Pro-Pain for The Environment: Or, Looking for Mr. Goodstove

***UPDATE:  I did find the old style Coleman basic two burner stove with the regular tank (not requiring the ridiculous NON-recyclable propane tanks) available new online.  I wish the higher enders were also thus available. 

Seriously, how can a person drive five hours to enjoy the fresh breeze over lake Michigan (wind must not be coming from Chicago), and then pull out one of those rotten, non-recyclable Coleman (hisss-boooooo) propane cylinders for the gas stove to whip up some beef stroganoff?  I mean, that's like thanking a friend for a lovely dinner party by defecating on their white couch (Do all my posts work "poo" in them? Yes, they do).

I mean we go camping and enjoy the sunset over a glistening lake, the haunting call of a loon, the piney, clean air, and we say thanks by cooking with a propane tank that is essentially one-and-done:  Use it, and throw it away in the landfill.

 That's a strange tip to throw in God's jar, is all I am saying.

Specifically, I am talking about Coleman's (and other knock off brand's) 16.4 ounce propane cylinders that seem to be required now for so many gas grills, lamps, and heaters on camping trips (see picture below).  These little tanks are easy to store and oh so more convenient than slopping some liquid gas into that old-school grill.  I admit, they are wonderfully easy to pack and use.  

But, as I said, when you are done, and I take this following information from the Coleman site I visited today (8/30/13), unless you can find a recycling center that will take them (I couldn't) you burn off the excess gas and toss them in the landfill.

Coleman admits in writing that there are not many recycling programs that will accept the little buggers, and, indeed, I called my recycling center and got two different responses:  One, I could saw them in half, and they would take them. (Riiiiiight.  Pretty sure my life insurance doesn't cover sawing metal, combustible gas containers in half--I mean my LIFE insurance.)  To be fair, maybe the 1 gram of propane Coleman says will be left after burn off doesn't pose a threat, but, when I called my center again today, they flat out said they wouldn't take them.  I asked them why, and they couldn't exactly tell me, but more or less said because the leftover gas is hazardous--which is exactly why I won't be sawing them in half anytime soon, and if YOU decide to, let me know so I can keep the cat in.

 I like to give folks a chance, so I emailed Coleman to let them know that I would gladly pay an extra $5 a bottle (because I admit, they are so darn convenient) if that meant having a responsible recycling program.
tick-tock  tick-tock  ........ They still haven't gotten back unless maybe my spam blocker's hypocrisy filter stopped the return email. I mean, here is a company predicated on creating things for people to enjoy nature, whose product destroys nature.  Yeah, maybe even my computer got offended by that one.

Am I being a little too alarmist? Do a little mental math with me a moment:  Take yourself back to the last state camp ground you stayed in:  How many sites did it have?  200 or so?  How many of those folks were cooking or heating or lighting something with Coleman cylinders (drum roll--perhaps a drum roll on an empty Coleman cylinder since that's all they are good for)--Uhhhh about all of them.  Except for the enlightened folks with wood stoves or MSR whisperlites, but more about that later. 

Really, let's guess 3/4 of the campers use Coleman cylinders.  That's 175. Maybe those 175 sites use two bottles a piece. That's 350. Multiply 350 by visitors switching out about every three or four days, and you get....well, about a bazillion bottles give or take seven. All filling up the landfills.

May as well go buy a Hummer.

I am aware of devices that purport to refill these little propane tanks. Maybe they work.  But, look, Coleman puts a warning right on their literature essentially saying, "Don't refill this, idiot.  It's dangerous." And I believe them.  Seriously, you don't want to mess with a nozzle that is NOT designed to restrict pressure upon being refilled. Just imagine sudden nozzle failure while you are letting your six year old help flip the buckwheat pancakes.

Yeah. 

This all brings me to the real point of my post:

My camping family has grown to six.

Before now, we've relied on my trusty, BEAUTIFUL MSR Whisperlite stove  with the fillable, utterly recyclable fuel bottle.(See picture below:  You fill the red tank with fuel when you want it.  If the tank ever wears out, any recycling place would gladly take the high grade metal--as all you have to do is unscrew the lid to know there is no hazardous material inside).

The problem for the family camper is that the Whisperlite is designed for DNKS (double income, no kids couples) who are spending their sabbatical from Brown University walking the Apalachian Trail. There they are sitting on Klingman's Dome cooking risotto and asparagus.

Lovely.  Happy for them. Nothing wrong with that.

But, I now have four children chucking pine cones at each other while I am trying to heat up two-pounds of beans on a stove.  I need something more stable and with more burners.

And I need something that DOESN'T use Coleman  propane cylinders (unless they start some sort of real recycling program).

The search is on. 


Pics:  My current stove.  OTher:  Evil cylinders.

Backwater Valve Checkup

So, my first post I ever wrote was about a cool little backwater sewer valve we had installed in our house.

