Tag Archives: kerosene

Kerosene stove

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I live in a house that is plumbed for natural gas. I use it for heat, cooking, and clothes drying. Broadly speaking, when the power goes out, I still have natural gas available for my use. However, this will not be the case in every circumstance. A power outage caused by a squirrel humping a transformer three blocks down the street will not affect natural gas delivery to my house… a large natural disaster or distrubance, on the other hand, may impact delivery. (Could be anything…union goes on strike, pipeline damage, etc, etc.)

So, to me, it makes sense to have another way to cook. And, really, cooking is a bit of a luxury in a crisis…I can live a long time eating unheated food out of its can. But, being able to create a big pot of steaming hot water…that has a tremendous value.

For my cooking needs I have a couple small camping stoves. One, a Coleman Peak 1 stove, will run on white gas or on kerosene. The other stove, a Primus multifuel, will run on literally any hydrocarbon I can find. But those are small stoves that don’t lend themselves to real cooking. Great for backpacking, though. I need to pick up a small two burner propane stove and that’s on the list as soon as I do some research. But…one thing I’ve wanted for a while is a kerosene stove. I have kerosene lanterns, kerosene heaters, and a rather healthy amount of kerosene on hand. Its the hottest burning of the liquid fuels, stores well, and is safer than gasoline. I can, and have, cooked on top of my kerosene heater but it doesn have nearly the heat control I’d like.  So, whats the options look like for kerosene stoves?

Well, there’s a buncha sheet metal stamped kero stoves that are out of China and India. They all look a bit flimsy and their sharp edges of stamped steel could give you tetanus just by staring at them too long. But I did a bit of research and came up with this:

Seems pretty solid. Not made in China or India, which is nice. If you get one of these, you really need to follow the one big cardinal rule of any kerosene appliance: when you fill it for the first time, or you are using a new wick, give the wick plenty of time to soak up fuel before you light it. Seriously. Fill it with fuel and then go forget about it for at least several hours. Otherwise trying to light it will only result in the wick burning rather than the fuel. Here endeth the lesson.

Like most kerosene appliances, there is some smell when you start it up and when you shut it down. I’d normally say you would want to do those procedures outside but I think this is a product that you really should be using in a wildly well ventilated space…like maybe a garage with the door up.

It takes a bit of fiddling and adjusting to get things just the way they should. What youre looking for is for a blue gas-like flame. Not the cheery yellow of a kerosene heater. It takes a little learning curve to figure out just how much or how little wick to give it, etc, but once youve got it dialed in the results are pretty good.

I was able to put a covered dutch oven with one liter of cold water on this and it had it at a rolling boil in seventeen minutes with an ambient outside temperature of 37 degrees. I’d imagine that building a screen or shield around it to keep the cold away would help quite a bit.

I see this as a choice for tailgating, car camping, picnic tables, and other outdoor venues where you want a long-burning heat source to cook with. In a crisis, I’d see no trouble sitting in my yard boiling up water for freeze drieds or frying something. I suppose that i a well ventilated indoor space you might be able to use it, but I’m going to have enough problems going on around me at that point to want to add another one like CO poisoning.

I got mine offa Amazon for about $140 and I think that was about the right price for that. The build quality seems better than what I’ve seen in the China/India versions, and it appears well made although realistically it isn’t a terribly complicated device. As always, while you’ve got your wallet out go pick up a spare wick because.

For me, since I’m a bit heavy on kerosene, this was a good choice for an alternative cooking method. A small propane stove would probably be more efficient and easier to work with, but I have a  lot of kerosene so for me this makes sense. I’m still going to get a small two-burner propane stove that runs on the 1# bottles, and when I do I will report back on it. In the meantime though…I rather like the cheery heat and warmth of kerosene.

New heater

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A couple months ago, the thermocouple for the furnace decided to crap the bed. As you know, the thermocouple, on a gas appliance, is what keeps the device from sending gas to the burners when the pilot light is out. Its a part that regularly fails. Could be a year or two, could be ten years…but you’d be a smart man if you kept some spares on hand and learned how to replace them. I was not a smart man.

Oh, I knew it was the thermocouple. And thermocouples are pretty standardized. But do you know what is not standardized? The means of accessing the thermocouple. That is to say, while I have the part, and know how to swap the part, I had no idea how to successfully disassmeble my furnace to get to the par.

So I did what any smart person would do who didn’t want to spend money they didn’t have to – I went to YouTube and looked for instructional videos.

TL;DR – wound up having to have someone come in to swap it out, but video’d the entire process so I know how to do it next time.

But this post isn’t about that, although there are some good takeaways there. This post is about that the heat went out when it was 0 degrees out and the ‘supply issue / labor issue’ bugaboo said no one was coming to fix my furnace for about three days.

