Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

This stove is a big disappointment. It burns slow with poor heat output. By making the holes 3/32, performance is improved but not to the point of equalling many homemade stoves. It also needs preheating and a tight fitting windscreen.Further performance is enhanced by lifting the pot above the stove,allowing more air intake and thus more thermal feedback to keep vaporization vigorous.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

I REALLY wanted to like this stove. It's very lightweight, very cool looking, nice to have integrated pot stand.BUT the heat output is just too low to boil. I would compare it's output to a low simmer setting on my other alcohol stoves. If you do buy this stove make sure to spill some fuel around the base to make for a very fast prime and use a good windscreen.If you want to buy an alcohol stove get the Trangia also sold by REI.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

I bought a Vargo Decagon titanium alcohol stove on a whim while browsing at REI. It looked like a very cool design. Then I started seeing posts about how inefficient titanium alcohol stoves were. So I have been doing some testing. I live at 6,400 feet elev. and there’s lots of snow at Lake Tahoe. I can bring 2 cups of cold tap water to a rolling boil at right around 5 min. 30 secs. every time. It doesn’t seem to matter if I’m outdoors or in. (Our tap water comes from the lake and it’s cold, probably 45-50 deg.) Then I can refill my aluminum pot and get it hot enough to get bubbles on the bottom before the flame goes out. (If I were smart, I’d get a 32 oz. pot) One ounce of alcohol lasts about 14 minutes. The secret to getting it primed fast is to spill a little alcohol on the outside of the stove then it comes out of the jets in about 20 secs. Otherwise it takes about 45. The stove is sensitive to wind and I can blow it out so use a wind screen. I recover unused alcohol easily with a paper funnel. It has a wide base and feels very solid.

I haven’t used it on a trek yet, but am anxious to. I think I’ll be very happy with it and like the fact that there are no canisters to dispose of.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

Just got back from some High Sierra snow camping and the Vargo Dec got the job done. It takes a bit of practice to get the fuel level right (1oz is about right and use a squeeze bottle instead of your big clunky main fuel bottle), but with a good windscreen it is light and forget.

I only use this for boiling water and it is, as you might guess, a bit slower than the butane torches out there. But I am in my no rush mode when making camp.

When it is freezing outside and windy to boot, it would not quite boil with one ounce of fuel. I simply topped it off with another 1/4 ounce (once I felt it had cooled off) and finished the job.

Overall, the fact that it weighs nothing and has no controls to fuss with or clog or break or leak or balk at 9000 ft, makes it a no brainer.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

Like another reviewer I really, really wanted this to work but it failed in repeated tests in my basement laboratory under what should have been ideal conditions (no wind, moderate room temperature, and warmish tap water). I did not have trouble lighting it and on the first attempt filled it just to the top of the fill hole in the center of the stove. It burned for approximately seven minutes and two cups of water didn't even come close to boiling. So, back to the drawing boards; I filled it all the way to the top and relit. After nine minutes and thirty seconds it ran out of fuel and once again the water (two cups required for all freeze dried meals) had not even approached a boil. This is a product that I definitely will return to REI. Hopefully they'll pull it off the shelves and quit selling it. One tester said he got his to boil water in five minutes and thiry seconds. He must have been using rocket fuel because I used what the instructions required which is denatured alcohol and my results were less than dismal. Its back to my titanium gigapower in the summer and my MSR dragonfly in the winter.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

I'm somewhat of a stove collector and admit, I primarily bought this stove because it looks cool. I use it with a MSR Titan Kettle. The stove fits inside perfectly with a homemade aluminum windscreen and room for plenty more. I use the stove to cook single or double servings of rice, or noodle meals. It works great for that. It starts losing heat about the time rice needs to simmer. Comes out perfect every time! If your meals are more ambitious than that, get a bigger stove. This one's for hot drinks and small boiled-water meals. I have four or five store-bought alcohol stoves. My homemade Coke-can stoves work better than all of them. I can't figure out why manufactured stoves don't just copy the homemade design and add something sparkly so gear-crows like me will pay [$] for them.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

This is the stove that I carry when I want to cover a lot of ground. I own 2 other alcohol stoves and 1 run by white gas. This stove is sturdy, reliable, and foolproof. There are no moving parts to maintain. It burns cleanly and boils water quickly. You will not find a lighter way to boil water unless you put your kettle in the camp fire. Common goofs include use without a windscreen, using a kettle whose base it too large for the flame, or trying to boil more than 0.75L of water. If you do not expect ability to simmer, you will not be disappointed. Heats water quickly, especially at high elevations.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

I bought this product in 2008. I tried it and was somewhat disappointed as I had difficulties to get water to a rolling boil. In 2011 I found a clip on YouTube on how to make a cone shaped construction that serves as pot stand, windscreen and heat trap all in one. This cone, together with an aluminum REI pot straight on top of the Decagon turns out to be reliable and sturdy solution for my outdoor cooking needs.

I went backpacking for 2 weeks in June in Yosemite when there was still a lot of snow (a lot!). We camped at 9000 ft a couple of times and remembered that some folks warned me about using an alcohol stove at higher elevations. This turns out to be complete nonsense! The Decagon did just fine. It may have taken a bit longer to prime, but otherwise it preformed just fine. No cold dinner for me thank you very much.

