- Ben from Snowys here folks today with my own personal
Coleman PowerHouse 414 Dual Fuel Stove.
(upbeat music)
I love this stove because you can run it on Shellite,
you can run it on unleaded,
it burns hot no matter what the conditions are
and I don't need to carry a gas bottle.
Now, I use this stove on a recent long trip I did,
so 20,000km,
this is what I cooked on while I was travelling,
I use this now to move away from carrying a gas bottle,
so you might look at this
and think it's big,
but bear with me for a second.
So, it weighs about 6kg,
about 55cm in length,
about 35cm this way at the widest point at the base here
and about 16cm high,
when this is folded open,
it's about 45cm to the top here,
so it's not a small stove in comparison
to a lot of gas stoves,
but I don't have to use a gas bottle,
I can pull this,
it's got a little carry handle here,
this slides in the back of my car,
I can pull this out of the car,
I can put it on a table like this
and I can set it up,
and use it,
I don't need to attach a gas bottle or anything,
it runs off unleaded or Shellite fuel,
preferably Shellite,
which this is the Diggers Shellite,
you could pick up various brands of this
all across the country,
I had no problems finding this
and in the four months that I travelled,
I reckon I would've used more than eight bottles of that,
I think I came home with some even,
I wasn't using it every day though,
so easy to come across
and all I carried was this,
and I had a small box on the roof
with a few of these backed up in it
and I can keep some of these actually inside the stove here,
so I'm only carrying small amounts of fuel inside the car.
So, to set this up,
plonk it down on the table,
there's feet on the bottom here,
so you could put it on a stove stand or whatever,
so it's not directly on the table,
there is a bit of an air-gap underneath there,
so to set this up it's easy,
I'll open this up
and also show you what comes with the stove when you get it.
So, before we fold these wings out here,
just lift this up,
with the stove you get a little funnel here
that's used to fill the fuel tank,
which I'll show you a bit on shortly
and user manual there,
and this is the fuel tank that tucks in here,
now when I travel,
I put this in a little bag,
just to stop it rattling around in here,
so take that out before you fold these wings out
because these wings tend to impede this
being able to lift up.
Now, these wings here fold out
and these metal sort of hoops or wire here
just tuck in a little cutout on the side there,
if you tuck that in each side
and that's the stove setup,
ready to go apart from the fuel,
so we've got cooking space here,
just under 50cm right at the very rear here
and that tapers out to just under 70cm at the front,
so in terms of a burner plate to fit on here
because a burner plate's not gonna go
right to the back,
a burner plate up to about 50cm in length
will fit pretty comfortably on here.
Now, to set this up further,
we need to prep the fuel tank first,
so I'll just move this aside
and grab the fuel tank over.
So, this is all serviceable,
so all the parts here are replaceable,
so if you do happen to use dirty fuel
or use unleaded a bit more often,
these parts can get clogged up,
but you can take all this apart
and clean it,
I've just used Shellite in this
and I've got no problems with it so far,
so it's still burning really well,
clean fuel means you don't get all the gunk
and stuff build up inside the generator here
because basically the fuel comes from here,
runs through here into the burner in the stove,
if that fuel is dirty,
this slowly sort of builds up with soot,
and gunk
and stuff, you need to clean it out.
