No it's not a smoker and doesn't even play one on TV. But this little stove was bought last year after a great deal of reading, consideration, and internal debate. There had been several large natural disasters across our nation--hurricanes, floods and fires that disrupted the power grid, water supplies and social order.
I'm not a prepper in the mainstream media sense of the word, but we do keep on hand food and water enough to meet the needs for a while of ourselves and a couple elderly neighbors should the new Madrid fault let go as predicted a hundred miles or so to our west here in Kentucky. It's overdue, and our recently increased "earthquake rider" to our homeowner's policy reflects current thoughts.
This stove is a real wonder to me! Once I got the hang of starting it up (don't over stuff it with paper) it worked beautifully as advertised for me. It burns small to large sticks, pine cones, leaves and such creating a hot fire that burns down to fine ash. Fuels that are everywhere and often overlooked. The stove has a lot of stainless steel and a fair bit of cast iron in it. The shelf let's me rest longer sticks on it which can be fed in as needed to the firebox. There's a thick layer of insulation between the inner stove "liner" and the outside.
The stainless steel "Dragonpot" on top was a separate purchase from the same company but is money well spent, and special in that the inner pot is surrounded by another layer with space between it and the inner pot to channel flame up and close to the inner pot. it maximizes heat transfer. But I can also use many regular kinds of cast iron or other cooking vessels on the top cast iron grid.
The one measured gallon of cold tap water shown was boiled from start to rolling boil in 13 minutes. We've made some stews, macc and cheese, steamed vegetables and several other dishes for practice. In use the Dragonpot gets very sooty and the areas between the inner and outer pot layers is for me difficult to get fully clean.
We have propane and liquid camp fuel stoves but of course those would run out soon in a long-term needs situation. I can always find something to burn in this thing (I expect and hope).
I feel good about having this stove in our kit and although sort of pricey for what it is, clean boiled safe water would be priceless in a repeat of some of last year's disasters.
I'm not a prepper in the mainstream media sense of the word, but we do keep on hand food and water enough to meet the needs for a while of ourselves and a couple elderly neighbors should the new Madrid fault let go as predicted a hundred miles or so to our west here in Kentucky. It's overdue, and our recently increased "earthquake rider" to our homeowner's policy reflects current thoughts.
This stove is a real wonder to me! Once I got the hang of starting it up (don't over stuff it with paper) it worked beautifully as advertised for me. It burns small to large sticks, pine cones, leaves and such creating a hot fire that burns down to fine ash. Fuels that are everywhere and often overlooked. The stove has a lot of stainless steel and a fair bit of cast iron in it. The shelf let's me rest longer sticks on it which can be fed in as needed to the firebox. There's a thick layer of insulation between the inner stove "liner" and the outside.
The stainless steel "Dragonpot" on top was a separate purchase from the same company but is money well spent, and special in that the inner pot is surrounded by another layer with space between it and the inner pot to channel flame up and close to the inner pot. it maximizes heat transfer. But I can also use many regular kinds of cast iron or other cooking vessels on the top cast iron grid.
The one measured gallon of cold tap water shown was boiled from start to rolling boil in 13 minutes. We've made some stews, macc and cheese, steamed vegetables and several other dishes for practice. In use the Dragonpot gets very sooty and the areas between the inner and outer pot layers is for me difficult to get fully clean.
We have propane and liquid camp fuel stoves but of course those would run out soon in a long-term needs situation. I can always find something to burn in this thing (I expect and hope).
I feel good about having this stove in our kit and although sort of pricey for what it is, clean boiled safe water would be priceless in a repeat of some of last year's disasters.
