Got an e-mail yesterday from the proprietor of Spenton.net, who is selling these “WoodGas” camp stoves that raise interesting possibilities for folks camping in areas where there’s lots of dry wood lying around. The stove is a bit heavy at 2 pounds but if you never have to carry fuel, it could be a fair tradeoff.
The problem with wood as a fuel is getting it to burn efficiently — the smoke alone from an average campfire is enough to scare most folks away from trying to cook over it. The Spenton stove gets around this by having a small, battery-powered fan at the stove’s base to blow fresh air through the fuel, allowing it to burn at a higher efficiency with very little smoke. The fan has two speeds to regulate cooking temperature.
The guy from Spenton.net has offered to send me one for review, but I’d like to get feedback from y’all before I commit to anything. More on the company’s background is here. Background on developing these kinds of stoves as an alternative energy source here.
It might tempt me as a curiosity, but I’m not eager to haul two pounds of stove & batteries on any more than a liesurely trip, maybe up to 5 days or so. If it worked really well on a trip like that, though, I might consider it as a luxury item.
Might be handy for car camping too if you didn’t want fuel bottles in your car and just wanted a quick fire to heat some coffee or tea.
The underlying philosophy for the stove is to avoid burning fossil fuels, and while alchohol is not a fossil fuel per se, it takes more energy to create it than it produces when burned (depending on the alcohol type and the grain distilled), so it’s not terribly efficient.
You still have the “greenhouse gas” issues you’d get with burning anything else, so it’s an imperfect solution.
Personally, I think the wood stove is great. I just don’t like the ones with the batteries and the fan. It’s too much extra weight. I would go for the Magic Stove.
http://zenstoves.net/Wood.htm
Too bad it’s made in Switzerland, that would be a huge shipping fee.
Looks to me that all they’ve done is make a heavy copy of the Sierra stove. The Sierra weighs in at 17 oz. or 10 oz. for their new titanium model.
Sierra stoves have been around for a long time.
http://www.zzstove.com/sierra.html
As a self-confessed gear addict, I’m happy to say I have both the Spenton and the Sierra Zip: loved the idea (and sstill do) of wood burning stoves. I prefer the Zip as I’m a backpacker, but the Spenton might live in a car boot (or trunk as you guys say) for car-based trips. If you’re making the choice, I’d go with a Zip any day – lighter (1/2 the weight) & burns more efficiently.