How Much White Gas Do I Need?

How much white gas should you bring on your trip?  That's actually going to depend a lot on your style of cooking, your stove, the conditions, etc, but let's take a look and see what we can come up with.

Don't use white gas?  No worries.  For canister gas, check out my post How Much Canister Gas Do I Need?

The white gas stove I've used the most is my MSR Whisperlite.  I'll be using my experience with my Whisperlite to generate the numbers that follow.

My MSR Whisperlite

A word about style:  On most of my backpacking trips, I keep cooking fairly simple.  Most of the time, I'm boiling water for re-hydrating foods and making hot drinks.  I almost always have tea in the morning and cocoa in the evening.  I normally boil at least two cups and more typically three cups per boil.  Simmering for the most part is kept to a minimum, but I do simmer sometimes to re-hydrate things at higher altitudes.  I don't typically have a hot lunch, but I almost always have a hot breakfast and supper.

Over time, I've noticed that I use something on the order of 1.5 fl oz (44ml) of white gas on a solo trip per day.  For two people, I find my usage is something on the order of 2.25 fl oz (67ml) per day.  If I'm melting snow, I figure on roughly doubling those amounts.  These amounts include fuel used for priming.  These amounts are the amounts I expect to use.  Particularly in winter, you should plan for the unexpected.  I typically bring an extra day or two's worth of fuel on winter trips.

So what does that equate to in terms of fuel bottles?  There are a lot of different sized fuel bottles out there.  I'll list some common sizes, and you can hopefully adjust from there.

A note on fuel bottles:  MSR, Sigg, Primus, Optimus, Snow Peak, and Brunton fuel bottles all have the same threads and are generally interchangeable.  However, you should always test your particular stove with the particular fuel bottle you intend to use before your trip.  My Primus pump fits in my MSR fuel bottle, but the opposite is not true:  My MSR pump does not fit in my Primus bottle.  The threads on the Primus bottle are compatible, but the threads start down too low in the neck of the bottle for my MSR pump to engage.

Most manufacturers recommend that you use only their fuel bottles with their stove.  That's fine, and you can't go wrong with that, but that recommendation is more about legal liability than it is about the technical requirements of running a stove.  Generally, any fuel bottle designed by a reputable stove company for use with a pump should be fine, provided that it has compatible threads.

An Optimus Nova stove in use with an MSR fuel bottle.  Works just fine.

I would not use "no name" fuel bottles or drink bottles as a fuel bottle for a pressure stove.  Note: Coleman and Soto fuel bottles have proprietary threads and are not interchangeable with any other brands.

Now, fuel bottles:  I'm going to list MSR's bottle simply because that's what I have a lot of.  MSR has three bottles:
10 fl oz "working" capacity, 11 fl oz total capacity (300ml, 325ml)
20 fl oz working capacity, 22 fl oz total capacity (600ml, 650ml)
30 fl oz working capacity, 33 fl oz total capacity (900ml, 975ml)

Note that there is a "working" capacity and a total capacity.  Why two different capacities?  Well, when you run a pressure stove, you need some air space in the bottle for it to work right.  MSR always marks their bottles with a fill line.  Do not fill past the fill line.  The capacity up to the fill line is the working capacity.  The capacity up to the physical top of the bottle is the total capacity.  For running a stove, use the working capacity.  For storage and transport, you can fill the bottle to the total capacity.

Examples (assuming 1.5 fl oz/47ml per day)
10 fl oz (~300ml) = 6.5 days
20 fl oz (~600ml) = 13 days
30 fl oz (~900ml) = 20 days

For almost all of the trips that I've done, a 20 fl oz/600ml bottle has been plenty.

A 20 fl oz/600ml MSR bottle in use with an MSR XGK II stove

The only time I've really wanted a 30 fl oz/900ml bottle was when I was doing a lot of snow melting.  At home, I use 30 fl oz/900ml bottles for storage.  If I were going to buy just one bottle, I'd probably buy a 20 fl oz/600ml sized bottle.  For short trips, I'd carry a bottle with a lot of empty space in it.  for longer trips, I would fill the bottle.  If all you take is short or weekend trips, you might consider a 10 fl oz/300ml size.  If I did a lot of winter  trips, or wanted bottles for storage, the 30 fl oz/900ml size make a lot of sense.

Now, these are my numbers.  The only way you're going to know how much fuel you're going to use is to get out there and do some trips.  These numbers are somewhat conservative by design, but you might want to carry a little extra fuel until you get it dialed in.  Be aware that in windy and cold conditions, your fuel usage may go up.  Hopefully these numbers will give you some rough idea of how much fuel you might want to bring along.