Now, fueling the stove,
there is actually some fuel in here at the moment,
but you can tip the stove on the side like this,
there's actually a little sort of notch here
that allows it to sit upright like that
and undo the filler valve here,
you'll hear it hiss a little bit,
you can then use the funnel here
that comes with the stove,
this has got a little sort of,
I'm not sure what you call a valve type arrangement in here,
which helps when you fill it,
it stops splashing around
and it helps avoid it overfilling,
so we'll stop at a point at which it reaches
sort of the bottom of that little lip there,
and won't overfill the fuel inside the fuel tank here,
so you don't end up with spillage,
this fits neatly inside here,
they say to put it in
and give it a quarter a turn,
I could never really work out why they did that,
but I just kind of filled it until I could just see
a little bit of fuel in the bottom there,
to be honest,
you could fit one
and a half of those just about in there anyways,
so I pretty much just emptied one of these,
a whole litre of those inside there pretty easily,
so I'm not sure what the actual capacity is of this,
but Coleman do say that 1.66L of Shellite
gives you about 2.5L of burn time,
so I suspect that the total capacity in here
is about 1.6L
and they've just let that burn until it empties out,
so once you've put that in there
and filled it up,
it's got a bit of a filter in the bottom there,
that white stuff is a bit of a filter
to make sure you don't get gunk in there,
seal this up again
and then we need to pressurise the stove here,
so once we've done that up,
we then make sure this is turned off,
we don't wanna turn that on now,
if we turn that on,
fuel will start to spurt out the jet at the end here,
so make sure that's off,
don't worry about this valve,
we'll talk about that in a sec,
this here is the little pump that we use
to pump pressure into the fuel canister here,
there's a little hole in the end
that we need to seal with our finger as we pull it out,
so we pull it out,
seal the end with our finger
and we're pushing air into it,
now we do this probably,
depending on how full the tank is,
sort of 30 to 50 times,
you can feel it getting firmer the more you pump it,
so this is quite empty this tank here at the moment,
so I'm probably gonna do it quite a number of times
to make sure that there's enough pressure in the fuel tank
to efficiently push the fuel out into the burner,
I can feel pressure building up in there now,
I'll probably pump that probably 60 to 70 times,
but there literally is probably about
this much fuel in here,
so it's quite empty,
but Coleman's recommendation from when the fuel tank
is filled to pump at around about 30 times,
you can always adjust it a bit later,
you might find after you've used it for a while
that the flame dies down a little bit,
you just need to then pump a little bit
of extra air in here as you go,
you've just gotta be careful as you do that
and make sure you're nice,
and steady.
Now, that is ready to go,
so we're good to light here now,
so what we need to do is grab some matches,
now this all operates through lighting this burner first,
you can't use this burner,
without this burner being on,
so this one lights
and then when we wanna turn this one on,
there is a knob on the end here
that opens up the second burner
and we then need to light this one with a match as well,
but that is fed through this hose through the middle here
from the first burner,
so we always light this one first,
so if you're only burning it on one side,
this is the side you're gonna be burning it on,
so I'm just gonna spin this around,
so that we've got a bit of wind protection here
while I use the match now,
we need to light the match
and then get the gas flowing in,
so if we come back to the knob here,
we've gotta have this off while we light the match
and this lever here we turn upwards,
I don't exactly know what that does,
but I'm assuming it changes the flow of the gas
through the generator
and into the burner a bit like priming
or using a choke on an engine,
we then will light this
and then hopefully that stays alight,
and then they say to turn the knob at least two full turns,
but I find that you don't need to do that,
but that's now lit there now,
so usually that will,
well you see there's a bit of a yellow flame
there at the moment,
if there's a yellow flame for a long time,
that means there's too much fuel in the burner,
you wanna turn it off
and let it burn out,
and start again,
let that sit for a while
because what's happening at the moment
is that flame is heating up the generator,
this hose that's feeding across the top of the burner
and that's then turning that fuel
or that liquid fuel into a gas
and once it turns into a gas we can see
that burning down now
and it's just gone to a blue flame there now,
so that's now ready to cook
and we can turn this right up if we like,
you can hear that roaring away,
don't turn it up too early because it will flare,
if there's flaring
and there's lots of yellow flames to it,
just turn it off
let it burnout,
and start again.
This is probably the biggest difference
between a gas stove
and this one
is that lighting it is a little bit more finicky
than a gas stove where you just turn it on
and light it,
you need to prime this,
but that's now gonna burn even in windy,
cold conditions,
this doesn't get affected by the cold,
you can pump more pressure into this fuel tank here
and that's always gonna burn nice,
and hot there,
I've never had a problem in any conditions
with that burning nice
and hot.
