Gas or spirit?

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marie galante

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Most boats have a gas fuel/cooker installation. Most we've seen seem to have less than state-of-the-art gas safety checks and procedures, with elderly rubber hoses, no flame failure devices, and no spillage alarms.

A ( very ) few friends have spirit cookers of one form or another and insist they are much safer. They are all beardy, fisherman-smocks and wellies types.

Could they be right?
 
They are safer, but they're also less good as a cooker. Perhaps beardy welly types don't care as long as they can (slowly) boil a kettle? But I reckon they'd struggle with some of these on a two-burner meths stove:



By far the majority of yachts have gas installations but gas explosions are rare and newsworthy events. Direct your healthy concern towards ensuring the system is in good condition, the cooker has a flame-failure device, and there is a working gas detector on board, and all will be fine.

Pete
 
Gas all the way providing you're confident your system is safe.
My first boat had an early version of the Origo, a pain to fill up, expensive for the meths and not particularly fast cooking / kettle boiling.

I believe the newer ones are easier to fill.

Having gas just makes everything easier, I've a grill for cooking toast / meat etc. And the burners boil the kettle much more quickly, and do a better job of heating a pan. A lot cheaper to run, and it doesn't evaporate when I leave it for a while.
 
My gas oven/stove was ancient, but brilliant, did everything. Crew left the gas on unlit TWICE by accident.

Now have an Origo. Sometimes the less than convenient saves you from the things you can't foresee.
 
Modern gas cookers cannot be left unlit and passing gas, the flame failure device will switch the gas off.

Same thing happened several times with the old faithful cooker on Sleighride until I worked out that it was getting snagged on the waterproofs as people went to the heads causing it.
 
Agreed there was no need to switch the type of fuel, just get a modern gas stove with flame failure device. That way you keep the convenience and speed of gas without introducing any more risks.
 
Totally agree with all the other posters. Our original cooker was an old one without a flame failure device - occasionally a burner would blow out. We never had a big scare with it but dumped it and bought a modern one.
On the only occasion I have sailed a delivery trip on a boat with an Origo I found it difficult to imagine how anyone could recommend it as a serious option. Smelly, the fumes were most unpleasant, slow, no way it could be used as anything but a kettle boiler, fuel was expensive and difficult to find on occasions. The owner disposed of it as quickly as possible and installed a gas cooker.
 
I should add that the cost of a replacement gas cooker/oven scared me silly and the Origo was on a special on Amazon :) Add that to my culinary challenged capabilities (some people genuinely don't need to cook a 5 course meal with canapes on board) and it was a reasonable compromise.

I agree that they do whiff a bit, are slower to boil a kettle and are a bit fiddly to fill. But I've gotten used to it and whilst I don't think its 'better' than a gas stove - having one less thing to worry about is nice for me. It suits my style of boating - at the moment - given that we do weekends and occasionally a week.

For a live aboard (which we are not) or for passage makers (which we are not) or people that stay for weeks on board (which we are not - yet) I would imagine that the spirit stove is indeed not such a great idea, however for the rest of the market, probably a good (off the top of my head judging by the responses on here) 80% of casual boat users - they are a quite good alternative.

Note I said 'alternative' rather than trying to say its the best thing since Hovis invented the slicing machine.
 
ghostlymoron said:
Agreed there was no need to switch the type of fuel, just get a modern gas stove with flame failure device. That way you keep the convenience and speed of gas without introducing any more risks.
Click to expand...

Just engage logic there.. if the gas cooker is that old (like mine) - it's likely the whole gas system is knackered warranting a complete refurb. If you feel that 10% of the boats value is best spent on boiling a kettle quicker then crack on.
 
marie galante said:
Most boats have a gas fuel/cooker installation. Most we've seen seem to have less than state-of-the-art gas safety checks and procedures, with elderly rubber hoses, no flame failure devices, and no spillage alarms.

A ( very ) few friends have spirit cookers of one form or another and insist they are much safer. They are all beardy, fisherman-smocks and wellies types.

Could they be right?
Click to expand...

