The Joule Thief: Yet Another HX Pot

[Roger Caffin]

INcreases boil time?
or
DEcreases boil time?

Cheers

[bradmacmt]

My huge titanium wind screen weighs 2 ounces and increases boil time for me

Is this a typo?

[jscott]

ooops, well not quite a typo. I* meant increases the speed of boil time. water boils more quickly. with the windscreen.

[Jan Rezac]

If you need to increase the radius of the BRS 3000 pot supports a little bit, they can be bent outwards – I did that in the past as a preventive measures against the possible melting of the supports. It’s documented here: https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/brs-3000-stove-mod-to-prevent-melting-of-the-pot-supports/

It has a downside too – the folded stove become less compact. But if you need to increase the radius of the pot supports just a little bit, you don’t have to bend them as much as I did. Bending just the end part with the grooved pot rest may be enough too.

 

[Tyler R]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Jan:</p>
What an awesome and simple solution! Thanks for sharing, I’m going to pass that thread along to the 3 people that currently have this problem with their pots and BRS stoves.

[Tyler R]

Hi Jscott:

it seems that measurements are being made without a windscreen…indoors? In little or no wind?

Yup, that’s correct. I prefer to do it this way because it acts as a stable baseline that is easy to repeat in-between experiments. Then while on the trail I know all I have to do to get close to that baseline is reduce the systems wind exposure as much as I can.

I personally never use a windscreen, I do the vast majority of my hiking in the CA eastern Sierras where wind can be a plenty, but so are large rocks and areas of natural topology that act as a safeguard from the wind. I suspect I put more time into camp selection, stove windblock making (and disassembly for LNT) than most, so I haven’t felt much of the need for a windscreen in the past.

Recently I have come to question this practice as I get better at pushing big miles. It is times when I end a 30 mile day and I desire to drop where I am and set-up camp with a hot tea that I really question the logic of saving an ounce in exchanging for the extra time I need to spend for site selection and stove windblock construction.

Does an external, large wind screen serve the same function, essentially, at a lighter weight, as this system? Not trying to be a bummer here; you guys are far more sophisticated than me with everything involved. So sorry if I’m asking a stupid question

I don’t know for certain ( I have virtually no windscreen experience to pull from) but you might get close to some kind of answer by looking at Jon’s website https://www.flatcatgear.com/ and youtube channel. To my knowledge, Jon is pretty much BPL’s resident windscreen expert and among the group of most knowledgeable stove gurus as well. This really shows on his site with tons of data collected and in one place for others to view. I suspect the answer to your question can be found in his data.

If you use his data to compare how your stove of choice performance with and without a windscreen, then you can get a good “bias factor”. You can then use this bias factor to bias the performance metrics of these pots to guesstimate how bad they may perform in the wind with your stove of choice and compare that to how your own pot + stove + windscreen performs in similar conditions. Thats how I would approach it, but I’m sure the logic is flawed… like I said, no experience on this exact subject so I’m really just guessing here ;)

Cheers!

[Roger Caffin]

My very functional windscreen (a slightly modified Trail Designs one) weighs 49 g. It can be the difference between a slow pot of luke-warm water and a fast pot of boiling water. And it saves a huge amount of fuel too.
It is worth every gram.

Cheers

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