Camping Stoves

After purchasing your tent, camping stoves are probably next on your list of camping purchases. Many factors need to be taken into consideration to find a camping stove most suitable for your camping needs.

Several questions you need to ask yourself are:

do you need to carry the camping stove and fuel over long distances?

how readily available is the fuel?

How much you are willing to spend on a camping stove?

Is it easy setting up and dismantling the camping stove?

Is controllability of generated heat from the camping stove an issue?

The greatest variety in designs of camping stoves come under this category. They include gas-cartridge stoves and refillable gas-bottle camping stoves. In most of these the gas is stored as a liquid under pressure, but vaporises immediately as it leaves the storage bottle, arriving at the burner as a gas ready to be burned.

If you're looking for the ultimate in portability then the Trangia stoves are the best solution as it combines a methanol trangia burner with all the pots and pans you need. It isn't as civilized as a gas burning camping stove but when you're in the middle of nowhere it provides a great solution. Remember if you're going to be carrying a camping stove then weight of the stove and the camping stove utensils becomes a large factor. This is where the trangia camping stove comes in handy as it provides everything in a little neat compact package.

There are small "gipsy" stoves which use wood and paper as a solid fuel. Additionally, other common solid fuel stoves use white, waxy solid shaped into a small rectangular blocks made out of hexamine. These type of camping stoves are extremely handy and cheap to run.

Petrol camping stoves have been popular with generations of hikers and campers. Brands include Coleman, Optimus, MSR, Primus, Sigg and many others. They boil water in no time and many of them can run on a variety of different fuels such as unleaded petrol, coleman fuel, white fuel, kerosene or aviation fuel and others. One of the drawbacks of this type of camping stove is that depending on fuel, they may require a bit of maintenance to keep the camping stove burners clear and running properly.

On a final note, most camping gear is fairly harmless if you don't follow the correct precautions, but remember camping stoves are not. You can be playing around with a quantity of highly volatile, even explosive, fuel. The potential for disaster does not end there as campers died in snow caves and tents from the fuel fumes, either due to the lack of oxygen or excess carbon dioxide, and from carbon monoxide. However, do not have nightmares most users manage to handle all this with complete safety, just by follow basic safety precautions.