Jetboil Helios… extremely slow?

Haven't had a problem with Helios performance. Generally about 3-4 minutes to boil 1 to 1.5 liters at 20 F, though I generally don't time it exactly. Only one I've tried that's comparable is a Primus Eta Power set that's slightly faster. Both have been great.

I have loved my Helios… used it for years in base camps.

12 minutes for 1.5l does seem a weebit long though.

At those temps…. was the canister super cold? In a beer cossie? In a small pan of water? Did you have the canister inverted?

Hi Stephen

> in about 12 minutes
Sounds a bit too slow to me. You may have a blockage somewhere – try cleaning the jet and maybe the needle valve. Not sure whether you can extract the valve though.

Cheers

Last night, canister had been sitting in my garage, which is detached from the house and uninsulated. So canister was presumably same as ambient air temperature (35ºF). No cozy, no water, yes inverted.

I took Roger's advice to dismantle the stove and clean the needle valve per Jetboil's instructions. On visual inspection I am not seeing anything that causes me to believe it is blocked.

Tested it again tonight. Milder weather, about 45ºF tonight. Canister was sitting inside my house this time so that was strongly in its favor. I noticed this time it had a bit of a flare up before the stove got warmed up.

I neglected to time it exactly but I did keep an eye on my watch. I'm estimating it's about 5-7 minutes this time for 1.5L. Not unacceptable, but again it had the advantage of a warmer canister.

Even with nearly double improvement over last night, it seems fairly slow.

I'm going up to the mountains on Thursday night so I have a few more days to futz around with it but otherwise I'm going to have to fall back on my trusty Whisperlite.

>>> 5-7 minutes

That seems more in-line with what you should be expecting from the Helios.

Gotta remember, that is one huge freaking pot and getting it up to boil temps doesn’t happen anywhere near as fast as the regular jetboil sol systems.

The Helios really excels at just being a snow boiler… just turn it on low-to-medium, load it up with snow, and let it sit there all day long with somebody constantly feeding it more snow.

I used it a few times for actually cooking food and found it to be pretty bad at doing that. But feed it snow and it’ll go all day without any issues.

It will be interesting to see how the new Jetboil Joule is going to preform.

Tested it today. Nothing changed, except that I left the canister and the whole rig put together outside overnight. 45º outside today.

I timed it. 13 minutes to boil 1.5L.

Twice the flame went out completely — once at the 2 minute mark and the other at the 13 minutes mark. I had the valve open to almost full bore and there was zero wind. When I held the lighter above the stove (well above a normal flame) I had blue flames briefly, making me suspect that the gas velocity might have gone too high.

I assumed it has some kind of pressure-regulator valve but if the gas velocity is too high it's not working properly.

Oh Dear – I forgot. It's a hot summer here, but you are in winter. Your canister may have been a bit too cold to run upright. Of course, if you were ryng to run with it inverted, then something is seriously wrong. What happens if you try to use it inside where it is warm – in the kitchen maybe?

Otherwise, it sounds as though running it back to the store might be the simplest solution.

Cheers