At Hackaday’s Minnesota office, we appreciate central heat and hot coffee because the outdoor temperature is sub-zero in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Not everyone here has such amenities, and families living in tents could use heater help. If you live somewhere inhospitably cold and have the resources (time being the most crucial), please consider building and donating alcohol jet burners.
Alcohol burners like these are great for tents because if they tip over, they self-extinguish. You can fill them with 70% rubbing alcohol and they’ll heat a small space, and if running on denatured alcohol, they can be used to cook with. They won’t do you much good outdoors unless you have significant wind protection, as the tiny jet is likely to blow out. The first time you light one, you must heat the coil with a lighter or another heater to vaporize incoming fuel, then it can sustain itself by wicking fluid up from the reservoir jar. Relighting after a tip or accidental gust only takes a spark since the copper is already hot.
If you came for a hack, note how they fill the small tubes with salt funneled through a condiment cap before bending them. Sure, there are springy pipe bending tools, but who doesn’t already have salt and tape? Keeping humans warm is crucial, but heating metal takes a different approach.
Heater Bloc's Guide for Building the Copper Coil Alcohol Heater and Safety Enclosure is now available!
Please share this zine with anyone interested in instructions on how to build a tent-safe alcohol heater. https://t.co/iv5xKd93jo— Heater Bloc (@HeaterBloc) November 23, 2021
Thank you for the tip, [cyberlass]
Sadly, in my area the donees would rather drink the fuel rather than burn it.
That’s one good reason to use denatured alcohol.
Rubbing alcohol has the worst taste. Parents even use it on childrens’ nails to deter them from sucking or chewing nails.
That is some serious BS. Rubbing alcohol is isopropanol. Pure one just diluted by water to 70-80% by weight I use as wound desinfection, to clean kitchen table, to degreade my oily skin on my face, to clean displays, and it is absolutely drinkable and tastes just a little different than ethanol and human body can metabolize even though it is slightly worse than ethanol.
I don’t really see where you are going here. Yes Isopropyl is only (roughly) twice the toxicity of ethyl, how does your response have anything to do with what you are responding to? I’m trying to see a logical connection, but I just can’t.
@cliff There is superfluous information in my post ik. The main thing is that it does not leave any residue otherwise it would not be good for cleaning and it does not taste bad.
So how can it be used on nails to prevent choowing them as BillSF9c suggested.
That is caused by externally added bitterant (is it the right word?). Alcohol itself is not.
Also – I am not sure about US, but in Russia, certain population “drinks all that burns” (or at least drank), so to speak, and was pretty creative in cleaning up alcohol-containing substances into semi-drinkable ones.
It’s also the reason why in Poland, denatured alcohol does not contain methanol anymore. Now it’s just ethanol (not pure, but not toxic), colorants and “bitterants” (nice word). People will drink it anyway so adding methanol would just increase amount of poisonings.
Various people in US drink anything for alcohol, but most avoid rubbing alcohol and drink mouth wash, which also tastes better.
On one episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies”, Granny was about to drink some wood alcohol.
A visitor/bystander told her, “Oh if you drink that, you’ll go blind!|”
Granny replied, “It’ll let you know when you’ve had enough!”
B^)
That’s why you drain off the first bit of the run. Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol so it will boil off first. There are formulas one can follow to actually figure out the almost exact milliliter amount that you should pour off.
Yeah, but all that is basically superstition since the concentration of methanol in the mix changes gradually, not all of a sudden, and the amount you have varies as well. You can’t actually calculate it to any degree of certainty.
The way to get rid of methanol is to not make any in the first place – which depends on the ingredients of the mash, and preventing contamination by wild yeast and bacteria. Certain fruits and berries contain large amounts of pectin, especially when used raw instead of ripe, which is broken down by microbes that produce methanol. If you have a bad batch, you can end up with so much methanol that throwing away the heads doesn’t help – you still end up making poison.
