Mark Young

Ganesha Ultralight Wood Gas Stove - Not What I Expected

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Video title: Ganesha Ultralight Wood Gas Stove - Not What I Expected

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewfxaUHjJ4Q&t=4

Video language: English (auto-generated)

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This is the Ganesha ultralight titanium folding wood gas stove you know you're interested keep watching all right just before we take a closer look at the Ganesha I just want to thank Bryce at the Ganesha project for sending this out to me so I've had this in my possession longer than I should have before getting the review done and I do apologize to you Bryce but as I explained in my emails that we exchanged back and forth fire bans all summer long here in Nova Scotia just could not get the opportunity to go out and use this in the woods the way it was designed intended to be used but that's all over I can get out

I've been playing with this I've had quite a few fires in it and I'm ready now to not only demonstrate it and talk about its design but give you my thoughts on using it so what we're going to do is I'm going to collapse it back down into its folded storage case and then take it out show you what it all comes with put it all together give you some specifications for it get a fire going in it all right so

I have collapsed the stove down and put it back in its storage case and then I'm going to take all the pieces out and show you what it's all about as we go but let's just start with its basic philosophy and I think it's really reflected in the materials they've chosen even for the case the case is just a tyvek envelope I say just a tyvek envelope but it is very lightweight very sturdy and it's held closed with a piece of Velcro I don't know how long that will last as a storage case but it's working fine and I've had this for a number of months now so I think it'll last at least long enough before I find make something else for it oh let's just have a closer look at the logo hopefully it's showing up here in the light can you see that Ganesha wood stove project and

the figurine of an elephant so for those of you who are not aware Ganesha is a Hindu deity who is represented as an elephant with multiple arm ARS yeah so that's where the inspiration for the name from comes from in fact these are Made in India they're all handcrafted and the Ganesha project has a lot to do with cooking in countries where a lot of the cooking is done inside of homes using wood stoves with very little fuel available to them and of course there is a great risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke and inhilation when it's done like that so a wood gas stove is a great answer if it can be made cheaply or inexpensively for everybody to own one because a wood gas stove will not only reduce the amount of smoke hopefully to near zero but can use fuels other than wood so it can even use dried dung from animals and well I don't have any of that out here but

I do have some dry wood that I can use in it for demonstration purpose so that's the bit of the history in fact before I go even further I'm going to suggest to you that regardless of whether or not you're interested in purchasing in this stove please go to the website and just look at the information that's available cuz I'm very impressed with the ethics of the company and what it is they're trying to accomplish through the design of these stoves what I have in my hand is just made for use here in the western world but they make these stoves for use in countries as I mentioned where a lot of cooking is in done indoors and very dangerous and fuel is not all that abundant okay enough said about that

let's start to look at what's inside the envelope so when when I got this you know I was okay yeah it's light it's I don't know how long it'll last but you know until it it doesn't last it's still very functional right so we'll put that out of the way here's the next thing impressed me the envelope that the folded stove is in this is actually a ground sheet that I'm going to be using and put underneath the stove to prevent fires from occurring it's fiberglass impregnate it with silicone very clever and very functional it has I wouldn't say a downside but does have something you have to be aware of but I'll explain as I go so it just folds and wraps around and closes over the stove with a dome snap and I'll just put that aside you'll see it again in a moment and

then you get the two pieces that make up the stove you get the inner chamber and the outer chamber let me just show you the inner chamber and how this goes together so the inner chamber as you can see made of stamped titanium you can see all the discoloration with it now mind you the pot supports are made of stainless steel but everything else is titanium the frame itself is stainless steel and you basically just fold it open and the floor inside drops down into place like that you see this is the feed port for the stove itself and you can see there are holes for air flow in the bottom and yeah that's pretty much it now the pot supports I'm going to talk more to in a minute because they're non-adjustable and they are sized for a specific pot or a pot of a specific diameter but there is some workarounds if you have smaller pots and larger pots and that type of thing so before I even assemble the outer chamber of this you should know that this works as a wood stove all by itself this is just a small ultra light wood stove and you know you could use this without having to use the rest of the stove I've done that it works but it's much more functional when you put the two of them together and

