Hey all,
This is the SimmerShield team dropping in to participate and answer questions and expand on some points. Consider this our “commercial disclaimer” as outlined in the forum rules.
James Marco: Interesting, but losses are still a problem along with awkward usability.
It is a bit fiddly, at the first few times you put it together. Once you spend some time with it, it’s pretty quick and easy.
James Marco: The heat shield WILL get HOT.
We recommend running the burner at quite a low output for best efficiency. At those throttle settings the shield doesn’t get too hot. You can poke at it to adjust it while it’s running without burning your fingers. Because the shield is so thin, there just isn’t much thermal mass; you can comfortably grab the shield wall to remove it from the cup immediately after turning off the burner.
David Thomas: I saw that 13.5 liters boiled with 4 ounces butane claim in their Reddit post and I’ll wait till someone confirms it independently. They claimed “twice the efficiency” and I’m not seeing it, unless they get to use a low throttle, indoor, no wind, 70F water and the benchmark is outdoor, wind, 32F water and full throttle.
The 13.5L number comes from our “Perfect” condition lab testing, so yeah the big numbers are low throttle, indoor, and 50F water. The other systems (benchmarks) are under the exact same conditions.
We tested to simulate both dead calm and windy conditions. The “windy” test consisted of a fairly powerful box fan pointing at the stoves, with a wind-block in between. The intent was to simulate windy conditions where you are able to partially shelter the system behind a log or similar object. Under these conditions, we boiled about 10L of water with our system, and about 5L of water with a conventional canister burner. That’s where the “twice the efficiency” claim comes from.
We can now offer some better real-world data. This past summer we spent about two months hiking in the Canadian Rockies with our SimmerShield, tracking data the whole time. In those conditions (cool ambient temps, plenty of wind, very cold source water, etc) we were consistently able to heat a bit more than 11L of water per 4oz fuel canister.
bradmacmt: Just get a Jetboil…
These are good products, but are meaningfully different than our system. They are are faster and (arguably) a bit easier to set up. SimmerShield is lighter and more compact. The efficiency levels are pretty similar, maybe a little bit better for our system.
John: the terrible BRS stove.
Haha, yeah the BRS by itself isn’t the best burner out there, especially in windy conditions. However in our system it works just fine; any other option would be bigger and heavier with no compensating upside.
Thank you to Doug Coe for posting here about our little product. We meant to get back to this earlier but it’s been a busy summer and we’re doing this as a hobby. One of our goals was to avoid car-style advertising and just tell people the facts and see if they like it. Let us know if you have any other questions :)
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