Cooking in your tent

[salbrecher]

Who here cooks in their tent? I cook in the vesitibule but thats about it. Sometimes it's still to windy to cook in the there and the tent fills up with spindrift while stirring or adding snow. I'm still a little leary about full on in the tent cooking though. How much ventilation should I leave? Some people say you should be able to feel the wind on your face in the tent if cooking to ensure proper ventilation; others have said that their is always enough ventilation without opening doors.

[Blake]

I cook in the tent, but it's a megamid with good ventialtion if/when I want.

[backcountrydog]

i use a hanging stove and cook in tent regularly. no probs

[Squid]

Not me. I know all the cool kids do it, but I also know that if there's a way to fuck things up, I'll do it.

The vestibule has been fine in all but the foulest of weather.

[icegirl]

how long do you simmer the mammut?

[tshimko]

OK if it's propane/butane, but liquid fuels will give you CO poisoning for sure unless the ventilation is really good.

I've seen it happen. Symptoms are similar to altitude sickness...headache, nauseau, dizziness.

[letsroll]

OK if it's propane/butane, but liquid fuels will give you CO poisoning for sure unless the ventilation is really good.

I've seen it happen. Symptoms are similar to altitude sickness...headache, nauseau, dizziness.

 

So why is it that propane/butane fumes are better than liquid fuels for CO emitions? Do just not release as much CO as liquid, or is it that they just burn cleaner?

[nattybumppo]

I once spilled about a quart of prime chicken stew in a 3-man with four guys crammed in. I had tried the vestibule, but it was so windy and snowy that the stove was blowing out. So I moved everything in and gave it a go. I got it all the way cooked and was reaching for my brother's cup and tipped the pot off the stove (a canister job.) We were so hungry that after the initial thirty seconds of shock and hot-potatoing of the lit stove, we whipped out our spoons and scooped it off the floor, and the pads, and the bags, etc. You haven't lived until you've slurped Liptons and canned chickened from the grooves of a Ridge Rest.

 

It was a nasty drive home, I can tell you that. My buddy's tent still smells. I can't say there's a moral here. I suppose we would have survived without the food and water, but we sure wanted it at the time.

[Alex]

I cook inside my I-tent, using a Markill Stormy hanging stove, primarily on winter trips. We open the doors and it warms up the tent without too much condensation. It sure beats sitting out in the wind and driving rain/snow!

 

In the summer when its warm out, I prefer to cook outside if the bugs arent bad. The views are just better.

[EWolfe]

Cooking In Your Tent

 

may lead to

 

One In The Oven

[dylan_taylor]

OK if it's propane/butane, but liquid fuels will give you CO poisoning for sure unless the ventilation is really good.

I've seen it happen. Symptoms are similar to altitude sickness...headache, nauseau, dizziness.

 

Liquid fuel and cannister stoves pump just as much CO into your tent. Liquid fuel stoves just stink more when you shut them off, and they are dangerous to prime inside a tent. CO is 200 times the affinity for attaching to your red blood cells than good ol O2. So if you suck in a bunch at altitude you aren't doing yourself a favor.

 

I've tried cooking in my tent (a bibler) with canister stoves and I suck at it. I have burned a hole in both sides of my sleeping bag when it touched a swinging superfly ascent, and I dumped a liter of boiling water off the top of my pocket rocket. I never cook in the tent if there is a vestibule. Only when I don't have the vesty and it is nuking outside.

[Thinker]

Dylan said: Liquid fuel and cannister stoves pump just as much CO into your tent. Liquid fuel stoves just stink more when you shut them off...

 

Dylan, I'm not so sure I agree with you....yet. What's your basis for making that statement?

 

CO is the result of incomplete combustion (of either fuel type). It seems to me that complete combustion would be much easier to approach with the butane/propane mixture in the canisters than it would with the petroleum based fuel.

 

Where's CBS when we need him.....

[Bug]

I used to heat my van with a propane heater. One evening after a long day at work in the woods, I lit it up and layed down for a minute. When I woke up, the heater was going way down, then back up, then way down..etc. I opened a window and it popped back up to full power. I definately felt a little spacy but there were no long term affects. That reminds me of a story.

I used to heat my van with a propane heater. One evening after a long day at work in the woods, I lit it up and layed down for a minute. When I woke up, the heater was going way down, then back up, then way down..etc. I opened a window and it popped back up to full power. I definately felt a little spacy but there were no long term affects. That reminds me of a story.

I used to heat my van with a propane heater. One evening after a long day at work in the woods, I lit it up and layed down for a minute. When I woke up, the heater was going way down, then back up, then way down..etc. I opened a window and it popped back up to full power. I definately felt a little spacy but there were no long term affects. That reminds me of a story.

What was I saying........?

[rbw1966]

I worked on a case involving a guy who died in a huge coleman tent that he was heating with a propane heater. Ventilate well.

[tshimko]

Propane/butane burns way cleaner than liquid fuels, and thus less CO.

 

Regarding the guy with a propane burner is a tent who died...there is another problem with ANY combustion process..that being production of CO2.... AND reduction of oxygen, which in a close space with poor ventilation would also present a problem...that being suffocation.

 

I've never experienced singed sleeping bags, tent walls, etc..all the more reason not to cook in a tent. Even during 22 days on Denali including a 7 day storm, never did I cook in a tent.

 

Just say no.

[dylan_taylor]

Dylan said: Liquid fuel and cannister stoves pump just as much CO into your tent. Liquid fuel stoves just stink more when you shut them off...

 

Dylan, I'm not so sure I agree with you....yet. What's your basis for making that statement?

 

CO is the result of incomplete combustion (of either fuel type). It seems to me that complete combustion would be much easier to approach with the butane/propane mixture in the canisters than it would with the petroleum based fuel.

 

Where's CBS when we need him.....

 

Lets not split hairs here. Maybe one pumps out a few ppm more than the other. But I would tend to think that they are both equally lethal when used improperly or in a poorly ventilated place. However, neither cannister stoves nor liquid fuel stoves achieve 100% complete combustion of the fuel. And liquid fuel stoves burn pretty damn clean when they are well taken care of, burning clean fuel, etc...

 

If you cook in a poorly ventilated spot, you will eventually exhaust the fresh supply of O2 due to having only a finite volume of air to draw from in the first place. That means the stove can't perform the complete combustion reaction stoichiometrically. That means it is going to put out more CO (a positive feedback loop) but my degree is in geochem, not organic chem, so forgive me for speculating.