I think this thing is dangerous enough without surrounding yourself in a cloud of deadly methanol vapour. The recommended fuel is non drinkable (it can’t get you drunk and tastes like shit) and is far less toxic.
Here in the UK as well as a bright purple colour denatured alcahol has to contain something to make it undrinkable.
Traditionally this was methanol (hence its commonly called methylated spirits) but to prevent poisoning it generally now contains birtex (artificial bad taste) and an emetic (to ensure anyone who does drink it throws it right back up again)
Having gotten small amounts of German denatured alcohol (“Spiritus”) on my tongue, it really made me not want to do that again.
It goes everywhere when you handle it. When I was a small child, we went camping with the family, and I handled a spirit burner which had been used before, and then stuck my hand into a bag of candies.
All of it ruined.
Is that something that is sold(denatured alcohol?), Or is that Alcohol that is eft open until the fumes evaporate?
Sadly, it also appears that you don’t understand that drinking this will kill you.
Hey one of the people who worked on this project here,
We’ve handed out plenty, people arent drinking them.
Shut up.
Actually, people will drink this stuff. I was training some firemen up North in Eureka CA, and they had a problem after the pandemic started. A homeless shelter was passing out hand sanitizer (The small bottles) and the guys there were trying to filter the alcohol using bread. It really was not successful, so they used the alcohol sanitizer to start fires in the bedding. Nobody was pleased.
something happening in some place a few times is not indicative of a trend. Furthermore, unless you have data proving otherwise, or some source, I’m inclined to believe this is some bullshit. Come with reciepts.
Was a quick google but the CDC has an article on the topic that talks about this very thing. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932e1.htm
the comment below, if you read it says
“15 cases of methanol poisoning were reported in Arizona and New Mexico, associated with swallowing alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Four patients died, and three were discharged with visual impairment.”
15 cases. not cases of alcohol. 15 people. WHAT ARE YOU ON ABOUT?!?
Mentally ill alcoholics will drink anything – hairspray, petrol, even bud light at a push.
Visit the mountains in southern America and you will find more cases. Addicts will use anything when they need it.
Yawn.. Yet another troll?
Do you need my class notes?
I can forward my alcohol hand sanitizer videos if you wish.
Next you’ll solve world hunger with biodiesel.
I’m not impressed.
If you put the hand sanitizer in a cup and add a little salt to it turns to drinkable liquid instantly. No I’m not telling you where I learned that.
In prison? Sheesh, just go out and buy some vodka — it’s cheaper than hand sanitizer.
😆
How dare you saying that people would even consider drinking bud light! My gosh man the earth has started to spin in reverse on its axis I get it but to imply anyone would drink bud light? We are definitely forked! BTW I need a drink, does an anyone have any extra aftershave they could donate to a needy cause? No bud light or old spice please I’m notthat desperate. The green preferably skin brazzer aftershave but I suppose I would accept the blue flavored also? don’t be alarmed I’m not going to use it for shaving. Thank you for your time help and support
👈👉🖕👌👇💪🤤🍺 Further consideration bud light I’ll accept also, Coors light! Triggered!
Hahaha
Old folk knowledge.
Shellac for french polishing is dissolved in alcohol. Hobos used to buy bottles of shellac and throw in a spoonful of salt, then shake the bottle and stir a wooden stick inside to catch the clumps of sticky shellac that formed. The same thing happens with the hand sanitizer, because the salt draws the water off the gelling agent, which falls to the bottom.
>vodka is cheaper
€35 per liter thanks to nanny state taxes is not cheap. Hand sanitizer (75% ethanol) is €5 per liter. Guess what the hobos are buying?
switch, I was OK with your first two lines, because I believe you have handed out many, and you don’t *know* of any cases where people were drinking the fuel. But telling me to shut up was uncalled for. I live in a different area than you. My wife works in a mental health ICU. People where I live *DO* drink rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, and anything else they can get that purportedly has alcohol because she has seen the after-effects (when the patients didn’t die right away).