You see, during heavy rains, we had sewer water reverse its flow from the city sewer back up through our half-basement toilet.  Most of it was clear water, but then, we started having packages from the neighbors spewing on to our floor.

Lovely. Think of the famous "baby ruth" scene from a certain movie:

Yeah.  That's us.

Well, to prevent water from flowing BACKWARDS from the city sewers we had two choices:  An expensive, very labor intensive pump system that would thereafter require electricity to empty the water and waste from half of our house. Or, a simple mechanical flap that would theoretically close whenever water began to reverse its flow BACK to the house.

I usually think along the lines of something like Occam's Razor when it comes to solutions: "when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."(Thank you, fine folks at  http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html for this definition) So, having two competing systems that should accomplish the same task, I chose the simpler one.

And so we did.  The problem with OLDER flap valves (like this one--NOT THE TYPE OF FLAP WE CHOSE)

I have heard is that when your kid sends an extra fibrous #2 down the drain, or his sister's barbie doll, the flaps get tangled and fouled, and won't properly reseal if backflow happens. But, I suspect the fouling happens because everything MUST make contact with the flap itself.  Contact is bad.  That's how fouls happen. But, if you can look at the picture at the end of this posting, the NEWER valve we put in sends waste OVER (not pushing through) the flap, so fouling isn't such an issue.

What IS an issue, though is that over time, like that white van you drive, the system slowly builds up grime.  So, I have a sign on the utility closet in our basement that reminds me EVERY TWO MONTHS to check both our regular back up sump pump battery AND the backwater valve.

I just checked the backwater valve yesterday after about five weeks of poop and garbage-disposaled food flowing over it, and I found nothing serious had built up yet, but that I did need to take a tooth brush and warm soapy water to reach into some crevices and encourage a few floaties and a little grime on the wall to continue on down the drain.  If you look at the picture below, all you do is unscrew the top and you have easy access to the yello flap below.  Again, a little grime on the walls and a few small pieces had not made their way to wherever poop goes in its next life.  Now, the presence of a bit of grime and stuff DOES tell me that the downside of choosing a simple mechanical valve over the more complicated electric pump system, is I have to stay on top of cleaning it out to make sure it opperates well.  A little grime after 5 weeks doesn't mean in another 5 weeks there would simply be a LITTLE more grime.  I suspect grime multiplies (not adds) up because the more more grime, the more likely OTHER grime will stick to it.

Kind of like little grime teenagers.  The more teenagers on the corner, the more who want to stop and see what's going on.

Oh, that's right.  That was back when teenagers went outside.  Well, forget about it, then.

My guess is about every two months should do the trick for keep the flap working and the house protected!

Obesessing Over Family Tent IV

Ok, I have probably spelled "obsessing" five different ways.  Stupid multiple consonants.

So, Eureka Titan:  Nice floor plan, easy to set up.

The walls have windows on each side so airflow is good (though the dense mesh is not as free-flowing as, say, windows at home). 

Though I have hated electric sites in the past (chiefly because--I mean, this is camping, right?  Can you say eco-footprint, and because it invites neighbors who want to listen to "Thar's a tear in my beer, 'cause I'm missin' you dear" country or 80's rock all day.  Not that there is anything wrong with country or Van Halen), but I have learned to love having a small electric fan to truly keep the air moving in a tent and to keep the moisture down.

But, we like to camp up north--Wisconsin, Michigan--where it gets chilly at night, so we wanted a tent that could seal completely up at night.  We did NOT want a mesh TOP because we thought we would loose too much heat (though obviously those are nice for cooling off the tent, etc).

Now to the one big downside, though the jury is still out whether it's the tent's fault or my fault.

Rain.

You know how rain can totally spoil a camping trip. "Oh, but you can sit and play UNO with your kids while listening to the pitter-patter of rain on the fly!"   Surrrrrre, for about five minutes until your three year old comes crashing on the air mairtress trying  out a WWF move on you, and the cards go flying.

Or, alternatively, you can watch people go running to the camp bathroom with their jackets over their heads cause they just can't handle it anymore inside the tent.  Fun.  Guilty pleasure.  SOmething probably wrong about it, but fun.

And, oh, the Titan fly seemed to keep the heavy rainfall out of the window, so we could open up and watch.  Sickos that we are.

But, I figured,

Incorrectly.

That if my $180 box store tent could keep rain out for YEARS without being seam sealed, my $500 tent ought to be able to keep rain out with out being seam sealed until someone finally buys that weiner rotating on the heating pad at 7/11, which will be like forever..

I was Wrong.

About the need for seam sealing.

But, right about the weiner (still rotating--I suppose).

Even though Eureka SENDS a water seal bottle with the tent, and explicitly tells you to seal the untaped seams, I did not.

