Trangia: How much fuel per day to take

[Solohike74]

Never thought I would, but what with the cost of gas cans and not being able to take them flying, have thought I might take up the Trangia way.

I've set my eyes on the Mini Trangia as mostly I go out solo.

How much fuel should be taken per day? Assuming 2-3 cups of tea or coffee, a possible evening soup, and dehydrated meals (either continenatl pasta or the backcountry ones from camp stores). This question is for fuel bottle selection, as well making sure I go out with enough.

[Strider]

Never thought I would, but what with the cost of gas cans and not being able to take them flying, have thought I might take up the Trangia way.

I've set my eyes on the Mini Trangia as mostly I go out solo.

How much fuel should be taken per day? Assuming 2-3 cups of tea or coffee, a possible evening soup, and dehydrated meals (either continenatl pasta or the backcountry ones from camp stores). This question is for fuel bottle selection, as well making sure I go out with enough.

Can't answer your question accurately as most of my trips are shortish and I tend to just take a full 500ml anyway. However, I did go a week once on around 300ml.

Checkout the Trangia Triangle or the Clikstand - both are essentially a Mini Trangia with a built in windshield

[DonQx]

Depends a bit on how you use it and in what conditions.

One lady I know can get away with 65ml per day including baking a flat damper in the pan.

Methinks the Mini Trangia Tends to use a bit more fuel than the full Trangias.

We're not the most frugal with fuel and usually bring a bit back home, our rules of thumb with the 2 person Trangia are

- 100ml per day 1 person on their own
- 150ml per day for the 2 of us


dq

[forest]

I don't have a Trianga.

For my metho stoves I just do some test burns on 500ml of water.
Throw some ice cubes in the water (Mountain water can be brr cold) and put a fan on it if you like (Or do it outside if it's breezy)

Figure out your usage for 500ml, then work out how much boiled water you would do in a day.
Add a bit for spillage and field inefficencies.
Walla, Amonut sorted and you get to burn some fuel at home....

Me, I take 60ml for my fosters keg caldera cone system.
That gives me 3 cups of coffee, one instant soup and a freeze dried meal.
Amounts will vary with stove type, pot etc

[Aushiker]

On my last outing with a Trail Designs Sidewinder Ti-Tri system I averaged 68 ml per day. This was for breakfast, afternoon/evening hot drinks and dinner. I am pretty happy with that usage rate.

Andrew

[anotherwalker]

I'd suggest roughly 50ml of fuel per litre of water to be boiled.

There are some interesting articles in these links regarding fuel usage by Anthony Dunk (he used to make and sell the Methlite pot/wind stand).

http://www.diamondspirit.net/adunk/trangia.html

http://www.diamondspirit.net/adunk/methlite/index.html

[Snowzone]

I measured my use a few years ago when my daughter was still coming along on trips with me. I was allowing 125ml per day cooking for two with a hot breaky and dinner, afternoon and evening hot drinks. Always came home with a little left in the bottle. This was in cooler weather.

[enduro]

Thought I have had one for years, I would avoid the Trangia (750g) and be seriously looking at the Evernew Pots and a stove surround system. Some of the complete Evernew systems weigh 200g - pot, surround and all!!!

If you DO want a Trangia, mine is for sale!

[tasadam]

My response would be applicable to all fuel stoves.
It depends on variables including what you're cooking, how you cook it, and how cold and windy it's going to be.

If you just need to boil water, then you can run some tests yourself to see how much you need. Weigh or measure the before-and-after.
Also, if say your base temp for water boiling in a test environment (at home) is 20 degrees out of the tap, but on the walk its closer to zero, it will take more fuel to bring that water from zero to 20 degrees, in addition to how much fuel you will use to boil it. Accurately, put your water in the fridge before testing. Not so accurate, allow an additional 20%. Remember the air temp in testing will likely be different to on a walk.

Then there are differences for altitude.

If you are simmering for say 10 minutes, you will have to simulate at home and see how much you use if you want to know for sure.
Always take extra, say at least 10%. Also, account for the fact that the air temp might be warmer where you are testing to where to might actually be cooking.
Then there's the wind, harder to keep the temp of the flame concentrated on the cooking pot in the field than it is in a test environment.

Do you want to allow for the odd fuel spill? For boiling water to drink if needed?

So many variables - hard question to answer. A bit if an idea on how you cook, and a bit of testing at home, then you should soon gather a bit of an idea on how much you should need. Lastly, better too much than too little, but don't be like some chaps I recently met who had (I think) 2 and a half litres on the OLT, couldn't give it away.
Hope that helps.

EDIT - And after typing all that, I see much of it has been said already...

[Explorer_Sam]

We have 2 trangia fuel canisters to carry metho. I believe they come in 3 sizes; 300ml, 500ml and 1000ml we have a 300ml canister and a 1000ml canister. Because we don't worry too much about the weight of our packs, even if we're only going to use 50mls we might still carry the 1000ml canister. It's much better to use these than to just carry metho around in it's plastic bottle because the trangia bottles are made of durable polythene and have a safety valve at the top so no metho will leak out and get in your pack.