I'll demonstrate that now so let me just go to the outside piece so here we have the outside piece and it folds out so same basic construction made of stamped Titanium with stainless steel wires through the frame to give it rigidity and the hinges support and everything else so there it is there now inside attached by a short ball chain is this piece and this piece get it out here here we go is a well this is the the bridge between the inner chamber and outer chamber that turns it into a wood gas stove and you'll understand what I mean in a second it is marked top on top of it and that's important of course because this is top and you should be able to read top when you put it on top of the stove okay so

how do you assemble this thing because you can see it's not very rigid right now well to do so I have to start by partially collapsing the inner chamber I have to take the feed ramp and tip it up like this holding it like that I drop it down inside of the odor chamber and when you get to the feed port trying to do this on camera is a lot harder than actually doing it in live so there can you see I have an inner chamber and an outer chamber so this is the stove pretty much assembled the last piece of course is this piece that I called top and you can see that it is notched on all four sides and they will fit over top of the pot supports bit of fiddling here right off of the top cuz I'm trying to do it and have you see what I'm doing at this the same time a lot easier if I do this while it's sitting on the ground would be but of course you wouldn't be able to see it then okay there we go it's all down in place all right so there is the wood stove completely assembled now

here's the thing it is designed to be a wood gas stove a wood gas stove works so that it creates pyrolysis through the pre-combustion I'm going to say of the wood the wood is actually heating up to a point where it's releasing volatile molecules of burnable materials smoke in other words and so what happens then is the air that and this is for people that may not be aware air is being drawn in underneath the bottom of the stove up through between the two walls and as it's drawn up it preheats so that when it gets to the top of the inner chamber the air is already quite hot and that convection continues to draw air up then and hopefully this is going to show up let's see may have to take it slightly apart in order to show no I think that's showing up all around the top of the inner chamber that smaller portion of the wood stove are a number of small holes so when that preheated air comes up to the top it enters back into the combustion chamber right there hot mixes with smoke as it's being generated from the wood and combusts so you it's like a secondary combustion actually that's what it's called secondary combustion as like an after burner on a jet might be so what happens then is you get very little smoke coming out of the stove because all of the smoke theoretically all of the smoke has been turned into flame and all that flame is additional heat So in theory a wood gas stove is a clean burning stove with very little smoke that coming out of it and uses less fuel to create that heat at the same time okay so that's the theory of a wood gas stove now the thing is how does it translate to a stove like this because I know those people out there that know about wood gas stoves are looking at that and say it's not going to work with that big open chamber on it it's not going to work partially true and that is partially true and that's been my experience I'll talk more about it when we set it up and get it going that

it is not like other wood gas stoves not just because it's a folding stove but because it has that big feed port wood gas stoves generally are circular like an inner chamber outer chamber Bush buddy solo stove probably some of the best examples and you feed them from the top that's good it seals the wood gases in but it has its limitations you can only get the stove so hot you can only get as hot as the stove will permit through the combustion and secondary combustion this is different though there is some downgrading of gasification because this is open here but the having this port open feeds an extraordinary amount of air into the stove which aids combustion in other words you can get a lot hotter with this stove than you can with a regular wood gas stove a lot of the time I find as you'll see you don't get complete secondary combustion you don't get complete pyrolysis the creation of that smoke which would then go on to combust into flame you get some of it going and there are some tricks to get more of it going such as using your wood to block that chamber off but what you can do with this is you can well I've burnt it with top down burns and bottom up burns you know any number of ways configurations to see which one would work best