For John, the person that mentioned [I] “don’t understand that drinking this will kill you.”, I did not say nor imply *I* am the person drinking the fuel. Of course I know drinking rubbing alcohol can kill you, if you get enough. In fact, it’s better if you drink more than enough than not quite enough.
Hey someone needs to spread this more I know I’ve never heard of it and it would help so many in the twin cities alone as someone who has slept under a bridge a block from a shelter cus I didn’t do forced 1 hour sermons
Ty for that. I plan on making several to hand out. Also, I wanted to make one or two for my own tent. I have a tendency to be cold all night and this is better than using bottles filled with hot water. Can’t wait to try this out!
Well “homeless” is in the tag list for this article so I guess I’m not off-topic.
I recently spent 5 years living in the bush in Australia where everything is out to kill you, venomous spiders and snakes, 150kg birds that can trample you to death, crocodiles, cyclones, fire tornadoes, even some plants can kill you. It’s not a place for the faint hearted.
I met many homeless people and technically I was homeless to, So I have some answers to dispel myths some of which I see here.
1) Are homeless people social rejects with problems like mental health, antisocial behavior, alcoholism, drug addiction, unemployed?
Homeless people come from general society so they have close to the same mix of these attributes as people who are not homeless. The differences would be from my experience, that homeless people are more empathetic, less antisocial and less often drug addicted. However one feature that does stand out is that they are more often unemployed or under-employed.
2) Why are there so may homeless people?
Governments set a target for unemployment deliberately to regulate the economy. Workers are less likely to ask for a pay raise when they are aware of homelessness and are much more willing to work for a lower wage. At the same time, increasing property values are dependent on low vacancy rates. So homelessness is a government policy constructed to regulate the behavior and expenditure of non-homeless people and in doing so, regulate wage gains and property values.
3) What is needed to fix homelessness? Is it things like better health and social support, perhaps a phone app to help them support each other.
No Dummy. What’s needed to fix homelessness is homes! But the government doesn’t want to fix homelessness. And currently the story ends there.
For any person homelessness can be just 7 days way from where you are now. Here in Australia housing construction , both public (social) and private had ceased with the pandemic. Property values and rents have skyrocketed and sadly vacancy rates are so low that for example some regional towns are loosing they only doctor or dentist because the house they were living in was rented by them and in now going to be sold and there are zero available rentals in the town for them to move to.
The fastest increasing demographic group for homelessness is low income working middle aged women.
On a lighter note, I tell people that the worst thing about living in the bush is washing your hair. When they ask why I tell them that you have to bathe in creeks or rivers and when you wash your hair you have to close your eyes and then you can’t see if any crocodiles are heading your way.
That would be the “unconstrained vision”.
https://youtu.be/mS5WYp5xmvI?t=711
Matt, you’ve got to be the best mate I’ve come across all year. Kudos.
Get a 5 gallon collapsible or Ridgid bucket and a cup. Fill the bucket and carry it to a safe area. Use the cup to get your hair wet and to rinse after you’ve shampooed. Works for a shower too.
How long dose the alcohol last in the jar
This is going in the “just in case” memory bank for sure. There’s also a note that says it can run off of unscented hand sanitizer. Neat!
Likely implied also are ones w/o glycerine or other things. Unscented? Many kerosines are scented. I’m not sure that is a valid requirement, but perhaps so for some.
Ah. Salt. Good idea. I sometimes have trouble getting the sand out when I use it to bend tubing. Salt would just dissolve out if it jams up. And Cerobend is just too much trouble.
Great idea but concerned about carbon monoxide if running these indoors, isnt that a danger?
No, read page 4 of the guide that is linked in the article for more information. Safety looks like it was a big priority for their design.
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TL;DR ANY combustion process is capable of generating carbon monoxide, and you MUST check for CO, or provide air inlets and outlets.
