Gas or spirit?

foeu said:
That is not how you use a Taylors.
1. Put 15ml of meths in the preheat cup and light it.
2. Put the kettle on the stove.
3. Wait four minutes for the meths to burn out.
4. Light the burner just as if it were gas.
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I use one of these soaked in meths to light my Taylor cabin heater. Saves having meths sloshing about.
 
The problem I have with lighting a paraffin stove is that the window of time in which you can light it after pre-heating is quite short- a few seconds.
So many times I would pop down below, slop on a bit of meths, go back to the helm, oh look a bird/boat/bit of weed, oh the meths has burned off, go back down below, light the burner, find it's just not quite hot enough and whoomph big yellow flame and soot on the deckhead.
I ended up using a blowtorch as a backup as if you miss the opportunity to light the burner first time, that's the only way to top up the temperature. Putting meths on a not-quite-hot-enough burner doesn't work, you have to let it cool right back down and start from scratch.

SWMBO says I am easily distacted hence why I didn't get on as well with the stove as she did.
 
foeu said:
That is not how you use a Taylors.
1. Put 15ml of meths in the preheat cup and light it.
2. Put the kettle on the stove.
3. Wait four minutes for the meths to burn out.
4. Light the burner just as if it were gas.
Click to expand...


That's how we use our Taylors, which came with the boat. Always had gas before. Not noticed any real difference in Kettle boiling times. Our Taylors has an oven which did take some time to get the hang of temperature control, but OK now.
 
prv said:
I think you're mixing up spirit and pressurised-paraffin stoves. I believe paraffin is actually slightly hotter than gas. The trade off is the faff of getting them lit. Personally I like gas, but I would at least give paraffin a try if, say, I bought a boat fitted with a nice Taylor's. Spirit I think I would be looking to replace quite quickly.

Pete
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Yes, paraffin works well in a stove. We had a very nice Taylor's two burner in a succession of camper vans. Even including lighting with meths they are as fast as a smallish butane gas stove but a little slower than a bigger one. Once lit they are hotter than most butane stoves. A very long time ago a Scouting friend measured time to boil a standard measure of water. Fastest of all was a propane bitumen melting burner, less than a minute. Most gas and paraffin stoves were between 2 and 2.5 minutes.

Problem with the Taylor's is that they are horrendously expensive and an oven costs about twice as much (from memory) as the two-burner.
 
Kelpie said:
Paraffin is, in my experience, more powerful than gas. Favoured by long term livaboards due to the energy density (you could feasibly carry several years supply aboard) and no compatibility issues. A friend of mine even used jet fuel in his Taylors and found it worked very well. I also found it smellier than gas, and if you get a flare up there is soot deposited on the ceiling etc.
I would have paraffin again but at the moment am simply finding gas more convenient. Lighting up takes two seconds instead of two minutes.
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Jet fuel IS highly refined paraffin! The smell round the working side of an airport is exactly the same as the smell of the pressurized paraffin burners we used on board my Dad's boats - both a Primus and a BiAladdin lamp. I tend to think of jet engines as glorified space heaters :)

Just to contribute to the debate, I have used both paraffin and gas over the years, and regard gas as preferable on safety grounds. Like it or not, there is a (not unpleasant) smell from paraffin burners, and they DO take a few minutes and a little skill to get going. That said, once going they are efficient. The real hazard with paraffin burners is that they can very easily emit Carbon monoxide; even when properly adjusted they emit it at a level not far below safety limits. Even putting a pan of very cold water too close to the flame will cause them to emit dangerous levels of CO. This is not speculation; I have seen a (regrettably unpublished) report on this done for my former employer, who use paraffin cookers (Optimus) in the field in Antarctica, where CO is a real haxard. As a result of the report, field parties are issued with cookers modified with longer legs on the cooking stand to avoid carbon monoxide emissions when melting snow for drinking water. Admittedly that is for use in an enclosed space, but it makes you think. Gas cookers are not immune to this, but routinely emit Carbon monoxide at levels below detection, and a flame that can emit CO is obviously faulty (yellow!). Paraffin is used in the polar regions for exactly the reason some people have mentioned - the energy density of the fuel is high, so the supply for a long period is not bulky.

Yes, gas is flammable and heavier than air, but a modern gas locker and a well-maintained system will avoid the hazard. And by modern I probably mean "post 1970s"; certainly my Moody (1989) has a gas-locker that is sealed from the rest of the boat and drains overboard. Further, most of us have extremely simple gas installations, with only one appliance, so the gas piping has few joints!