I'm going to go for the simple bottom up burn today and just like you would a normal wood stove because you can continue to feed wood in here without having to take the pot off of the stove okay so that's the basic theory but what does it look like in practice well let's just set it up and get a fire going in it all right it occurs me I almost got through the testing without giving you the dimensions and the weights for this thing so let's just do that and then we can move on so the weight is what's most important here 7.8 oz yes 7.8 so now that also includes that little tyvek bag and the fiberglass silicone mat that you use on the ground so all together 7.8 oz 220 G

now I'm going to give you the assembled size and the size of it all packed down will be in the video description so across the top in each dimension as 5-1/4 in or 13.3 CM 6.8 in high or 17.3 CM so roughly the same size as the Firebox stove or the Bushbox XL yeah about the same size but much much lighter lighter than even the titanium versions of either of those two stoves all right now let's get the testing done all right

as I get ready to light the stove up I just want to to talk about how you might use a wood gas stove like this or any other wood gas stove so for the most part people will agree that using a wood gas stove you use a process called TLUD standing for top lip updraft in other words you put all your fuel in first you build your fire on top of your fuel and as the burning sinks down the level of the burning that's where the gasification or the pyrolysis will take place the creation of that smoke and then the gasification which is where the air enters in and creates that secondary combustion yes you certainly can do that that is the best way not necessarily the best way for this stove so I've tried that I tried that with vertically stacked sticks I've tried that with horizontally stacked sticks it will work it just takes longer to really get going so what I'm doing now is

I'm just going to do a traditional burn like you might in any other wood stove start in the bottom light it in the bottom throw my wood in on top and then go from there pyrolysis still will will take place if this is truly a wood gas stove but it will take it'll well it'll just happen a little differently but we'll watch it as it progresses okay so what have I done I have my stove set up it is on that fireproof mat it has birch bark that's all there's inside right now is some birch bark like that and that's going to use that to light I went around looking for dry sticks bit of a challenge today the fire ban may be off but that doesn't necessarily mean all the wood is dry so here's what I found is the driest tiny pieces of wood I have see how much wood I've got in my hands that really is all I need probably more than I need to well much more than I need to make a cup of coffee but to get a good fire going get my pot of water on and get it boiling that's more than I need however like I said it's not necessarily the best wood so I've got some splits here that uh I can put on top if I need to or if I want to keep it going all right so

I mentioned the pot earlier and the pot size so Brice sent this over as well this is a MSR titanium Titan or the Titan titanium from MSR great little pot it actually is I had didn't have one before but I really appreciate it because this stove is designed to work with that pot yeah that's stable enough that'll work designed to work with this pot so I'll be putting the diameter of course inside of this but those pot supports are of a perfect size to work with this pot now you don't have to use this pot is just ideally suited to this pot also made of titanium like the stove but you can use some that are slightly larger not much smaller than this pot though because much smaller than this those stands inside are not going to hold the pot in the center you could use something larger if you have something very large you could put it on top like a a 16 cm zebra belly pot will go right on the outside top of this if you've got something small that you want to use you could slide a couple of tent pegs wire skewer whatever you want through the holes on the side and rest it down inside between the pot stands not ideal but it will still work like I said it's designed to go with this pot so I think it's a great setup all right let's get the show on the road little piece of birch bark I'm not going to need all of this cuz I have some inside

we just light that yeah I think I'll put one little piece on top of that and there will be smoke yes there will be smoke birch bark can be very smoky but let's just start dropping in some of these sticks so you can see I'm not being very precise about it and the the whole point of this stove is that you should be able to walk around pick up look how fast that's catching on walk around pick up sticks off of the Earth or other combustible materials like animal dung and just fresh out of animal dung here so I'm going to have to go with what I have now I've got a lot of sticks in here so I'm going to wait until they really start combusting before I put the pot on I also want to see if we're going to get look how much I still have left that's probably enough right there but I'll hold on to these now until that's really gotten going I pretty much is but we will let it burn for a few seconds