Please note I am not judging what these heaters actually do, I am addressing the theoretical basis they have claimed as their basis for heater safety. Page 4 is INCORRECT. Carbon monoxide can be produced by ANY combustion process where a flammable substance burns incompletely. Incomplete combustion can occur when the flame dynamics result in a too-rich mixture in the flame. This is chemical (or combustion) engineering, and it’s the reason your high-efficiency furnace has fans to force air into the combustion chamber, as well as a (high-temperature) exhaust and to pull out combustion byproducts, even though methane (CH4) is simpler (half the carbon chain length) than ethanol.
Combustion/energy generation has nothing at all to do with the source of the combustible (petroleum vs ethanol), and everything to do with the kinetics of the combustion and complete mixing of fuel with air. Liquid fuels either must have high volatility (Coleman fuel, unleaded and white gas, petrol) or other measures to thoroughly atomize the liquid (pressure, heating, tightly controlled orifice size to generate very small droplets) AND means to mix a lot of air with the fuel (turbulence, controlled air paths that use the speed of the hot exhaust to increase the volume of the incoming air). The folks who hack with rocket stoves use a rule of thumb that the exhaust flue needs to be at least twice as long as the diameter of the flue, with additional rules of thumb about the sizing of the combustion chamber relative to the exhaust flue, sizing and placement of air inlets, and a number of the hackers rigorously measure mass input, heat output, and when possible, the composition of combustion gasses.
You may say, you’re just some random person on the internet, why should I listen to you? I’m a chemical engineer with education in the theory and practice of reactions, including combustion. I have almost 40 years in research and development that included oxidation and other reactions that depends on mixing and kinetics, and my colleagues depend on me to provide observations on the safety of proposed processes in the real world. I am acknowledged among my family as the resident fire a$$hole-capable of making a smoke-free warm and comfortable wood fire in a campfire ring, making the cabin warm, but not too hot, in a wood stove with the right amount of wood to last all night. I use a woodburning rocket stove to cook and simmer. Last, I have a small jet type alcohol stove (commercial backpacking) that I use to boil coffee water in my cabin and have seen with my own eyes that you can, in fact, generate high levels of carbon monoxide (700 ppm) measured on a residential CO monitor after using the stove twice within 15 minutes in a 12x20ft cabin.
If you want to help people by building alcohol heaters or cookers, be sure to help them by giving them a carbon monoxide monitor, or at the very least, test each and every one by burning it in a typical sized sealed space, and find out just how much inlet and outlet air is required to keep the CO levels in a safe range.
Awesome reply. Thank you.
I think some forget the type of people this forum selects for. Many know their chops and have the years to prove it. Doesn’t always mean they’re right (even experts get things wrong) but the odds favor them being correct.
Thank you for giving a detailed and authoritve reply. I’m just a Mom and the “no CO” comments were scaring me.
Hi, i build these, let’s talk! Please email me RoseCityCat@protonmail.com
Suggest you contact the professionals at Aprevecho Research Center (a non-profit that has done a lot of the research on rocket stoves). Wikipedia has an article about them here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aprovecho
Most of my work these days is in polymers.
The 95% efficient gas furnace in my shop doesn’t have a high temperature exhaust. It’s so cool it uses PVC pipe for the exhaust.
Oh come on now. It should at least be ABS. We can do much better than just carcinogens.
100% right. Even electric heaters with open heating coil take oxygen from the air. I do not know all types of heaters but I would say only sealed electric oil heater is save in any closed and tided small area.
Thanks for all the information. I will definitely check out the heaters that I make. I’ll instruct people to make sure that they leave the zipper down a bit to have fresh air.
One of my favorite old YT channels is Tetkoba’s Stove R&D were they explore many similar and more interesting designs.
https://www.youtube.com/c/tetkoba/videos
Tetkoba is basically the porn of alcohol stoves.