Worried? Nope. Went to the basement and pulled the kerosene heaters out of storage. I have two. Why two? Well, first of all (say it with me) one is none and two is one. Also, I wanted one for the basement to keep the pipes from freezing, and one for the living area to keep the humans from freezing. So, two.

What surprised me was that when I pulled the trashbag dust cover off the heater I was delighted to find an index card clipped to the top of the heater with a clothespin. It said that the heater was last used, cleaned, fully refueled, and had its batteries changed on a particular date a couple years ago. Sweet. Future me is very impressed with past me’s thoughtfulness. (Yes, batteries. All kero heaters can be lit with a match if you need to, but most use a couple C-batts to power an igniter to light the heater. But, you can work it just fine without the batteries if you need to. More of a convenience, really.)

But, heater #2 is a bit dog-eared. It works, but it’s definitely seen better days and perhaps it is time for a replacement. So, of to Lowe’s. First thing I noticed was that kerosene was $35 for 2.5 gallons. This is wildly absurd. Even at your local green-handled Cenex pump its still expensive. Fortunately, I’m prepared. A few years back I bought out someone’s Y2K stash for $2.86/gallon. And prior to that, there was the Great Kerosene Closeout at Home Depot which pretty much set me for the forseeable future.

So, it was off to Lowe’s yesterday for a new kerosene heater. One left in stock. I assembled it, filled it, let it sit for a while so the wick would soak up fuel, ran it for a while to burn off any oils and whatnot, and now it’ll go into storage with a happy little index card taped to it with all the necessary info. But…a few other things are worth noting.

Any piece of gear can, and will, fail. This is why I have two of these things. So, in addition to keeping the instruction manual with the heater for quick reference, I’m also ordering a spare wick or two (which, fortuitously, both heaters use). I also keep a couple siphons on hand as well. Most importantly, in the box with the kerosene heater gear is a CO detector and spare batteries. There’s no room for error with this stuff. Get a carbon monoxide alarm and use it.

And, finally, a couple really good, really large fire extinguishers. I never, ever fuel these things indoors and when I fuel the outdoors I always have someone standing by with a fire extinguisher….just in case.

Also, I bring the heaters out onto my porch to light them or extinguish them. I light them, wait ten minutes, and then bring them inside. When I want to turn them off, I take them outside, turn them off, and let them sit for ten minutes before bringing them back inside. This avoids the annoying smells they make when you start/extinguish them.

So…thats the big prep-related activity this weekend. New kero heater.

 

Plan B heating

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Montana is awesome in the summer and lethal in the winter. So, for my needs, it seems a good idea to have an alternative source (or two) of heating in case something happens that causes the normal heating system to be unavailable.

First and foremost, if youre going to burn anything…propane, wood, kerosene, fiat currency, whatever….for indoor heat you absolutely must have a carbon monoxide detector (or three) in place. And if it goes off, don’t ask questions….walk outside immediately.

I have a fairly decent supply of kerosene sitting here. In the last fifteen years I lucked out into two sales on kerosene that were just too good to pass up.

Kerosene heaters are a mixed bag. For one reason or another (mostly .gov nonsense) the really good kerosene heaters (like the Toyosun) are hard to come across new. Fortunately Craigslist provides a ton of used kerosene heaters at very decent prices. I mean really good prices…like $20-50 for a heater that was $150+ when it was new. So, since one is none, I have a couple heaters. But…I almost never use them. (Thats the problem with living in an area that is basically disaster-free.) As a result wicks dry out, things get dusty, batteries go dead, that sort of thing.

I decided to get around to taking care of some preparedness tasks I’ve been letting go and one of them was making sure the kero heaters were up to snuff. Nope. Both are sitting on “E”. And they’re dirty. So…time to institute a preventative maintenance and readiness program for the stupid things.

I sat down and disassembled things as best I could. I wiped down everything to, tightened all screws, cleaned the glass, applied some kerosene to the exposed wick, filled the tank, and lit the wick. And…it ran fine.

Some people don’t like kerosene because “it stinks”. Yeah it does…when you start it and when you shut it down. When it runs, it usually runs without any smell. I set my heater on my porch, light it, wait five minutes, then bring it inside. When I want to extinguish it, I take it outside, turn it off, and leave it for a half hour so not only is there no smell but it’s also cooled down nicely so i can handle it and put it away.

And speaking of putting away, I really need to make up some sort of ‘dust cover’ for these things. I don’t like leaving them sitting in the basement where they get dusty.

And, I really need to put together an accessory package for these things. A tall .50 can with spare wicks, batteries (for the ignition), barbecue lighter, matches, fuel handling materials, etc. By the by, even though kerosene is extremely safe to handle, I always fuel them a) outdoors b) when theyre cool/cold, and c) there is always a fire extinguisher handy.

I need to go into Evernote and create a category for the kerosene heating supplies. I should probably also set up a scheduled set of reminders to inspect and test the heaters as well. So, yeah, a little bit of work but they payoff when the heat is out should be quite worth it.