I thank you for joining me on another Adventure in Stoving,

HJ

Stove of the Week: The Borde Stove

Stove of the Week:  The Borde stove

I've been blogging about lightweight winter capable stoves for the last three weeks (the Coleman Xtreme, the MSR Simmerlite, and the MSR WindPro).  I'll conclude this series within a series on lightweight winter stoves with this week's post, but I'm going to continue to feature winter capable stoves for a few more weeks, but this is the last on lightweight ones. Next week will feature the MSR XGK II (pre shaker jet version).

So to conclude my mini-series on lightweight winter capable stoves, this week's stove is the Borde Stove, also called the Borde benzin brenner (Borde gasoline burner).  (ボルドーバーナー)  The Borde stove burns good and hot.  Note the color of the tips of the flame spreader in the below photo.  That stove is HOT!


The Borde stove is a diminutive cult classic with a very loyal following among mountaineers. It's compact and, at about 8.5 ounces (241g), relatively lightweight.
 


However, with respect to the stove's weight, two things should be noted:  1)  There is no integrated pot support and 2) the capacity of the fuel tank is perhaps only 250 ml -- if that.  As with most "white" gasoline type stoves, air space must be provided within the tank in order for the stove to work properly.



One should also note that there is no valve knob on this stove. How then is it controlled? The "star" burner itself is rotated with a control hook. Rotation to the left increases the flow of fuel, to the right decreases the flow. Unfortunately the original control hook for my stove has been lost somewhere along the way. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to make a new control hook from steel wire. Home made control hooks:


Rotating the "star" burner plate assembly with a control hook.


Here's a closer look at the "star" burner plate assembly. Note how the assembly is threaded and that the base of the assembly screws into a short tube directly attached to the coils. It is here, at the point where the assembly screws into the coils, that fuel is emitted.



OK, let's get started shall we? Now, since the Borde is a white gasoline type stove, we'll need to prime (pre-heat) the stove. The directions say that one should open the valve (by rotating the "star" burner plate assembly to the left), turn the stove upside down allowing a small amount of gasoline to come out, and ignite the gasoline while holding the stove in one's hands. Let's see, holding a lighted container of dripping gasoline in one's hands. Uh, is it just me or does this sound completely nuts? lol. There is a better way. First we'll need the following set up: a bottle of alcohol, a small pan, and of course our Borde stove:


Next, we'll undo the plug in the end of the stove and add white gasoline (Coleman type fuel). We'll then tighten the plug firmly using the flattened end of the wire stove holder.


Now, we'll place the little pan under the coils of the stove, fill the pan with alcohol, and ignite the alcohol. Since the pan is at an odd angle, it won't hold a lot of alcohol, so I went ahead and primed the stove twice (aka a double prime).


After double priming, I open up the burner just a bit allowing the now vaporized gasoline to flow out of the burner. Here, the Borde stove is just warming up:

The pot stand I'm using in the above photo is an aluminum US GI cup stand. It works, but I generally wouldn't recommend a GI cup stand for use with the Borde stove. The top of the burner plate should be about 3/4" (2 cm) from the bottom of pot you are heating. A GI cup stand is simply too short to provide the appropriate clearance.

Here, I'm heating water for my morning tea.
 
A word of caution:  Since the burner is directly attached to the fuel tank, the Borde stove gets hot.  Always pick up or move the stove by the wire holder.  It should be noted that the Borde stove has no safety devices of any kind whatsoever.  Overheat this stove, and it will explode.  Indeed, the nickname of this stove is the Borde Bomb, although some claim that the nickname derives more from the method of priming than the way in which the stove operates.  The plug at the base will sometimes fail first, but the plug failing first may not always happen.  In short, you are the safety device.  It is up to you to turn down the stove if it seems to be surging too powerfully.  You must be mindful at all times of how the stove is sounding and performing.

I'm not completely sure when the Borde stove was created.  I've seen several patents taken out by Josef Borde in the 1940's and 1950's.  Somewhere in that time frame the stove that we know today was developed.  There have been multiple variants of the stove, including versions where the burner is mounted on top of the tank rather than at the end, but generally all of the stoves are considered the Borde stove.  
My information is a little bit sketchy, but apparently the Borde stove went out of production some time in the mid 1960's until production was resumed some time later by Norbert Bader.  Alas, the most current information that I have is that the aging Mister Bader has discontinued production again, perhaps this time for good.

OK, let's finish up now with a couple of flame shots.





Thanks for joining me on another Adventure in Stoving!


HJ


The Borde Stove

What's good about it
Super high cool factor!  :)
Compact
Extremely simple
Relatively light

What's bad about it
Hard to find
Expensive
No longer in production (parts hard to find, no factory repairs available)
Small capacity tank
No integrated pot support
No safety devices.