total of 9.15 ounces. This cuts my Jetboil weight almost in half. The only additional cost will be the stove and a mug for my wife.

So, can you cook in this or will it ruin the color?

Hi Lapsley

> the Vargo is extremely inefficient.
Where did you get that idea from?
—-
Edit: my bad – I was thinking of the Jet-Ti, not the Triad!
—-

If you read Part 2 of the Stove Shootout series you will find actual measurements which show that the Jet-Ti is one of the MORE efficient of upright canister stoves.

And all canister stoves use less fuel by weight than alcohol stoves – that’s inherent in the nature (chemistry) of the fuels.

Cheers

Hi Trooper

Tall narrow mugs are not the most efficient of pots. The bigger the diameter the more efficient in fact.

Cooking in a blue mug shouldn't damage the colour (much) as long as you have water in the mug.

Cheers

Roger,

I haven't done any testing, so I wouldn't dare disagree on height versus diameter. However, it does seem counterintuitive. If we had two vessels that of adequate diameter to receive the brunt of the stove's energy, and the only difference is one was taller, why would it be less efficient?

Is this a better one? I'm still trying to figure out this html code…

I think the issue is that adequate diameter is wider than you think it is. You don't want to absorb "brunt of the stove's energy"… you want to absorb every little bit. Even if the flames aren't going up the side, a bunch of heat can be escaping. My non exhaustive testing found that my short Evernew .9l pot was about 20% more energy efficient than any of the narrower pots I tried with stoves that had fairly narrow flames (e.g. the flames did not go up the sides of the smaller pots)… but clearly the heat was.

–Mark

Mark is right. It isn't the height per se but the base diameter which counts. However, base area times height gives volume…

Cheers

Solo thru hike…maybe go alcohol? If short distance or sharing with 2 or more…go Jetboil. Share the weight, carry a couple oz. less water per person. Is french press coffee a priority? Do whatever floats your boat (less weight or luxuries) and enjoy.

"> the Vargo is extremely inefficient.
Where did you get that idea from?"

I think he was referring to the Vargo alcohol stove.