Alcohol Stoves a fire hazard?

On my recent hike on the Bibbulmun Track here in Western Australia I spent two nights with an English backpacker (trailname TeaBags). He spoke to me about how he had hiked the triple crown in USA (although not in single season thruhikes). I'm not sure if it was the PCT or CDT but he told me how when camping a bit away from the border fence on his first night before starting the next day, he was using an MSR(?) multi fuel stove which had a pump mechanism to pressurise it. He didn't think it had started properly so he gave it some more pumps and the hose broke off spraying fuel everywhere. As a result he lost a lot of gear, had minor burns from frantic fire fighting efforts, spent many hours in custody and eventually escaped with a relatively minor fine, having burnt quite a few acres of land. He also had a few days setback to the start of his hike. He could have received major fines and been deported never to return to the USA. I don't think he's used a pressurised stove since.
It just proves that whatever your level of experience you have to be careful and make fire precaution part of your routine when using a stove. We have huge fire risks here (I am typing this in front of a fan as we have just tipped over 40 Celsius (104 Farenheit) at the moment. In my neck of the woods you just don't have fires for half the year. However on the Bib facilities such as picnic tables etc are good enough that you don't have any problem with using any kind of fuel stove at a hut. Just don't try and have one on the side of the track and have a ranger catch you.

I would concur things can get out of hand with fire very quickly. Alcohol stoves are popular on long distance hikes including the PCT. In Southern California, where much of the PCT terrain is hot and dry, the threat of a large wildfire increases exponentially.

In regards to PCT hikers, I would guess that the problem derives partially from the general inexperience of such hikers using alcohol stoves. I think a lot of hikers show up at the border with new stoves they haven't ever used, having been told that this is the "right way" to hike the trail. Case in point: in 2009, a couple of very nice guys who clearly were completely new to the wonders of alcohol stoves were attempting to cook. Well, the one guy hadn't used to the stove before, and he didn't see a flame after striking a match. Assuming that there wasn't fuel in the stove, he poured more alcohol into what was a lit stove. The flame went right back into his alcohol bottle, making him the proud owner of a Malotov cocktail. Under duress, he tossed the bottle away from the two of them.

The temps were in the 90s in a scrubby high desert area. Yet, as if only by divine providence, the bottle rolled into what could only be described as a tiny trickle of water from a natural spring, thus preventing what would have most likely turned into a wildfire.

Scary stuff.

Dirk

Again,

Alcohol is miscible with water: why wouldn't you put the fire out? I've extinguished a stove under test with water.

Can't water count as an off switch?

Surely you shouldn't use any stove where the ground is so combustable, if knocked over, a fire will spread faster than it can be put out, thus all stoves should be banned except on non-combustable ground.

It's really super windy on the PCT in Southern California and alcohol stoves don't have enough weight to hold themselves down. There were many evenings on the PCT I was afraid to use my stove. There are a lot of hikers from wetter climates who have absolutely no idea how easily the So Cal vegetation will catch on fire. Their ignorance is shocking to me, but they've never experienced a climate like this before.

Hiking the PCT I never caught the forest on fire, but I caught the duff on fire. My ignorance was of wetter climes. I thought that was dirt, but I learned it's just pulverized rotten trees and it catches fire really easily. A few dinners were interrupted by a fire that had to be put out with a liter of water until I figured this out. And once my stove behaved oddly and shot out a huge plume of flames straight up. Never did that before or since. I was afraid to pour any water on it and thought it would be best to let it simply burn out. Had a breeze picked up, there may have been a huge fire by Jackson Meadow Reservoir that night. And one time the mosquitoes were driving me so crazy to distraction that I knocked the stove over.

They are pretty dangerous in my opinion.

There may not be much that can be done about newbies showing up at the trailhead with gear they've never used before – but why isn't the trick of adding some salt to the alcohol in order to produce a visible flame more widely touted? Why don't sites that sell or promote the use of alcohol stoves ever mention this trick? It's certainly not hard to implement: when you buy your bottle of HEET at the convenience store, just pick up a single-serving salt packet too. Pour the salt into the HEET bottle and shake it before you use the fuel for the first time, and now you have a yellow flame. No more guessing as to whether or not the stove's burning. Not hard to do at all, and while it doesn't solve the problem of knocking over the stove, it might prevent a few accidents of the sort Dirk Rabdau mentioned.

