Help on back up heating and cooking tools please.

I got one of these and so far 36 cans of butane...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41wtaUFFZuL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

And Im thinking about one of these.
http://beprepared.com/images/250/CK-S170.jpg that fuel lasts 10 hours for warming and 5 hours for cooking.
my question is, anyone had these and do they work to heat foods well?
here is what it says about it.

Heat Cell Fuel (1 can)

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The Heat Cell Fuel will provide a consistent warming temperature for up to ten hours or a cooking temperature for approximately 5 hours.

Safety Features:

• Contains no alcohol or mineral wool with formaldehyde.
• *Burns clean and odorless. No offensive odors associated with gelled alcohols.
• *Classified by NMFCA as a class 65 non-flammable. Classified by DOT, HAZMAT, IATA, IACO, and US MAIL as non-flammable acceptable for Air-Shipments.
• *Spill resistant design reduces accidents and liability due to fire hazards.
• *Easily relit with no "flashback".
• *Can be easily handled as a warmer in use.
• *Self extinguishes should it fall face down.
• *Classified as Non Toxic to marine life.
• *Safe for all. Multipurpose: Medium heat-over 10+ hours as a warmer for buffets, cocoa, soups and sauces depending on conditions. High heat - Up to 5 hours as a cooker for buffet lines and emergency heat source depending upon conditions.
• *EcoFuel is the only product to offer the heat of a gelled alcohol without the hazards.

Efficient:

• *Achieve maximum temperatures quicker than other fuels.
• *Longer burn time offers lowest cost use.
• *Easy to relight at any time and condition.
• *Indefinite Shelf life and does not evaporate.
• *Reduced shelf space and DOES NOT require special flammable storage cabinets.
• *Always burns fuel at top of can providing consistent heat from beginning to end.
• *Unaffected by heat or cold.

Environmentally Friendly:

• *All components are 100% Bio-degradable/inert.
• *Safe for landfills.
• *Does not affect Marine habitat.
• *No Harmful Emissions, Not classified as an Air Pollutant.
• *Environmentally Clean Manufacturing Facility generates Minimal Waste during manufacturing.

Im at a loss as to what to get for cooking long term. I live in the city so not cooking out doors ( to many worries about being out doors .

Im also concerned about cooking in my kitchen using gas or kerosene whats your thoughts on this?
the fuel cell is 3.50 a container. expensive I know. I just want to have back ups in case one goes out and Im stuck with no good cooking source. thanks for any advice

 

The sterno I used to use for parties when I had my catering business, It is ok in a emergency situation. I used them under my chafing dishes and are fine for warming food. as far as the butane stove I did have one of those also when I was a game jockey working a carnival just so I could get out of florida great stove, easy to use, Used mine mostly for cooking ramens, or frying balogna to eat,or an erstwhile burger.

 

If the butane burner stove you purchased isn't approved for indoor use, you might want to use that outdoors. If outdoors isn't an option at all, then the room needs to be well ventilated, otherwise you can get carbon monoxide poisoning. Burning propane or kerosene indoors will do the same.

 

Yet, millions of folks have propane stoves as their primary kitchen appliance, and suffer no ill effects. Perhaps, if you could seal yourself in a PERFECT small room of some type, you might suffer oxygen depletion, but in any kind of normal household, that isn't an issue.

IF you're cooking with propane, the most you're using on a "power burner" on a kitchen stove is about 20,000BTU. The small eyes are 9-12,000BTU. The burners on a Coleman camp stove are about 8,000BTU.

Compare this a ventless propane wall heater that runs 30,000BTU ( and for which no source of fresh air is required....normal house leakage is quite enough ). I have an UNVENTED wall heater in my sunroom, which is 10x15, and relatively tight ( Andersen door/windows ), and a carbon monoxide detector in the same room....it never budges off zero.


SO, back to cooking. Best source I've found is that 2 burner Coleman stove. It runs off 1lb propane bottles, and you can get an adapter hose to run it off 20lb gas grill size bottles. We remodeled our kitchen this summer, and set up the campstove out in the "auxiliary" kitchen I built off the back of the garage. Had the campstove connected to a 20lb bottle and found it would last us about 3 months. Your mileage may vary.

 

I prefer to error on the side of caution.
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If you plan on using the heating and cooking appliances described indoors, I would crack open a window at least. Also, before I ever lit the first one in the house I would install carbon monoxide detectors in all bedrooms, and in the common areas outside of the bedrooms.
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Tens, and even at times, hundreds of people lose their lives when during the winter we have an ice storm or some other event that knocks out the power for days.
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Unprepared individuals grasp at straws to provide needed heat or a cooking source without proper information at hand, and some pay the price for their miscalulations with their lives.

 

Yep...true enough.

But if you examine the cases, it's the idiot running a generator in the garage ( or even the basement ) or the knucklehead burning charcoal in the living room, and things like that. Not gas.

Gas ( propane, natural, butane ) is a very clean burning fuel, and if burned in modern appliances is right at 100% complete combustion.

Though you DO hear of furnace malfunctions from time to time, where something goes wrong and there is incomplete combustion, causing CO to come out, I don't know of a case of that from a cooking appliance.

But if cracking a window makes you feel better, go for it !

 

Several years back during one really cold winter, our propane range went out. Couldn't get out for a few days, so hooked up or coleman propane cook top and used it for about a week to cook on. We never had a single issue. As TNAndy said earlier, most of us use propane for cooking daily, our propane heaters both vented and vent free with NO ill effects. In your position, I would highly recomend the coleman camp stove, and go one further and buy the coleman oven that fits right on top. Propane is safe to store and last's forever.

