Northern Ireland Outdoors Forum - Hiking, camping and more
General => General Chat => Topic started by: admin on February 25, 2014
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This looks fun
http://safelygatheredin.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/how-to-make-cardboard-box-oven.html
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Handy idea if your in a pinch but I am puzzled as to the general day to day real use of this. To begin with you simply couldn't take it outdoors in general due to cardboard not being very waterproof and most outdoor ground surfaces being at least slightly damp. Then there is the issue of carrying a high box and all that fuel for it compared to other methods of heat, not to mention it has zero insulation so heat must be flying off that thing at an incredible rate.
I'm struggling to see how it is any more efficient that using a hangi, sure it may be a slightly faster but with the time to construct and having to carry all that fuel you can't be far out on total construction/cooking times. No doubt there are other reasons I haven't thought of as to why this sort of thing is not either used by off grid folks or being sold by some commercial enterprise.
Forgot to mention the horrendous mathematical part of how having 9 40degree coals suddenly means you have a steady 360degrees internal temperature for 45 minutes.
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I'd agree, I can't think of many actual uses for this. It's probably more of a proof of concept thing to show thinking outside the box (Haha).
I'd never heard of a Hangi (here's info if anyone's interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hāngi). Here's Ray Mears doing somethng similar. It's on my list of things I'd really like to try.
Handy idea if your in a pinch but I am puzzled as to the general day to day real use of this. To begin with you simply couldn't take it outdoors in general due to cardboard not being very waterproof and most outdoor ground surfaces being at least slightly damp. Then there is the issue of carrying a high box and all that fuel for it compared to other methods of heat, not to mention it has zero insulation so heat must be flying off that thing at an incredible rate.
I'm struggling to see how it is any more efficient that using a hangi, sure it may be a slightly faster but with the time to construct and having to carry all that fuel you can't be far out on total construction/cooking times. No doubt there are other reasons I haven't thought of as to why this sort of thing is not either used by off grid folks or being sold by some commercial enterprise.
Forgot to mention the horrendous mathematical part of how having 9 40degree coals suddenly means you have a steady 360degrees internal temperature for 45 minutes.
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Class !!!!
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Had some other thoughts about this today and one other thing came to mind. Charcoal is made by means of drying out wood so that kilo for kilo it has a high BTU that plain wood, but this also means you have to use a fair amount of energy in making in on a commercial scale otherwise it tends to be a very random and inefficient process. Also coal has a higher BTU that wood due to the years of compression it has undertaken so it can store more energy per cm3 than wood.
What this essentially means is either of these two fuel types create more carbon pollution than making a hangi or any of the other types of wood based cooking that are available. Since the author of the article is talking about how you can use this to live without electricity it would indicate and off grid self sufficient lifestyle, so it seems absurd they would choose a method that will cause more environmental damage that just slapping in a gas/electric cooker.