Not unless spirit is uninflamable.It's not rocket science to maintain a gas system in good working order :rolleyes:
 
The third option is paraffin. We used to have an Optimus hob and quite liked it. Ran it on central heating oil so it cost pennies to run. Fuel is easy to handle, no more guessing how much you have left like with gas. Very powerful burners.

The downside is the palaver involved lighting it- a quick cuppa is a serious undertaking, to the extent that we used to fill flasks, wash dishes, etc, before making the decision to the turn the burner off. It took a while to get out of that habit once we switched to gas.
 
Kelpie said:
The third option is paraffin. We used to have an Optimus hob and quite liked it. Ran it on central heating oil so it cost pennies to run. Fuel is easy to handle, no more guessing how much you have left like with gas. Very powerful burners.

The downside is the palaver involved lighting it- a quick cuppa is a serious undertaking, to the extent that we used to fill flasks, wash dishes, etc, before making the decision to the turn the burner off. It took a while to get out of that habit once we switched to gas.
Click to expand...

There are also diesel cookers I believe but that must surely leave the smell of diesel/paraffin over everything?
 
SiteSurfer said:
Just engage logic there.. if the gas cooker is that old (like mine) - it's likely the whole gas system is knackered warranting a complete refurb. If you feel that 10% of the boats value is best spent on boiling a kettle quicker then crack on.
Click to expand...

Are you sure you are comparing apples with apples? Swapping a two burner Origo for a two burner stove with grill and oven would perhaps not make economic sense but there are very many two-burner camping stoves that are very cheap indeed.

On diesel: we cooked for many years on paraffin stoves in a series of camper vans. They can be very quick, giving out lots of heat. Over a long period of time soft furnishings did take up a smell but in the normal course of things there is very little smell to them. Ovens (Taylors) are horrendously expensive, which is why we never had one in a van.
 
Kelpie said:
The third option is paraffin. We used to have an Optimus hob and quite liked it.
The downside is the palaver involved lighting it- a quick cuppa is a serious undertaking
Click to expand...

Not really, when you get used to it IMO. Preheating with ethanol takes about two minutes. Gives you time to fill the kettle, put tea in pot, bring out the cups, find the biscuits...
And when the burner is lit, the heating is fast.
 
Nicholas123 said:
There are also diesel cookers I believe but that must surely leave the smell of diesel/paraffin over everything?
Click to expand...
No... Gladys came with a Wallas cooker which effectively is a ceramic hob and oven where the combustion is carried out remotely like an Eberspacher... Don't look at the price though :-)

Previous boat had an Origo which was fine. Meths is very expensive so you need the odd trip to France for "Alcool a bruler" (when I bought it 10 years ago it was 5litres for 3 euro) which doesn't smell. Alternatively a bit of water in meths takes the smell away
 
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Nicholas123 said:
There are also diesel cookers I believe but that must surely leave the smell of diesel/paraffin over everything?
Click to expand...

The only diesel fuelled hobs/cookers I am aware of use a vented combustion design so hopefully little or no smell. There are fancy ones like Wallas or somewhat cruder ones like SIGMAR, which I believe are a bit like a seagoing Aga.
 
BabaYaga said:
Not really, when you get used to it IMO. Preheating with ethanol takes about two minutes. Gives you time to fill the kettle, put tea in pot, bring out the cups, find the biscuits...
And when the burner is lit, the heating is fast.
Click to expand...

I had one for four years and, like you say, there is a knack to it, and we did get used to it. But the new boat came with gas and I must say I haven't really missed the old hob.
 
I love my origo but as the boat wasn't designed for gas, I wouldn't put gas in her anyway.

I manage quite well cooking for 2 or 3 for up to about a week. Agree that it's not really for passage makers etc but I find its all part of the charm of being onboard
 
vyv_cox said:
Are you sure you are comparing apples with apples? Swapping a two burner Origo for a two burner stove with grill and oven would perhaps not make economic sense but there are very many two-burner camping stoves that are very cheap indeed.
Click to expand...

But do the cheap camping stoves have the flame-failure device which was the reason for the OP replacing his otherwise perfectly good Plastimo Atlantic with oven and grill?

Pete
 
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