 

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I agree whole heartedly! Oh, right. I am agreeing with myself. I thought I remembered saying something like that before I was pooh poohed as being a worry wart.

 

ok, I found truly what I wanted and when I went to order it they were sold out, and will be for months dang ! it uses the heet ( yellow bottle and several other liquid fuels. and its pretty powerful! take a look , they have lanterns to and there so cool looking and very bright ! I will be getting the lantern and the stove. heet ( the fuel of choice for me )is very cheap here ( 3 for a dollar at times! )
YouTube - BriteLyt Methanol Ethanol stove

YouTube - BriteLyt Methanol Ethanol lantern

 

I've sorta been looking into this but was trying to go a route where I wouldn't be dependent on having to buy anything after I bought the unit. I don't know that you'd be interested but when I started totaling up the cost of a box of sternos that provided 2 hours of cooking time.... I found we could get a box for around $50 plus another $15 for shipping. That's $65 without the cost of the stove so I thought hmmm.... better in my pocket than theirs and started checking into solar units. For less than the cost of 3 cases of sterno, I found I could have a Sportster Solar Oven with Reflectors or a Sizzling Solar Parabolic which I've actually seen work before and it really works, I haven't bought one yet.... I'm having difficulty deciding since I haven't spent enough time searching down solar cookers or the opinions of others to pick one that's right for me. Tee he.... they would have to be used outside.

 

Prepping is a lot about lists and organization, at least for me. Organization and step-by-step instructions help people with those immortal words written by Douglas Adams in his cult classic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - "Don't Panic!"

 

While Sterno and solar "cooking" are relatively cheap, they are neither efficient nor very good.

Sterno has the power to boil water. Yes, it boils eventually; and not any serious volume of water at that - I learned the hard way. Personal experience. Additionally, the Sterno fuel canisters, while they will last for 2 hours, because they put out so few BTUs it takes forever to heat anything - 45 minutes to heat up room temperature (at the time 85 degrees F) water for instant coffee, for example. Solar cooking is time consuming, arduous, and very much NOT low-key. I recommend you spend one day cooking entirely with Sterno and another with solar and see what I mean.

Solar cooking requires that you constantly go out and adjust the reflector array to make sure it is pointed at the sun, and takes hours upon hours to even get up to full internal temperature in the food. Also, your food is outside in a big shiny box that is literally a BEACON to anyone who may be looking for food, money, ammo etc. (IE Mutant Biker Zombie). Stick with the tried and true methods - camping stove - indoors (for efficiency and speed of heat up) and haybox cooking for keeping fuel costs to a minimum.

Dual fuel or even propane camping stoves have the oomph and BTU's to get things seriously going. Additionally if you use methods like haybox cooking you save on fuels, limit your exposure to gasses/fumes from cooking devices, and it is literally a "set and forget" method.

As always keep it inexpensive as possible, and keep it simple. YMMV.

The opinions of this poster do not necessarily reflect those of the owners and management of this forum.

 

After propane, which is now our "normal" cooking source, and have 3 -500gal tanks + dozen 100lb tanks + bunch of 20lb bottles, my backup source would be this wood stove:

 

Falcon> I've read a lot of threads here.... I read.... walked away to clean a toilet.... finished a bathroom.... came back and read again.... walked away to do laundry folded clothes and walked dogs.... walked back and read again.... put up food for a few hours.... came back and read again then left to pick up kids and came back to read again before starting dinner. I've learned a lot. I've been doing this for a few weeks. I tried to read your thread on -4.basics.html and I'm getting this, "Equilibrium, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation."

I'm pretty sure I'm off that "probation" for new members so I guess I need help from somebody understanding why my account doesn't have sufficient "privileges" or has been disabled so I can't read that thread. I can assure everyone here.... I mean no harm. I'm doing my best to ensure I'll be able to "tread water" when BigBrother comes to "save" us all... I've got a moderately handicapped adult "child" hanging out at age 9 or 10 for the rest of his life, a mother in law in her 80's, a husband who is not feeling too well lately, and a teenager still here in HS. If the **** hits the fan.... and all indicators are it will and it's only a matter of when.... my youngest brother in his early 50's with two teenagers who lost his wife will end up here with my Dad who's as old as my MIL. I suspect one of my older brothers and his wife will end up here fleeing Chicago next and... they will make it here... he served in Viet Nam and she served on ships or something.... I never did pay attention to what she did. That brother's been a "prepper" dating back to when my husband and I had no clue he hadn't taken leave of his senses. Thank God somebody in my family at the very least... exposed our entire family to the "issues" even if everyone thought he'd lost it.
TnAndy> We had one of those wood stoves for cooking and heating when I was growing up.... they're wonderful.

 

well I did go today and bought a Coleman stove, the one that uses unleaded gas and Coleman fuel. Im happy with my purchase and also got a can of fuel, one of many in the next few months. I also picked up the heet as I still want the alcohol one above. I also have the butane stove I got last week. I wanted 3 back up sources as Im the type that I do not put all my eggs in one basket, if one fails or breaks down I have other means of cooking.
remember Im a city dweller, I will not be cooking outside. talking about eggs, Im also looking into buying 3 chickens, My hedge is so high that no one can see in my yard . I am going to try to raise them and also do a small garden. ( raised bed) Im feeling better about things now and know that with patience, and with good sence I can do this!