His builds alsways look so clean and nice… Jesus…
Isn’t carbon monoxide poisoning an issue with these kind of heaters?
No, read page 4 of the guide that is linked in the article for more information. Safety looks like it was a big priority for their design.
Unvented flames in a tent still carry risk even if low due to fuel/burner choice. There will be a little/trace at minimum. There is from your gas hob when cooking too, but they should have passed tests to prove sufficient efficiency which this has not.
Quite frankly, even additional CO2 and less O2 in the tent due to a burner doesnt appeal personally. Rather like the dinky log burner with a chimney approach – only seen it in friends tents. Excelent sleeping bag and ground mat has worked on the literal hundreds of camping trips I’ve had.
If this is something you need, the lack of heat is probably a bigger concern than any potential gas hazard.
I’m not suggesting that this is safe (or not: not my area of expertise), but there’s a relative risk factor here. Every year, a few people die of carbon monoxide poisoning, but any time there’s a sudden widespread loss of heating, many people die. Both can kill, but for those who might need this device, it’s the failure to acquire the minimum required heat that is most likely to kill them.
Sometimes, even a bad solution is better than no solution. If nothing else, it’s often easier to improve a bad solution than to create any solution from scratch.
Sometimes, someone throws out a hairbrained maybe-solution and recommends that people use it, without actually expending any effort to make sure it’s safe or effective. These guys haven’t done that, and the subject isn’t that arcane — anyone with concerns can easily do their own due diligence. If anyone finds and shares any real hazards, the information will certainly spread around.
In the mean time, this design isn’t likely to be substantially more risky than other alternatives to solve the same problem, and cold kills.
This looks like a great inclusion for a car emergency kit.
Up in the Canadian Wilderness where cars can slide off the highway in storms, this is a really good idea for a survival kit with some water and shelf-stable food like rations or granola bars.
I think I will give a go at making a few of these for the family that live out in the country just in case!
For winter emergency a high fatty crunchy granola bar will win out as it is dry enough to not really freeze. If you remember the early 90s powerbars they were impossible to eat without a bolt-cutter on the mountain unless you stuck them in your armpit for 20 uncomfortable minutes. Think dry like freeze dried meats and camping foods, you can laways take your snacks out on a ski day to test them out to see if you can bite them without dislocating your jaw. That said maximize the fat and oil as that is the densest calories, stuff fried in lard or coconut oil has the most H+ on a chain. For hydration, forget it, either take a six pack of water from your house every time or have a heavy gasoline optional mountaineering stove as most winter cars will freeze the bottles solid until spring. Also a properly rated mummy sleeping bag. Canadian wilderness also buy, keep serviced, !!AND REGISTER!!! an EPIRB satellite distress beacon, it does one thing and does it better than any other, think of it as a Ford Prefect galactic hitchiker sub-etha thumb gadget, the coast guard or air force WILL find you. It is the same tech that finds lifeboats and crashed airplanes.
For emergency use in a car you’d probably be better off with some candles, they’ll keep your car warm, they’re stable, just put them in a bag and forget about them until you need them.
open flame in a car is just asking to burn it down…
I bought one of those new “amazin” air quality monitors. When we light candles in the kitchen, it goes off the scale. That is, air quality goes quickly from “good” to “bad” with just a couple candles (VOC measurement, mainly). I imagine this burner has a similar effect on the quality of air you are breathing. And should you ventilate enough to restore good air quality, I predict the heat you seek will be lost.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have the same effect. Read page 4 of the guide that is linked in the article for more information. Safety was big priority for their design.
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VOC is borderline meaningless – you’re just sensing the scent in the candles. There are tons of VOCs in your breath, from ketones all the way on down. There are air fresheners that sense VOCs in the air to determine when to give a new spritz of freshener. You put them in your bathroom where there are VOCs that have been generated by you.
Particulates would be a bigger concern with candles, but I wouldn’t worry about them either.