So, I didn't seal the seams and a pretty good downfall (not a huge thunderstorm, just one good soaking regular rain) brought water seepling through the seams underneath both doors.

So, we had some damp sleepling bags and clothes from that one.

Worse, water seaped UP through the TAPED seams of the floor. 

Oh brother!  That one has me nervous because you really aren't supposed to have to seal factory-taped seams.  Now, in the the tent's defense, I had sort of stuffed the excess end of the protective footprint tarp below the tent effectively forming a little water dam, so that a permanent puddle formed between the underside of the tent and the protective tarp directly on the ground. 

Next summer I will cut a protective tarp that is slightly smaller than the footprint of the Titan and hope no more water comes up.

So, in sum:  we love our little cabin in the woods, but it is not some magical fairy cabin that by virtue of being expensive doesn't require seam sealing or can have a puddle below it and not seap up.

I will be having a seam seal party next spring and hope to report that the cabin is bone dry next year.

Heck, I will even HOPE it will rain.

Not really.

Obsession over Family Tent III

So, let's see:  So far I have mentioned that our original box-store tent did great:  Easy to open, durable, snug, big enough for 3 kids and two adults as long as you didn't mind stepping over everyone to go out and chase away racoons from your Dutch oven with leftover cobbler in it.

But, with child four coming and about 12 years on the box-store tent, we went with the Eureka Titan:  13.9 ft. by 9.5 ft, about 131 sq feet or about 40 sq ft more than our first tent.

We loved the rectangular design and the ability to now have little hallways between the air mattresses and suitcases, etc. The walls do go fairly vertical (unlike the dome tent where being 6'2" I had to stand in the middle of the round tent (usually wobbling on the air mattress) to stand up straight.  Now, the walls are not PERFECTLY vertical, but slope in a bit, but overall I felt like I was in a snug little cabin for my family.

We also wanted a tent that would be easy to set up.  If you have traveled with small children, you know there is that moment you finally get to your site and you open up the van door--packs of string cheese, water bottles, cheerios falling to the ground--an all at once you have sixty things to do--and most of those are contingent on getting that tent up: can't move suitcases or blow up mattresses or have a nice place to put the two year old who prattled the whole way to the campground only to fall asleep as you were putting the car in park at your site------until the tent goes up.

Compound that with rain, you have a disaster (as happened our last trip to Peninsula State Park, Door County Wisconsin).   

You have to get that tent up fast.

We are VERY, VERY pleased with how easily the Titan sets up.  It basically has two sets of exterior bars that form an "X" over the tent and then clip into the tent floor, making the tent self supporting. You can see the exterior suppor bars below.  Now YOU HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU PLACE THE BARS IN OPPOSITE CORNERS ON FIRST because the bars DO take a good deal of pressure to squeeze into place.  In fact, the first time you put up the tent, you will probably say to yourself, "This CAN'T BE RIGHT!" and you'll have visions of snapping the bars and throwing your five-hundred dollar tent into the garbage bin.  But, AS LONG AS YOU PLACE THE TOP COUPLER (called a spider) CORRECTLY AND DO THE OPPOSITE BARS TOGEHTER, the tent goes up quickly and STAYS UP.

The bars are beefy, and the design is elegant in its simplicity.  As long as you have two reasonably competent adults (and practice a time or two before leaving on the trip), you can get the tent and fly up in about 15 - 20 minutes max.

So, thus far, for the floor plan and ease of set up -- we think the tent is great. More coming.

Obsession over Family Tent II (Love the Height and Shape

Issue on this post:  Second post in a series about buying a new tent.  In this post I mostly talk about how we loved the shape and dimensions of the Eureka Titan vs the roundish shape of our old dome tent.

 
As mentioned earlier, our box-store Target tent was great, but showing some wear after twelve years, and likely to be too small now that we had four kids.

So, I did what all middle-class Americans do, obsess about reviews during lunchbreaks at work and fantasize about finding that same model for $90 on Ebay....

As I mentioned, the winner of my tent-obsession became the Eureka Titan (pictured above). I chose this tent because I liked the footprint:  basically 13 X 10, and the cabin-like nearly vertical walls with 84 inches height in the middle.  Nice.  All 6'2" of me could now dress in dignity.

When we finally did purchase the Titan, I liked the basic rectangle shape after the slopping, igloo experience with our dome tent.  Don't get me wrong, our dome tent with  was able to fit a big blow up mattress,a  pac-n-play, a sleeping pad for two other kids, plus luggage piled up here and there.  But, basically, the floor was covered, and in some cases doubled up with pillows, and jammies and KnuffleBunny by Mo Williams books.  To take a pee at night you had to wobble across an air mattress, trip over an unzipped suitcase, and possibly step on your wife who is six months pregnant.  She'll appreciate that.