I want to wait till the fire starts to die down so that I can show you inside to show you if any secondary burning is taking place all right this is not going to be an easy thing for you to see obviously because of the intensity of the flame but I'm hoping that in between the flames you're going to be able to see the secondary combustion taking place so here's what I'm seeing now maybe it's a little clearer and easier for me to see there is secondary combustion taking place through the ports around the outside but not all of them so at any given time I'm seeing half of them wonder if I can move this around I can see some taking place up in that right corner if I bring it in closer hopefully you can see it through the flame now the now the light is starting to change the camera maybe if I move it back even yeah about half of the ports are firing at any given time so it is not a full complete wood gasification taking place in there but it is certainly better than it would be if there weren't any of those holes and that's not the only benefit of course of two walls the two walls does do mean a lot more insulation for the stove so this will work better in cold weather than it would in if it was just a single wall of Titanium because it kind of insulates itself and and it aids to the combustion

the size also and the dimensions are also working to create a bit of a rocket stove let me toss a few more pieces in bring the you can see it goes through fuel pretty quickly but this is still enough to get my pot of water up to temperature for coffee I'm trying to catch the gasification taking place in there but not so much happening right now all right let's just see if I can get the pot on I think it's probably got to get some of those sticks out of the way there we go that wasn't a good one knock him down inside and then we'll put the pot on there we go so now you can see how the pot fits in there perfectly and the wall coming up above the top of the pot stands gives it some wind protection as well so all the heat being generated by the fire is landing on the bottom of the pot given it as much heat transfer as can reasonably be expected all right I am just going to heat this water up I'm going to make some coffee with it and if I can get a good shot of the gasification I'll bring you back all right we're going to wrap this video up but there is

a few more things I wanted to tell you about the Ganesha wood stove before we do and the first off is the thing I didn't show you today is how it can be used with an alcohol stove I've tried it it works it's just not the ideal way of doing things or the ideal setup I guess so the concept is if you have a Trangia you can take the cap off set the cap in the bottom of the inner chamber set your stove on top of that and that will bring the stove up closer to the bottom of your pot closer but still not a great gap it's actually a little taller than it should be it'll work it's just not the most efficient way of doing things I'm okay with that because this I I have lots of other little stoves and arrangements I can bring if I'm going to bring an alcohol stove along with me when I bring the stove out so I don't need him to work integrated with this the other thing is wood pellets wood pallets don't work so well in this either you can probably see the holes in the bottom there is not a great number of holes and there's not supposed to be for the way this works but wood pellets need quite a bit of air flow through the bottom so there's not enough holes there for wood pellets to work well and the other thing of course is the front feed Port is wide open so pellets would just pour out unless you slanted them all to the back and yes you could do that can you use wood pellets yes you can but it's not an ideal fuel fuel for this stove in fact this fuel is designed for wood dung other combustibles you can make things work in there but they're not going to work as well as wood goes

the ideal wood is the dry stuff that you pick up off of the forest floor as long as it's dry of course and that's what this stove is designed to use you don't have to cut and split wood like I did for those extra pieces that I had with me just break off branches that you find in the force floor and it will work just fine okay now

my experience is when the stove first arrived and I set it up and I had my first burn in it like any other wood gas stove I assumed that it would work best with a top lit updraft so I vertically stacked and put wood completely filled the chamber built a little fire on top and lit it up and let it burn down through to watch what would take place what I saw is partial gasification so not all the jets would fire at any one time I was a little disappointed by that because I was used to using a solo stove a bush buddy stove other wood gas stoves where you got complete gasification pyrolysis and all the jets firing in secondary combustion that didn't occur with the stove and has not occurred ever with this stove however I have been able to make it work better and one of the best ways if you're really looking to get that complete gasification is to stack your wood horizontally on the inside and cover off the feed port of course that's only going to last for so long until that wood is consumed by the flames and then you're going to have too much air flow and that's what the issue is there's too much air flow in through the stove for a complete wood stove