I air quality meter is measuring PM2.5 and PM10 and (poorly) trying to extrapolate VOC as it can’t directly measure Volatile Organic Compounds. So VOC aside high levels of PM2.5 and PM10 is not a good health sign.
Yeah the good thing about us actually handing these out is we make relationships with folks, who we trouble shoot with. These are great, work well, and folks are requesting more.
Noted, but we have data that shows otherwise
Can’t imagine this would be the case with alcohol. Candle wax and the added scents are what generate most of the particulates.
Nice project. In one of my lives, I did work requiring orifices in small tubing, and we cut the orifices using a barrette or knife file (these are file shapes with small-angle edges) or a fine cut triangle file (these usually don’t have sharp corners, but can cut more efficiently as they have full teeth on the corner). File across the tube with the sharpe edge. Very little practice is needed to get a repeatable orifice any size from small effectively round to wider slot. Eliminates the need for a small drill bit.
yea but I can get a drill bit in about 10 different stores around my small town
Please keep in mind to watch the CO2 level in the tent. Some people died because of cooking in the tent. It would be nice to add a CO2 sensor to the project and make a loud noise and shut off the heater.
https://gearjunkie.com/camping/cooking/carbon-monoxide-gas-cook-heat-tents
It’s always good to keep CO2 levels in mind, but it’s not an issue with this stove. Read page 4 of the guide that is linked in the article for more information. Safety was big priority for their design.
Carbon dioxide is less of an issue. Carbon monoxide is a killer and page 4 of the guide is factually misleading. Please see my other comment.
This looks like an awesome community project for a scout troop!
This is awsome,and I will build one,just to see it work,making
the fuel just right could be an interesting side project.
It is not something that I would take with me,even for an emergency,as I have made hundreds of fires while traveling
to cook on and enjoy all over Canada and the states,there is wood everywhere,the only time I had any difficulty was in the Olympic rain forest in Washington state,took two hours to get
coffee and breakfast made,damp ,extra damp spot.
Just finished eating a meal cooked on and in a wood fire at home
warms the house,cooks the food,and burns up what gets swept off the floor.
Agreed but I doubt HaD staff will notice much if it’s just a comment.
Perhaps a suggestion box with a filter to reject profanity in any language as well as being a registered user?
Just thinking security as SPAM bots are profanely abused these days.
Oh, we totally read comments. Who are you responding to?
It’s some sort of combination of JavaScript and cookies. It doesn’t happen often. It’s ether that you open a comment form field on one page and then submit a comment form on another page before the first or one of the two pages is opened as a result of the reply link in an email.
I can’t remember which now, it’s been going on for years now. At the same time as this started the favorite icon for a browser to show representing your website stopped working on android on my phone (version 5 or 6).
I use NoScript and it’s a simple problem – one of the external scripts that assists with comments, if blocked, will cause all replies to be posted as a “top level” comment, likely some JS is being used to populate a “reply-to” field on the “reply” button / widget dynamically.
Still, it’s only been going on for a year or three since last update, and we can’t expect a technology hacking website to, y’know, fix simple technical bugs…
Yeah, They need to find a hacker! I don’t know where they would find one.
Oh yeah, HaD reads every comment!
That is why a number of mine have been deleted!
B^)
We do our best! :)
Good one..
Beware of CO and CO2, especially when is such a small space like a tent. And no, telling people to read page 4 of a guide two links separated from this article isn’t a response. If you’re going to say something, actually say it instead of spamming the same thing over and over again.
Alcohol gets it’s oxygen from itself IRRC, so that’s why. ANother one is just a roll of TP in a coffee can soaked with alcohol.
One ethanol molecule has 2 carbons and 6 hydrogens, and only 1 oxygen. You need 7 more oxygens to fully combust to H2O and CO2. That’s rather a large relative volume of air, since almost 80% of the air is nitrogen.