(Adding a drop or two of green or blue food coloring is a good idea as well – it makes it less likely that the alcohol will be confused with water. But that's a harder thing to implement while out on a trail. Food coloring's not a staple item. Small salt packets, though are pretty widely available; every fast food joint has them!)

What effect would a steady diet of salted alcohol have on the stove? I suspect it might increase corrosion – aluminum does corrode on bikes and bike parts near the ocean here, unless protected from some sort of coating. How fast would a stove corrode? Does anyone know?

If you knock a canister stove over it could light a combustable floor (will probably flare): then you have flames around a canister (which you don't want to overheat), you will bravely have to reach to turn off stove, then bravely try water (cold water against hot canister…..). Similarly a remote canister stove could flip, gas hose catch etc.

White gas/kerosene stoves, as above but you can't extinguish a petrol/oil fire with water:
a USA Class B fire extinguisher would be quite heavy…

They are many kinds of alcohol burner and stove of varying stability and weights: eg Trangia 27 is very stable. What about wick filled stoves.

Surely, the problem is the very combustable surface, which should preclude use of any stove. All stoves are dangerous.

Should the forest dept not engage in education about where to site stoves, the pros and cons of different fuels, and what to do in case of a mishap.)

Well, like I said I was there when that PCT fire was burning and I know the guy who started it. Like automobiles, alcohol stoves can be both potentially dangerous and useful. I use alcohol stoves and will keep doing so, I'll just be extremely careful to the point of not using them at all under some conditions.

One thing that bites people on the PCT is that fire conditions are often orders of magnitude more dangerous on the PCT than they typically are on the AT, for example. Conditions are much more important than the type of stove used when it comes to risk.

Any fire source can start a wildfire. Dryness, steepness, fine fuels and wind all increase the risk, as do alcohol stoves. All these risk factors were present when that PCT fire started.

I'm sure adding salt to the alcohol will eventually corrode the stove, and so the stove should be checked regularly and replaced when corrosion becomes evident. Cat food cans are cheap, though, so I don't see that as a huge drawback. ;-)

I think Alan and Bruce together have gotten to the heart of the matter. In high-fire-danger situations, ALL stoves are dangerous! Singling out alcohol stoves as uniquely problematic doesn't make much sense. Better to educate the general public (including hikers) on how to safely use stoves in the backcounty, and ban the use of ANY flame in especially dry conditions. (I have every confidence in my ability to burn down thousands of acres with a "safe" Pocket Rocket should I knock it over, never mind the fact that it has a shut-off valve. In really dry conditions, the solution is just to go stoveless.)

In the video, Rabbit said that the great alcohol stove fire was "an accident that could happen to anybody", and "we just all need to be more careful"… as he sat a table lit by the open flame of a candle. O.K. Rabbit, I'll be careful but you be careful too, pal. Too many restaurants have burned to the ground from tabletop candle accidents.
I've gone up to two weeks eating cold food with no huge urge to light a fire. Very easy to plan and carry out especially when I know that the winds in the Sandhills can blow at 30-40 mph for days on end. If you set anything on the ground, it WILL blow away.

All stoves are fire hazards if not used properly.

I can think of many inexperienced Whisperlite users back in the day who nearly set the woods on fire. (Or, in my case, nearly gave the family dog a heart attack when I used it on our patio when I first bought one. :D)

Inexperience and/or carelessness make all stoves a fire hazard.