So, with the cabin dimensions and extra 40 sqaure feet what we really got was the ability to stand up, and the ability to finally have defined areas for kids, mom, dad, our luggage, toys, books and (heavenly)  neat little "hallways" between all the stuff.

With the Titan, we were able to blow up our double mattress on one end and then another double mattress on the other end for the kids, and find neat little spots for each person's suitcase, and great spots for toiletries, keys, etc.  Side note:  The mesh bags on this tent are great and are set up high on either side of both doors WELL out of the way of prying little hands that want to set off the car alarm at 3 AM. 

There were times Sarah my wife set up the tent and we would just sigh with contentment:  Our own little cabin.  So, in terms of dimensions, for a week of family camping, absolutely pleased.

Tips from this posting:

(1)  Again, we loved our round, dome tent, but the slope of the walls and the octagonal floor plan, and the smaller square footage overall made it challenging for us.

(2)  We really enjoyed the large footprint of the Titan, the ease of organization with the rectangular shape,

and

(3)  The tall, straighter walls.

Coming up next:  A surprise on what the Titan did NOT do as well.

Time for a New Tent

Issue for THIS Post:  Finding a NEW Tent for an Expanding Family; Also, A review of the Eureka Titan

(The Titan, pictured above).


The topic of finding a new tent is pretty fundamental to successful family camping, duh.  Did I really need to write that? So I am going to take several posts to cover the story of how we would up purchasing a Eureka Titan tent to replace our old (but trusty) box-store, pop-up dome tent.

If you are a hard core camper looking for advice to reach the Hillary Step, you are on the wrong site.  I can't help you with Everest, but my blog might possibly help you and your kids have a better camping trip (and, one of your kids might just be named Hillary--coincidentally).  Latter folks, stay tuned.

(Hillary Step is just below reaching the summit of Mt. Everest--I read about it in Bear Grylls' awesome memoir, Mud, Sweat, and Tears--more on that some other time.).


Here's our tent story:  Thirteen years ago, my wife and I received a 9 ft. x 9 ft. instant pop up dome tent purchased from Target (a box store in America) as a wedding gift. The 81 sq feet of space and six foot tall peak in the center was plenty of space, and besides a sometimes drippy rainfly, the tent kept us dry and snug about two or three trips a summer for years.  Even after we added three kids, we could still fit a single-sized air mattress, pac-n-play, luggage (although all piled on top of each other) and a sleeping pad for two small children all in the tent.  In fact, with all the windows zipped, those many bodies made for a snug tent for camping in the North of the United states where it routinely dips down to 50's at night.  We also loved that the floor was made of thick plastic tarp material that absolutely kept ALL groundwater out.

In short for twelve years, at two or three trips a summer, this tent did beautifully.

My first point: I wouldn't turn my nose up at Target or Meijer bought tent, merely because it was box store.  As long as the seams are taped or you seal them yourself, I suspect you could likely get ten-years of light summer trips out of yours, too--provided you weren't going anywhere too exotic, and you didn't encounter a Tsunami.

But, with child number four on the way, and a little more money in the bank these days, we decided--ok, let's be honest--I began to drool over the thought of getting a new and better tent. Like any respectable avid family camper I began to spend work-lunch hours reading reviews, and hunting through company sites on different types of tents that would fit our specs.

Our specs:

-->We wanted larger floor space (previously we had about 90 square feet).

-->A tall tent.

-->Something easy to set up.

-->Something durable.

-->Something with the reputation of keeping out rain.

-->Something that was airy but could be COMPLETELY sealed up if it got cold.

And so I looked.  I read.  I reread.  I felt a little like a guy in sweat pants living in his Mom's basement, stalking a beautiful tent via the internet.

Finally, I thought I found the tent of my fondest tent dreams (and, it's possible I had a few of those during my obsession).  The tent:

The Eureka Titan. (Pictured on top)

Problem, though:  The thing costs $500 plus shipping.  Dang. A bit much for a family budget. 

So, I waited, like a guy ice-fishing in Wisconsin, to finally catch one on sale or to beat the other loser out for a cheap used one on Ebay.  Then it happened: Dick's Sporting Goods was obviously dumping inventory in January and reduced the price down to $300, so I had my tent.  

Sooooooooo, the next few posts will tell you what I thought of the Titan after one summer or camping   ..... More coming.

Steve's Quick Tips From this Post:  (1)  Don't start looking until you have the money budgeted, or at least have started to save, otherwise you will torture yourself looking at PICTURES of gorgeous, expensive tents, all while secretly suspecting Milt and Buffy probably have three of them (unopened) collecting dust in their three-car garage.

(2)  Know your specs.  What are you looking for?  There are so many options!

(3)  Wait. Unless you have the income budgeted, wait for sales--especially around January or other off months when stores want to dump their resources.

(4)  Don't obsess and lose all self-respect reading tent reviews at 3:30 AM in your basement.