Carbon monoxide is absolutely a concern.
Not really. Alcohols bring some oxy. What that means is (slightly) lower combustion temp. The heat comes from the combustion reaction, which uses the free oxygen from the environment.
Ethyl has, for example, the reaction C2H5OH +3O2–> 2CO2 + 3H2O, vs ethane: C2H6 +2.5O2–> 2CO2 +3H2O. One of the O-H bonds is already there with ethyl, reducing the net heat produced, for the same product.
What are you trying to say here? (
So no CO i guess, I said irrc. The article about the TP in the can intends it to be used in your car, not a tent. Read it probably 2005? It recommended alcohol over other fuel, probably the no CO produced. So some ventilation is in order, but there’s no poison.
yea but if your going to construct the thing your going to read the filipin guide, and besides this isnt a propane camp stove its akin to having a pocket lighter, but with cleaner fuel
Another solution, but yes, combustion inside a tent is problematic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA
when we were discussing how to make these, this is basically the design inspiration.
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2014/11/dont-heat-your-room-with-tea-candles.html
HaD has a MN office??? Where is it located? Can I drop by?
I maybe exaggerated with the word, “Office,” when I referred to my house. It has many of the things an office would have. Coffee, tea, computers, tables, people drinking coffee, floors, walls, coffee cups, graph paper, and approximately six whiteboards.
I live in Minneapolis, so teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeechnically HaD has an office here.
I like the sheer fact that 3 out of 11 things mentioned are coffee-related.
… which reminds me i have something horrible on my desk right now: an EMPTY coffee-mug! Lets change that asap!
But, how far is your office from Micro Center?
That’s what’s important!
B^)
Oops! Posted too soon, Axman Surplus is reasonable alternative.
I live a few miles from the Minnetonka Ave Ax-Man and I regularly go to the University Ave for more obscure parts. I regularly divert my paychecks there.
These are not safe. I built one today after checking out the .pdf using parts I had around. I tested it on my grill outside and within a few minutes it was surging and spitting denatured alcohol out the jet hole sending flames everywhere.
I also would not want to happen to touch the unprotected pot that my temp gunnread at 550 deg F.
I had the same experience. When/if it was able to get a good flame going, it quickly generated far too much pressure/gas in the coil and _jetted_ flame out. Then it would tend to almost go out, sometimes totally, but if not, end up in a low flame/jet flame unstable cycle.
IDK why some people have had success, but the design doesn’t seem very useful with this iteration.
I upped the gas/flame orifice to see if that lowered the pressure & make it work better, but no dice.
I’ve built one to spec for denatured alcohol, but can’t get the thing to light. Is there a limit to the wick length inside the bottle? I’m using a quart bottle with a small amount of alcohol. Could the wick be too tight in the copper tubing?
Wow this is actually going to get people killed.
I wonder why this cheap marvelous gadget isn’t mass produced and readily available in every camping store for less than 7 bucks…
In most developed countries homelessness correlates with psychological problems.
If you want to enable people try to give them treatment options in addition to fulfilling their basic needs.
A blanket and a low temp sleepingbag doent need precious fuel.
Disconnected first world mindset creating infeasible solutions, instead of helping people.
This is exactly what I was thinking while reading the article. I appreciate that someone is thinking of homeless people, but their needs would be better served by having better health and social care.
Betting somebody else’s life on iirc might be slightly problematic.
Any combustion involving carbon based fuels and oxygen will produce co and co2 and under the right/ wrong circumstances it will kill you.
If you want to help out, get some proper cold weather gear to those people and sponsor patrols watching out for people sleeping without protection from low temperatures.