In the interest of full disclosure, I learned the "salt trick" from someplace on the internet before my PCT hike.
Could have been PCT-L.
The amount of salt needed to make an alcohol flame visible yellow is seriously small.
When i said a "pinch" I meant an actual pinch between my thumb and fore-finger added to 8 ounces of alcohol.
Here is how it worked for me logistically:
I carried my aluminum Caldera H 12-10 stove for 1,094 miles of my 2665 mile PCT hike. From the Mexican Border to Echo Lake, until i swapped it for a Brass Trangia 28.
At resupply towns I would refill my alcohol supply for the next stretch. This usually meant 8-12 ounces of denatured alcohol or yellow HEET.
I carried my alcohol fuel in a 1 liter platypus bladder during that time.
I added a pinch of salt occasionally, when it occurred to me.
The residual salt in my fuel bladder between fill ups was enough so that my stove always burned yellow.
Here is what a 12-10 alcohol stove looks like that has been burning salted alcohol for 1,094 miles or from April 17 to July 4th.
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I also continued to use the salt trick with my Trangia 28 ,which is made of brass, from Echo lake to Canada.
Here is a picture of that stove.
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Here is a picture of my Trangia burning Plain Yellow Heet:
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Here is My Trangia burning the same HEET with 15 grains of table salt added:
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I just ran this test.
I fired up the Trangia with plain old Yellow HEET, took the picture, and snuffed it.
Then I added exactly 15 grains of ordinary table salt to the existing fuel in the stove, sloshed it around a bit, fired up the stove and took the picture.
Granted my 8 year old digital camera bracketed the two exposures a bit differently but i think you can still see that much more of the flame is visible after the salt is added.
This was only 15 tiny grains of Morton salt from a shaker added to 1 ounce of fuel.
I was adding a lot more than this out on the trail.
My original purpose was different than forest fire safety.
I did it because i did not like burning the hairs off my arms with invisible flames while lighting and priming my stove.
I think that was the original reason salting alcohol was suggested but i would have to go back and search the PCT-L archives.
This could be a helpful trick to those new to alcohol stoves the way i was. It just needs to somehow be spread into the collective conscious of hikers.
I actually had the perfect opportunity with Yogi's new PCT guide book but it slipped my mind.
DOH! and DOH!!

Thanks, Matthew! I'm impressed – the stoves look to be in great condition. Salt is indeed a trick worth using.

I felt sure enough to post over on PCT-L.
There could be a corrosion hazard to using salt but for the average lifespan of a stove it seems negligible.
If some hiker did get a hole in their aluminum can it would simply leak alcohol and they would replace it.
I recognize the risk and deemed that the greater good was to go ahead and try to make hikers, and particularly PCT'ers new to alky stoves, aware of the issue.
There is still some doubt in my mind regarding the long term use of salted alcohol and the possibility of a stove leaking due to a corosion induced hole.
The thing is that alcohol is either burned up or evaporates so that the salt/alcohol solution is never in contact with the aluminum stove for a great length of time the way it would be with salt water for example.
Still, I am taking a risk by spreading the word though based only on my own observations.
I think I will go ahead and set up some long term testing of aluminum and alcohol to see if i can corrode a hole.
I know I have 80 days on Brass and Aluminum.
The Trangia spent the whole time wet because it has a cap but it is made of brass.
The Trail Designs 12-10 was always dry since it has no lid.
What i need to figure out, or simulate, is how many cycles of wet and dry using salted alcohol it would take to corrode the aluminum to failure.
Clearly it is more than 80 cycles.
Now i need to figure out a way to compress the amount of time it would take to do the test in a way that still yields valid results for the real world.
Hmmm…

P.S. They are already running with the ball over on PCT-L.
Let us hope this dry year brings a safe and un-eventful fire season on the PCT.

Incredible! In scarcely an hour someone comes forward with this: http://hikethru.com/hiking-information/backyard-science/alcohol-stove

The internet is mighty indeed!

Interesting, if brief, article. I note that he says that the salt will stay in the stove after burning (burning it dry, I assume?) as the salt does not dissolve well in alcohol.

Matthew, I don't see any evidence of salt encrustations on your stoves. Have you seen any?

I have tossed a flaming ball of stove out of my tent when my old primus stove overpressured and gas was flowing down the outside of the stove. That was in the 1970s.

I lent my MSR Dragonfly stove to my son and his scout buddies, and when they pumped it up gas shot everywhere, and his hand was a fireball and the pump of the stove melted.

I had a student have trouble installing a Bluet gas cartridge on his Bluet burner, and it went up in a fireball that burned my eyebrows and singed my fleece jacket.

I have seen plenty of canister stoves kicked over accidentally.

I woke one night in a windstorm, and a 40 foot tongue of flame was flowing past my tent about 10' away. The wind was blowing a zillion sparks out of the "dead" fire pit where a camp fire had been lit. Luckily the sparks didn't get a flame going and we got the coals flooded with water.

I have never kicked over my Caldera stove, but its always a potential hazard. I would say esbit tablets would have less risk of having an accident, but that is one form of fuel I have never used. One has to be careful with all types of stoves and fires.