I guess on an overnight walk we need to boil water for tea if we're having pasta or heat up baked beans on the non-stick frypan and between us we have 5 or 6 cups of tea so we usually use about 100-150mls. I guess if you normally go solo, 1 litre of fuel would be necessary for a week long hike and probably 50-60mls for a day walk.

[Explorer_Sam]

I don't know whether or not this information will be helpful to you, but the other day I did a test in sunny conditions, no wind and it took 6 minutes to boil one cup of water on 20ml of metho. Then we boiled two cups of water on 30ml and it took 8 minutes.

[bushwalker zane]

I use Trangias at work, and when we have 2 guides and two clients we tend to use about 3 litres of fuel for a 6 day walk. So, 500mls for a day and that's for 4 people (with lots of cups of tea stops). I'd say only about 200mls at the most per day if you're going by yourself, especially with a mini Trangia.

[MartyGwynne]

My last trip on the south coast track I used my small trangia and only took 1000ml of metho.
I ran out on about day 4-5.
Oh no.
I managed to find some which some one had left behind as it was too much for what they wanted - lucky boy was I.
So I used about 200ml plus per day.
Breakfast - tea and heated muesli
Dinner - tea and cup a soup and re-hydrate food slowly.
Not good planning on my behalf maybe I was being a bit too wasteful.
So how do people only use about 60 ml per day is beyond my comprehension in um, darn what sort of food were they eating and enjoying by only using 60 ml. I enjoy my food too much and should have put more in - about 1.5 litres for the 7 days would have been best for me.
But I guess the moral of my 2bobs worth is what sort of food are you cooking will determine how much fuel you need.

[Aushiker]

Dinner - tea and cup a soup and re-hydrate food slowly.

My cooking is much along the same lines as you do but I suspect the difference is the re-hydration. Ideally any food that needs re-hydration is done cold, i.e., before it is heated up. This may start at lunch time or a when I hit camp.

Foods such as pasta that need cooking for say eight to 10 minutes are brought to the boil, then taken off the heat to sit and cook in the pot ideally in a cozy. After the eight to 10 minutes or whatever I put the pot back on the heat to bring the temperature back up then eat and enjoy.

Re-hydration is not cooking and hence does not need to have flame provided to achieve the desired outcome in my experience. Heck a slow cooking process is quite achievable off the stove anyway. I suggest you give it a go



BTW I use a Trail Designs Sidewinder Ti-Tri and my fuel usage on my last outing was 68 ml per day. To quote myself ...

My “cooking” tends to be boil the water type when in camp so I tend to boil either 300 ml of water say for a cup of tea or coffee or boil 600 ml for say breakfast (coffee and porridge). For boiling 300 ml 15 ml of water was sufficient to get a rolling boil and for 600 ml of water, 20 ml of fuel did the trick. The fuel used on this trip was Coles $mart buy methylated spirits (95% v/v ethanol UN 1170). My fuel usage averaged out at 68 ml per day. This was for breakfast, afternoon/evening hot drinks and dinner.

Regards
Andrew

[sailfish]

I have a mini Trangia (the wind shield stand is pathetic) but usually only use it on day trips or night fishing.
I have found that because you can’t cap the burner until it is cool, a lot of unburnt metho can be lost to evaporation after the flame has been extinguished. I have taken to setting the burner in water to cool it and get it capped quickly. Sometimes I only fill the burner and don’t take any other fuel. You can always resort to a twig fire if you run out.

I did some tests years ago by measuring out fuel and measuring temperature rise but I don’t have access to the data here. I think that working out the temp rise and mass to be heated and only putting in the required fuel load is the most efficient way to conserve fuel but wind really upsets the results and it requires a little mental maths, not so practical in the field perhaps.

Regards,
Ken

[sailfish]

OK I offer this as a guide only. Wind and inexperience will dramatically increase fuel use by several times so don't take this as an absolute. I ran my mini trangia test again in ideal zero wind conditions (indoors) but no lid, testing with 500 ml of water and 10 ml metho. If you run the pot low, it will be less fuel efficient.

I found it takes 0.00036 ml of metho to raise 1 gram 1 degree C

So if you want to boil 1 cup of water (250 ml = 250 g) and the starting temperature is 20 deg C (a rise of 80 degrees), we have:
0.00036 x 250 x 80 = 7.2 ml of metho

From memory I used to work on 0.0005 ml to raise 1 gram 1 degree C
This makes the answer 10ml of metho

This should enable an estimate of minimum fuel for a trip based on total mass of hydrated food and expected ambient temperatures.
Leave a wide safety margin, maybe 4 times initially and be scrupulous about wind and minimizing fuel waste and adjust with experience.


Regards,
Ken

[roodeny]

How much fuel i would go with the 100 to 150 mil per day but would also make a wind shield out of a ally foil pie tray just to protect it from the wind .