And these are definitely the “wrong” circumstances! Tents have a material “tub” at the bottom that is nonporous material as water protection. The top height of the “tub” is most often above your mouth height when you’re sleeping. Carbon Monoxide (CO) is heavier than air and will fill the lower space “tub” first and it can’t escape from there so CO concentration will rise to dangerous or fatal levels very rapidly even with a low volume production source. Other heavier than air gasses kill by oxygen displacement. They can fill there area where your breathing, displacing oxygen and you then die from the “lack of” oxygen. Carbon Monoxide is far worse it is “toxic” and will kill even when oxygen is still available.
And before I’m told about “page 4” of the document, yes I did read that.
While I don’t have the professional qualifications to dispute the contents of the document I can express that I lake faith in it for a number of reasons.
It mentions a list of symptoms that occur with exposure to high levels of CO. These are the symptoms of low levels of CO exposure (lower concentrations by volume). High levels of exposure cause death so rapidly that the exposed person is unlikely to experience most of these symptoms.
I have seen people that are financially challenged use tents that are so small that the smallest amount of internal toxin generation could be fatal.
I still think there is merit in following this course. Perhaps some way of having the energy source outside the tent and the energy radiated inside the tent.
Dude, if you’re going to spout off “facts”, then you should at least make an effort to make them plausible. CO is NOT heavier than air. You instantly discredit the rest of your argument by making such an obviously false statement. Be better.
Hi Paul, carbon monoxide is so little different to the specific gravity of air that in the context of the conversation it makes no difference, tents still have a “bucket” which will hold whatever is the specific gravity of air or there-abouts. Fro your drastic and diabolical fact to make a different you would need to take all the air away from … well … the air.
Please feel free to feel better than me or anyone else for that matter without the need to inject your venomous comments into the conversation. We are completely disinterested in your inferiority complex and would much prefer to discuss matters in a way that we can all simply understand. We don’t need 10^7 complexity to communicate simple things.
I didn’t go through all of your replies that you had listed but for the most part the ones that I read were mainly focused on the concerns of the drinkability of various types of alcohols in which you can use and the CO2 admissions so I don’t know if anybody mentioned it but finding ethanol alcohol in a pure form without having to go to a Laboratory Supply it’s going to be pretty hard unless you know what to look for I just wanted to let everybody know that there is a product called h e e t and it is used to pour into your gas tank to get water out of your gas lines and is comprised of 100% pure ethanol alcohol so if you’re looking for something other than isopropanol or vodka and you want to be able to easily locate some ethanol without extra contaminants hopefully that information will help you out and it’s fairly cheap stuff
It looks like the “fuel” will be in people’s bellies before the heater is even lit. Haha.
I will be trying this out though just for testing. Won’t combustion be come with problems especially in an enclosed place like a tent?
How about talking about the product? Just saying.
What a great document you linked there!
Wow! I built such burners in the past and quite sucessful. But man… There are some really nifty and nice details in this manual…
Great!
OMG the intelligence in people these days … just sad
I think it’s an awesome design I would for sure make good use of these, I’m going on a camping trip in a couple weeks and I’m going to make a couple to take with me to test out.
I think it’s great! And if your that worried about people drinking the fuel being used inside then I guess just don’t make them for the people in your area and maybe learn to knit?? Lol
I am in complete awe of this comment section of an article about how to make a small functional small space heater. That almost immediately devolved into half brained arguments about humans consuming isopropyl alcohol. IMO you should just make one and try it for heating a small space, heating only. Should keep you nice and toasty while you butt chug a small bottle of Russian DM and enjoy the trip.
Not really, don’t do that…..
I added a bit of a hack to your hack….glue a bottle cap under the coils on top of the jar lid…add a couple drops of alcohol…and bob’s your uncle…as all the priming suggestions basically result in a firey Molotov cocktail…I thought this might be a good way to not burn shit down…wish I could add a photo…forgive me if someone already came up with a similar solution…I didn’t have time to read thru all the bs….cheers y’all.
t seems like people will have food in their stomachs before the heater is even turned on. Haha.
However, I will still give it a try for testing purposes. Won’t there be issues with combustion, particularly in a confined space like a tent?