Vargo Triad XE Help!

[Pignut]

Just used my mates stove tonight. It seemed to work fine. I used it with my titanium alpkit mug (+lid). I didn't measure the amount of fuel but guess it was about 3/4 full of IDA. I splashed a bit about the bottom of the pot stand to serve as a primer and lit it. It took about 30s to boil the fuel in the stove and the "rose" to form. After that, I put on 500mls of water in the mug and it took about 9 mins to bring it to the boil. It burnt on for about 6 more minutes.

I think that apart from the priming, the main factor in the stove functioning well was the windshield. I used one I made using these instructions. It's a very good fit on the mug, about 1/4" space all around.

I don't think it would be able to boil 1 litre on one lot of fuel, but it faired well for the 0.5L.

Not sure if that's much help to you pignut really. Only advice really is to try to boil a smaller amount and use a good windshield.

Does your wind shield have holes in the bottom? (As staited in the instructions?)

 

[scanker]

Yes. It looks very similar to the one in the photo below, except my current version is a tighter fit around the mug. I made the windshield as high as I could without it interfering with the handles.

 

[Pignut]

Thanks for that!

Back to the drawing board!

 

[cyclist]

Yes. It looks very similar to the one in the photo below, except my current version is a tighter fit around the mug. I made the windshield as high as I could without it interfering with the handles.

a lot of radiating (heating the environment ) surface on your pot ...

Just have a look at

from http://traildesigns.com They also offer a lot of other alc stove related stuff.

IMHO it is very similiar in how it´s working to the Optimus range of alc.stoves (No.s 77, 81, 88, 90, 91 and No.85 Loke as well as many others incl. one made by the Meta Co. for Meta fuel bars). I als see some similiarity to the chimney kettles (Eydon, Kelly, Thermette).

 

[scanker]

Wow, that's cool. It shows it better in this photo that they do different cones for all sorts of cups/pots and how the cups are supported by their lips. A very good idea.

There doesn't look to be much ventilation around the bottom. They must work though - anyone got one?

 

[Pignut]

No but they are way cool!

 

[scanker]

They can't be that hard to make....

 

[Pignut]

MMMmmmmmmmmmm

Yet another job to distract me from finnishing the bathroom!

 

[cyclist]

no, it´s not that hard to make one. In fact it should be pretty easy. Only thing you need to know what you´re doing

It takes way more to do the calculation (and a lot of testing) on how much combustion air is needed and to design the intake & exhaust ports.
Probably that´s why they provide a burner to the windshield (as stated in the faq section) and offer to build windshields on request.

Alc. doesn´t have that much BTUs so I guess it´s a good idea to see the stove as a unit of burner, pot and windshield. www.thermojetstove.com offers an other system and also has a lot of infos

A close look at Trangias T27 with 0.6l kettle may give some more ideas

 

[Traildesigns]

no, it´s not that hard to make one. In fact it should be pretty easy. Only thing you need to know what you´re doing

It takes way more to do the calculation (and a lot of testing) on how much combustion air is needed and to design the intake & exhaust ports.
Probably that´s why they provide a burner to the windshield (as stated in the faq section) and offer to build windshields on request.

Hi!

My name is Rand and I'm one of the 3 guys that started Trail Designs and developed the Caldera System. By way of introduction, I live in Yosemite National Park and have been backpacking around here for the past decade or so. In doing so, my partners and I have been designing, tweaking, testing and perfecting a variety of things to reduce the weight on our backs. A little over a year ago, we made the decision to product-ize a few and make them available to others interested in the ultralight arena.

Specifically to the Caldera System....feel free to try it as a DIY project. The Caldera System and the Vari-Vent windscreens are patent pending mostly to protect against commercial infringement. We feel that we can make this gear at a low enough cost, and high enough quality that folks will ultimately find it easier to just buy from us....but as I said....feel free to take a crack at it! Nevertheless, I should expand on Cyclist's comments above. Cutting a truncated cone accurately so that it is exactly the right size to hold up your pot by its lip can be more than you might want to tackle as a DIY. In addition, suspending a pot of boiling water like that is probably something you shouldn't take lightly. Next, the stove/venting issue is not straightforward either. The environment inside the cone is hotter than most alcohol stoves are accustomed to. As a result, they tend to get into a feedback loop and boil/burn off their alcohol fairly rapidly which makes it hotter which makes them burn faster, which makes it hotter, etc. In the end, you will find that you get pretty lousy efficiency with the vast majority of alc. stoves out there if you run them inside our cone. Consequently, we spent a couple years developing the stove that we provide with the cone. It is tuned to work in that environment, and together, the cone and stove deliver excellent fuel efficiency and can reduce the amount of alc. you carry often times by 50%. Another issue that you should be aware of is the closure mechanism. It is not obvious by these pictures, but the cone will open up along the seam right below the handle cutout so that it can be packed flat, or wrapped even tighter to fit in or around other gear. Getting that to work consistently while holding tolerance on the upper end of the cone where the lip sits is a trick as well. Early prototypes that we tested in the field were rivited into shape. A solid solution, but not great for packability.

Anyway....I'm happy to see the interest and conversation around our gear. Keep it up and please send along any ideas for improvement!

Rand

 

[scanker]

Excellent. Thanks for that and welcome to the forums. Do you have any idea how much postage to the UK would be?

 

[cyclist]

improvents that might work are (huge)maybe
- other materials (which of course need hundreds of tests ...),
- preheating combustion air
- additional extreme cold weather accessiories
- a system that will work with existing burners (again a lot more calculations and tests ...)

IMHO after "some experience" with butane-propane-/gas-/canister-/fan-powered-wood-/beverage can-/Esbit-/Trangia-/etc- stoves & Kelly Kettle I doubt that there´ll be an easy way to accomplish improvements to the Caldera system: for sure modifications will make it heavier and/or more fragile and/or much more expensive

 

[Traildesigns]

Excellent. Thanks for that and welcome to the forums. Do you have any idea how much postage to the UK would be?

Usually, it costs us $12.50 to mail to the UK....so given the packaging, effort, etc....we have been charging $15 (US) for S&H.

Rand

 

[Traildesigns]

improvents that might work are (huge)maybe
- other materials (which of course need hundreds of tests ...),
- preheating combustion air
- additional extreme cold weather accessiories
- a system that will work with existing burners (again a lot more calculations and tests ...)

We have pretty much ruled out existing burners. Given the variables we have to deal with just to accomodate the different pots, adding the hundreds of variables required to deal with different burners as well (venting, offsets, etc) takes this little effort WAY outside anything we can tackle. Other materials on the other hand does hold promise and we're prototyping a few things in this space. Not sure what kind of cold weather accessories you have in mind.

IMHO after "some experience" with butane-propane-/gas-/canister-/fan-powered-wood-/beverage can-/Esbit-/Trangia-/etc- stoves & Kelly Kettle I doubt that there´ll be an easy way to accomplish improvements to the Caldera system: for sure modifications will make it heavier and/or more fragile and/or much more expensive

Yep....we have really worked through a lot of variables to come up with this system.....have a few more in mind for products in the future.....so stay tuned!

Rand

 

[cyclist]

cold weather gear:
just put a running alc. stove on a big ice block (one gallone pot filled with water) and watch the burner. Now imagine snow and wind ...

my own stove experiments included building a mini wind tunnel with additional "rain maker" - very interesting what happens ......

Back to the main thread: I guess the Caldera (maybe a little bit modified) is a very useful attachment to both Vargo Triad stove types