I can feel heat coming off that,
now these are 9,000
and an 8,000 BTU burner,
so they're not as hot as some of the gas burners,
but like I said,
they just burn in this condition all the time
and you can get a good simmer on this as well
I think I said,
but you can turn this down,
you can actually turn it off temporarily
and back on because fuel remains in the system
for a bit longer,
so that's turned right down there now
and I can put my hand over that close to it,
but I certainly wouldn't wanna do that
when I've got it turned up there,
it's now feeling much hotter,
sort of this far above
and once this has burned,
and all warmed up,
and the flame's gone blue,
we can now flick this little knob here
back down to the low,
pointing downwards
and that's now ready to go,
if we leave it up it's a bit like letting too much fuel
go through all the time,
it's burning a little bit too rich,
so this just helps it burn a bit more efficiently,
so that's now ready to cook on that side there,
if you want both burners though,
we need to grab a second match
and be prepared with the burner at this side here,
it doesn't light automatically,
so wind's just picked up,
so hopefully this match stays alight,
turn the other side here
and that's now lit as well,
now you will need to make sure
that when you light this side,
this one is turned up reasonably high,
if you've got that down too low,
I've found there's not enough pressure
to get through to this side to light this side as well,
so we've made sure that one's turned up
and then this one lights too,
now this one doesn't burn as hot as this one,
8,000 BTU
and 9,000 BTU,
so this side here is gonna be the hotspot
of your barbecue if you've got a hot plate on there.
Now, turning them off,
starting with this side here,
come to the knob on the end here
and twist that around to turn it off,
same over here if you wanna turn this one off,
we're just gonna turn this around,
I will mention before I turn it off,
if you've been cooking something for a long time
and that flame's going down,
and you're turning it up,
and not much is happening,
you need to put more pressure
in the fuel canister here,
so just a few more pumps here,
just being really careful when you do this,
you don't wanna knock the fuel tank off,
so a few extra pumps
just to give it a bit more pressure
and make sure it burns,
you'll find you need to do that more
the lower the tank is.
Now turning it off,
when we turn this off,
it's not gonna go out straight away,
we've turned that down,
but there's still fuel in the system here
that needs to be burnt out,
so that flame has gone right down,
but it's still just flickering away in there
and it'll do that for a little while,
and then you get a bit of a smell of Shellite,
and then it'll flicker out,
and it'll stay hot for a while as well after that.
So, that is how you use
the PowerHouse Duel Fuel Stove from Coleman,
I love it because I don't have to worry about gas bottles,
I can just buy these for refills,
hardware shops,
camping shops,
you can find this pretty readily all around Australia
when I travelled
and as I mentioned,
I think I used about eight of those in a four month trip.
Coleman's say 1.6L gets you 2.5 hours of burn time,
it's very dependent on the conditions you're using it in,
how long it takes to prime it,
you might waste a little bit of fuel
if you sort of flood it at some stage
and use a bit of extra fuel,
so it's a bit of an arbitrary measure there,
but I found it to be no less efficient
or more expensive than gas is,
but it's probably easier to find that fuel
and you can just set this up anywhere,
I don't have to worry about a gas bottle down the side,
I don't have to worry about leaks or anything as well.
I love my Coleman PowerHouse Duel Fuel Stove,
I've switched to it,
I'm gonna keep using it,
I can't see myself ever going back to gas,
it's just a really simple way to set it up,
a way to cook in the campsite.
Pack-up's easy too,
you just need to wait for this to cool down,
I wanna pack it up,
now once it's packed up,
fold these in,
fold this up,
put your gas fuel tank in there,
as I said I use a little cotton bag to put it in,
you can also fit one of these in,
they'll fit down the side there,
maybe put that in the cotton bag as well
and I usually keep the box,
and matches or a flint in there as well,
so you can store a few things inside the stove.
An awesome stove,
they've been around for a long time,
check them out online,
it's snowys.com.au where you'll find them
at our lowest prices every day.
If you do have any questions for me,
let me know down in the comments below,
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