The only downside I can think of is that the Decagon really works best (or at least primes much faster) if filled to capacity. But if you're only looking to boil water for one cup of tea you're wasting a lot of fuel. So I carry and insulated mug (my luxury item), boil enough water for tea and a meal at once. Make tea, prepare and eat my meal and have a nice steaming cup of tea afterwards. All that with the nice and quiet burn of an alcohol stove. Brilliant.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

This thing looks really cool and the lightweight and size make it very attractive. I really wanted to make this work but my hopes were dashed. I bought it on a whim and when I got home I looked at the reviews on the REI site and had a bit of apprehension. No worries I thought I'll just try it out in the garage. Equipment:I added 2 cups of water to a small MRI steel cook pot it is the 4 or 5 cup model 5" wide 3' tall. The pot has a slight indent on the bottom without a nonstick surface. I did not use a lid.First attempt: I added fuel to the stove as described in the instructions. And lit it. After the 2 min listed in the instructions it still had not bloomed. After 3 min still no bloom. At this point I blew it out and added more fuel making sure I spilled a little on the outside. (Suggestion on other sites) spilling on the outside did the trick after 1min 30 sec I had a bloom although it was pretty week. I waited a minute or so beyond that and still did not seem to get a roaring bloom so I assumed that was normal and added my pot to the top. The flames trickled out of the unit and remained lit. However I noticed that some of the holes appeared to be blocked and not participating in the burning event. After about 8 min the stove went out seemingly from lack of fuel. The directions say that it would burn for 15 min. The water was not even steaming and felt like 15 min old bath water just barely warm.Second Attempt: OK , I'm not a quitter so I assumed I had done something wrong so U used a paper clip to clear the blocked holes and filled it again with alcohol. Adding a bit more this time. With all the holes lit the bloom seemed a little bit more vigorous but again did not seem to heat the water to a boil before the fuel ran out at about 9 min.Third Attempt: OK well clearly following the instructions wasn't going to do the trick so I watched some YouTube videos and it seems heat is the critical element to getting the alcohol stoves to bloom properly and other reviewers had said a wind shield is critical for keeping the stove lit. I decided I would kill 3 birds with one stone raise the temperature of the stove , block the wind and raise the bottom of the pot off the stove to allow it to breath a bit better. I fashioned a windshield from a large tin can, I cut it down so the pot set about ¼ inch above the surface of the stove. I added some notches in it for air to allow the stove to breath. This improved the performance of the stove exponentially, as it warmed up it burned a lot more strongly. By the time the alcohol burned out at 10 min I had steam and small bubbles forming n the bottom of the pot. Not exactly what I had in mind for a cook stove but we were close. A refill and second lighting did bring the water to a boil.Fourth Attempt: OK back to YouTube. I found a video that was actually created by the manufacturer. [@] which was pretty lacking in content but I found another by Tim at [@] this video was rather well done. [@] clearly shows the stove working so I made some changes to my testing. I grabbed a smaller aluminum pot and added a cover. I then filled the stove to the very top as instructed in the videos, the alcohol was coming out the ports. I set it up without my wind shield and tried again. After about 7 min I was in fact able to get the water to boil. And the flame lasted 14 min. So perhaps with a titanium cup and a magic wand you could actually get water to boil in the 5 min the documentation quotes.The bottom line is this stove is hardly what I would call fool proof. Ignore the instructions on the packaging and go straight to the internet for a video demonstration. If you use the right pot style with a cover and the stove is blooming properly and all the planets in our solar system align correctly you can in fact get it to boil water on a single filling. My experience shows that it seems to be teetering on the very edge of acceptability. If this unit was just ¼" taller I think the reservoir would be large enough to boil water on even the non-perfect pots. When out on the trail I really don't like having to fiddle around with stuff to get it to work especially when I'm hungry and tired. I think this stove will be a constant source of frustration. If your goal is minimal weight and your cook pot works with the unit and you have low expectations then you could make a weak case for the Decagon as an acceptable product. Hopefully Mr. Vargo will come out with a slight redesign and call it the decagon II, but until then I would recommend that you steer clear of this stove. Too bad I really like the look of it and was really hopeful it would be the ticket but my hopes were dashed.

Comments about Vargo Outdoors Decagon Stove:

I first used this stove in a 34degree garage with room temperature water and 1oz of alcohol. I got a boil at around 6 or 7 minutes with no windscreen.

I have learned that you are best using 1oz of alcohol with every fill. More than that and alcohol comes boiling out and flaring up everywhere, less and you may not get a boil.

Today I finally tested wind screens as I knew I had to get that figured out before going out to the real world. I found a loose aluminum stove liner screen with a stove liner base works best so far. This was tested with a aluminum 2-5 cup coffee pot, GSI anodized double boiler and my new titanium snow peak hybrid. All of this with a High Volume fan oscillating on low and under a 5 speed industrial ceiling fan set on low. (Rough conditions) It worked every time with this wind screen. Finally, field tests in 2 weeks.

As a note, stability is good. The Snow Peak Hybrid pot is very stable (most stable of all) but the Snow Peak Hybrid frying pan lid tipped off every time. I don't know why, It was even on a very flat surface, but would always tip off. A small hardware cloth supplement pot stand will take care of it if I want to try fry something.

In summary, you might get more heat from a home made stove, but this one will not crush and last a good long time. I have built and burned up a bunch of soda can stoves as a hobby, but this one is a lightweight tank. It will always be there when you need it.

Dependable, consistent and light weight. Isn't that what we want the most?