I have never used a spirit burner, but it is clear that in terms of cooking efficiency they simply can't compete with gas or paraffin.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
The real hazard with paraffin burners is that they can very easily emit Carbon monoxide; even when properly adjusted they emit it at a level not far below safety limits. Even putting a pan of very cold water too close to the flame will cause them to emit dangerous levels of CO. This is not speculation; I have seen a (regrettably unpublished) report on this done for my former employer, who use paraffin cookers (Optimus) in the field in Antarctica, where CO is a real haxard. As a result of the report, field parties are issued with cookers modified with longer legs on the cooking stand to avoid carbon monoxide emissions when melting snow for drinking water. Admittedly that is for use in an enclosed space, but it makes you think.
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Very interesting. But is it really a hazard also in a typical leisure boat environment? I have used an Optimus stove for more than 30 years and have had a CO alarm for almost 10. Has never once gone off. Seems to me that there would have been reports of alarms going off in connection with paraffin stoves if this was a real danger.
 
I use a taylors 030 and find it excellent ,normally run it on heating oil (kerosene ) I have in the past used jet fuel with which it burns hotter. If anybody is thinking of using jet fuel you need Jet A1 , NONE OF THE OTHER JET GRADES are suitable or safe!

John
 
Taylors isn't a spirit stove. It uses pressurised paraffin. Although it may flare up, it doesn't explode.

Gas is heavier than air which means it fills your bilges while you may be breathing nice fresh air at head level. Once it reaches the correct proportion of air and gas it can be ignited and it will explode. And you still may have not smelt anything. Fluids such as spirit and paraffin may burn, and catch fire, but they don't explode as catastrophically as gas, otherwise we would require safety devices for them, and we don't.

Gas can also make a bad situation very much as in the case of the boats on the Thames - a fire may start to take hold caused by something else, but once it reaches the gas bottles and they explode, it kind of ruins everyone's day.

Gas is clean, convenient and easy to use. And because of this people put up with the risk and install safety devices (required by law because boats blow up) and are happy with that situation. Personally, I know I'd probably forget to maintain, check or replace any safety devices so I opted for spirit and, having grown up with Trangias, I don't have a problem with it. My boat came with a very sketchy gas system that I took out and installed the Origo. My boat is so small that eating out is usually the first option anyway...
 
JVL said:
I use a taylors 030 and find it excellent ,normally run it on heating oil (kerosene ) I have in the past used jet fuel with which it burns hotter. If anybody is thinking of using jet fuel you need Jet A1 , NONE OF THE OTHER JET GRADES are suitable or safe!

John
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I use Odourless Paraffin from Caldo
http://www.caldo.co.uk/paraffin_extra.aspx
Used to use Jet A1 in the Boeings which I used to fly !
 
BabaYaga said:
Very interesting. But is it really a hazard also in a typical leisure boat environment? I have used an Optimus stove for more than 30 years and have had a CO alarm for almost 10. Has never once gone off. Seems to me that there would have been reports of alarms going off in connection with paraffin stoves if this was a real danger.
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Well, you're unlikely to be melting snow for drinking water, which was where the highest hazards occurred. However, we all want to keep heat in (in UK waters; YMMV in other areas!), so the ventilation aspects are probably comparable between an Antarctic tent and a yacht's cabin (Antarctic tents do have ventilation chimneys!). But for me the clincher is that the baseline CO emissions from a paraffin "roarer" burner are much higher than those from a gas stove; BAS would have moved to gas if it were logistically practical (the increased volume and weight of gas containers makes it unviable). The emissions are still below the level that will set off an alarm, but the point is that you're closer to the red-line, so relatively minor glitches with the burner can increase the CO levels beyond safe limits.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I have never used a spirit burner, but it is clear that in terms of cooking efficiency they simply can't compete with gas or paraffin.
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I'm certainly not the sage of all things cookers, but having had both gas and spirit on the boat, BOTH have to be turned down to avoid burning stuff. Both cook stuff.

Are we not in danger of making somewhat sweeping statements that whilst possibly technically correct if one is to look at nth percentages, surely in the grand scheme of things - both perform the same duty pretty much the same. I mean - surely you dont run your gas cookers at 100% flame all the time?

I'm forever turning my stove down, that suggests to me that its performing just fine.
 
SiteSurfer said:
Are we not in danger of making somewhat sweeping statements that whilst possibly technically correct if one is to look at nth percentages, surely in the grand scheme of things - both perform the same duty pretty much the same. I mean - surely you dont run your gas cookers at 100% flame all the time?

I'm forever turning my stove down, that suggests to me that its performing just fine.
Click to expand...

Personally, I have found spirit stoves and paraffin with the associated pricking makes meal times
more fun than it does at home. If I was a live-aboard I would probably feel differently.

Bio fuel for spirit stoves for me has been a giant step forward.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
... the point is that you're closer to the red-line, so relatively minor glitches with the burner can increase the CO levels beyond safe limits.
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With gas, you're even closer to the 'red line'. Relatively minor glitches with unions, controls, or hoses can result in gas content in the bilges -- unsafe at any concentration.

Gas is used so often because it's convenient, and many people here have clearly decided that its convenience outweighs its risk. However, it's also the most dangerous fuel to use. By all means use gas if you're prepared to take the risk. But note that even the installation of gas alarms won't necessarily stop your boat being destroyed -- and losing your boat to a gas explosion is definitely not convenient.

Mike
 
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