@ Stephen, The Trangia has a little bit of white residue around the burner holes that could be salt. The Caldera 12-10 shows no sign of any salt corrosion at all.
@ Bob, True words! I agree that any stove has the potential to injure or start a forest fire.
There is a difference between having fuel contained in a sealed canister and having a jet of flame controlled by a needle and having 2 ounces of fuel wide open and on fire.
Hey i am an alcohol stove user too. I have two of them.
The fact remains that i could punt my MSR XGK canister while lit and it might shoot a jet of flame into the brush and start a point source fire.
If i kick my Caldera or Trangia i have 2 ounces of burning alcohol spreading invisible flames over a wide area.
Actually i have an experiment for folks to try.
Go out into the middle of a concrete driveway and light 2 ounces of salted alcohol in a cup on fire.
Now tip the cup over with a stick.. but stand back!
The spilled alcohol explodes into flame as it all trys to burn simulteneously.
The combination of heated alcohol that already wants to vaporize with the sudden liberation from the container allows all of it to oxidize immediately.
It is hard to describe the intense blast of heat that accompanies a burning alcohol spill.
You have to experience this first hand and i am not so sure folks new to alcohol stoves have.
I know i was totally un-aware of the potential until I spilled my own alky stove.
People have malfunctions with modern canister stoves too but the fuel canister actually exploding is unheard of.

I've heard a few third-hand stories about fuel canisters exploding, but those cases all seemed to involve serious misuse (like putting the stove inside a tall, tight windscreen which caused the canister to severely overheat). Back to that education thing again…

I think I'm going to follow your advice, and deliberately set my alcohol stove up in my driveway and tip it over just to see firsthand what happens. No doubt the results will drive home in a visceral way that I MUST be careful with my stove when I'm actually using it on the trail!

Yes, an uncontained liquid will always have potential to be a fire hazard. A saving grace for a Caldera stove is its darn hard to kick over. It has a little lip around the bottom which is handy for preheating the stove in cold weather, and it is a great stabilizer also. Plus its inside a protective windscreen, so its about as save as liquid alcohol could be. I doubt that one could tip it over with a kick on a driveway. Its just going to scoot along, but if its super full it might slosh a little alcohol out.

The only thing putting salt in your alcohol is going to do is make the flame visible. That might help keep you from burning your hand but it won't prevent the stove from blowing over in the wind, being knocked over by accident or catching fire to the stuff it's sitting on.

The best thing to do is to always have some food in your pack you can eat instead of a hot dinner just in case conditions are bad for cooking. Even just switch places between dinner and lunch or dinner and breakfast.

I have never had an accident with any kind of stove. But then I am one to follow directions and maintain them.

I noticed the "problem" with alcohol being invisible years ago when I read about using it to prime a Svea 123. No problems, but I noticed some had overflowed the priming pan a little (it was at night) and saw it catch on the area just outside the priming bowl. I had noticed I could not see the flame in daylight. So after a couple of times, I went back to priming with white gas. I have never knocked over any of my stoves.

My first alcohol stove was a Caledera Cone, which is pretty darn hard to knock over.

A lot this is inexperienced users. And that is where the Internet entices people to hop on the PCT, when they have little experience.

I once made the stupid mistake of using an aluminum windscreen with a canister stove. I didn't know enough to realize how dangerous it was. When I started unscrewing the stove, gas spewed out of the canister. It turns out I had melted the self-sealing valve, and I didn't know anything to do but to sit there and watch from a distance as the canister emptied itself. We were very lucky something worse didn't happen. In a dry environment, it could have been nasty.

As it was, I learned a very important lesson. If you factor in inexperience and ignorance I can't see how an alcohol stove could be significantly more dangerous than any other kind, especially if you're using a Caldera Cone where stability is a major part of the design purpose.

Many of the National Forests on the PCT only allow portable stoves using gas, jellied petroleum or pressurized liquid fuel with a valid campfire permit.

It seems to me that an alcohol stove doesn't fit into any of the permissible categories since the liquid fuel is not pressurized.

F.R., I don't think that you've been following this discussion in parallel threads. We discussed what the national forest restrictions really mean and what is really allowed.

–B.G.–

Apparently Yosemite has clarified how they feel about alcohol stoves:

"As of July 15, 2014, fires in the wilderness are prohibited below 6,000 feet, except for fires in portable stoves using pressurized gas, liquid fuel, propane, or alcohol. Twig stoves are not allowed below 6,000 feet. This restriction is due to hire [sic] fire danger."

This is now exactly how SEKI words their restrictions as well, which are nice and clear.