now having said that the more I use the stove it occurred to me that I needed to stop considering this as a wood gas stove yes I know it's a gasification stove that's the way it is marketed and gasification does take place just not 100% of the time and that's what you're looking for in a wood gas stove that does not mean that the design of the stove is bad because those deficiencies as I saw them those things that were preventing it from being a good wood gas stove actually worked in the favor of other types of burns the burn like I did here today where I just lit a fire in the bottom threw my sticks in on top and I could have continued to feed through sticks longer sticks obviously in through the bottom had I wanted to if you use it that way and stop thinking of it as a wood gas stove this stove really excels it won't if you're not looking for this to have complete 100% gasification you will be impressed by its performance and that's the best thing I can say about it the double wall chamber worked to help keep the stove hot because of course that's a problem with titanium is how quickly it can transfer heat out and and and not work as well especially in cold weather this works very well that double wall creates a a form of insulation that keeps the chamber hot for a longer period of time and because of its height compared to its diameter diameter of the inner chamber it has rocket stove type effects so

it's got partial wood gasification partial rocket stove and a whole lot of air flow through the door on or the feed port on the side and that leads to a very efficient very clean very hot fire just don't think of this as a wood gas stove and you won't be disappointed in fact I think you'll find it's actually more versatile as a result of the way it's designed the gasification when it does occur adds to the efficiency of the stove adds to the heat adds to the smokeless of the stove but because the stove burns so hot it's virtually smokeless anyway once it gets going that's true of all stoves not even the best wood gas stoves have to go through that period of heating up and getting the the wood going before they really become umsmokeless as we like to say yeah once again I was impressed with the stove now

here's the other thing there's people out there saying this is a bit of a puzzle stove there's so many moving pieces that I have to put together to make this work and it seems fragile all right let's address fragile first it's anything but fragile it is strong enough yes it's looks flimsy and the titanium is thin but that doesn't necessarily mean it's fragile this will still hold a considerable amount of weight on top and still be very stable and still function for a lot of burn it's is a little finicky putting together but once it goes together it burns really really well so what am I going to say about that it's not a fold it open drop the plate kind of a stove it takes a little bit more work to get it going what do you get in the exchange ultra lightweight that's what you get ultra lightweight stove with a high performance factor that goes with it now

I know that people are asking about warping what about warping with this thin titanium yeah there is there is some warping taking place not on the outside the outside never seems to get hot enough to do warping but the inner stove does warp a little bit so when I've taken a actually let's just check on that even now as I'm talking lift the top plate out lift the inner chamber out let's just check for warping taking place bit dirty of course actually not even as dirty as you might think okay so the fire grate in the bottom see if it shows like this do you see there is a little bit of water warping there fixed okay how about the walls okay A little bit of warping taking place on the sides fix that's my that's how I address warping fold it nice and flat didn't it and that's what I found is if you have a really long hot fire in this an extended fire you will get some warping of the titanium but once it cools down just bend it back into shape now I can't say that this is going to last a really really long time I've only had 20 fires in it maybe mostly in my backyard at home because I can have the fires there without having to worry about the fire ban out here in the woods out here in the woods I've had three I think what you saw was the third fire I actually had with it out in the woods so durability over the long term little hard to say but I think it you know the design is simple enough that and it's so easy to move the titanium back back into place that unless it becomes work hardened I think this will probably last plenty long once again what are you getting for those concerns ultra lightweight ultra compact stove very efficient very hot burning stove I guess that's the way to sum it up

okay uh that's all that I have I'm going to give you all the specifications I have for it in the video description I'm going to give you the links to the Ganesha wood stove project in the video description as well by the way this will be coming out in stainless steel at some cost savings with increased weight of course and uh yeah if you have any comments or questions please put them in the comments section below but until next time get out and explore take that path less traveled because it will make all the difference bye for now