Wildcoast,

Interesting selection of items at your website.

These EcoZoom stoves seem well suited for pre-positioning at camp or BOL or used in conjunction with a camper or 4x4 unit. They seem a little large for a bugout bag item.

Do you own or have you used an EcoZoom stove?? Which model is the best in your opinion??

One other question, the roof top tents you sell, where are they manufactured?? China?? Australia?? South Africa?? or locally??

Thanks. And best success with your business.

Cheers,

Mountainman.

Hi, i own a ecozoom stove, love it! Ordered mine when ony available from states..

here is a review i wrote for it a while ago for my own blog (no i don't get anything for it etc)

Now its 27 pds in weight which will surprise you cuz its does not look that big until you go to lift it.. It does appear very well made and I hope to get a good number of years out of it.

So for my first “test” I went the hard way, I was only willing to start a fire with what I could in fact find in my front yard and matches, this proved to a tiny bit harder and took longer then I expected as most of my fuel was a little damp but once I got it going well, the water really did come to a boil in a very short time and the heat that little stove put out is excellent. I was very pleased with how little wood it really took to get that water boiling.

My second fire in the stove was to cook supper with, and I did it with more careful planning and dry wood, I used some dryer lint to help get it started and it caught right away, I can see and agree with everyone that having the little metal grate wood feeder is a great idea..

Now it took very little time to figure out how to get a cool heat and a fast year but I had a little more trouble working on a nice steady med heat, I will try again next with charcoal and then with dried cowpatties (watch for it to have its own post). One of the perks of this little stove is that you can use different sources of fuel with it.

I fried up some bacon over it, and it again impressed me at just how quickly it heated and cooked the food.. one of the claims was that it produced very little smoke, I did find that it smoked a bit on my first try but I have to agree that the second time with dry wood, it was impressive at how little smoke it gave off, but that bacon sure smelled good Once it was finished I took out some of the fat and threw in cut off the cob fresh corn to fry up as a side dish, and it did a lovely job on it.

I will be looking forward to trying a few different things cookwise on this little stove, I have a few different cast iron pots that I would like to try a few things on it, including to see if I can make some flapjacks on it, quick breads are one of the things that if you don’t have a oven, (power out) that need to be able to be made up.. now if its summer, you can use a solar oven but in our cold Canadian winters, you had better have a different plan, I will also do a post on how this stove holds up to cooking in winter time.

My next challange is going to be trying to can a little something in a hot water bath using coal, as I figure it should provide the most stable heat for the learning curve on this one, I am a little leary that it will prove that the size of the oven that burns will be a issue but I still want to try it at least one, I expect that my little potbelly cast iron stove is the better choice for outdoor canning, as it can take a proper typical peice of wood to give a longer burn time, but we will see.

Note: I did not get this stove for free to write about it, I paid full price for it and have no ties to the company etc etc.

second review
As folks know, i got a ecozoom, as I wanted to be as frugal on the amount of fuel needed to cook and or reheat my food, boil my water etc. I promised a little more detail on things as I figured things out myself, and I figured it out.. so lets see what I have learned.

So first, I wanted a factual amount of wood burned so I used precut wood at one inch by one inch by 12 inches long.

So this little one can make flapjacks in cast iron frying pan like no ones business, you only need four sticks to make a full batch in cooking time.

For making Baking Powder in a cast iron cook pot with lid, it took six sticks to cook a pot full, the pan does need to be greased and they do need to be flipped, you can`t seem to do the coal cooking that you would on a real fire, the space in the ecozoom is just to small to do that, you would need to use coal intead of wood fire. But it cooked them in less then eight min from start to finish.

Then I added in 2 quarts of water, brought it to a boil in under five min and put in fresh dug cut up potato`s.. Time to cooked potatos was, (this required a total of four more sticks) right around ten min, its worth noting that fresh dug potato`s do cook about 20 percent faster then stored potato.

Now because I could not stand the idea of letting that boiling water and the rest of the coals and fire go to waste, I put in two cups of rice into it and the rice was done perfectly by the time the fire died out and it was allowed to just sit for 20 min..

Awesome.. for less then one typical fire log in size, I cooked four frying pans full of pancakes, a cast iron pot with five Baking Powder Bisquits, boiled water, cooked potato`s and made a pot of rice..

Included link as there are photos to go with..

http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/power-out-how-are-you-planning-on-cooking/

I still need to yet cook with dried cow chips at some point, never lose the little stick holder or it would be a issue, on the other hand you can successful waterbath can on it.

One of the few portable rocket stoves that work properly.
You could make one for about the same price or less but it wouldn't be practical to make a portable one as good as this.

Hi Mountainman
Thanks for the interest 🙂 yes we do have a EcoZoom we have the versa and the dura. Both work very well... And yes you are right bug out would be a bit heavy with the ecozoom versa or dura but we have the lighter models that work just as well, but again all depends on your needs. We use cast iron pots on ours which are fabulous and I have yet to have a bad experience using one of these stoves.
On to the roof top tents... We actually started this when we brought one in from the states for personal use and realized the expense of customs,shipping and foreign exchange and thought there must be a better solution for other Canadians interested in the same thing. So after researching for two months we found a company in china willing to make changes in the manufacturing to improve the quality of the tents. We feel we now have a better quality tent which we can offer for a lesser price.
Thanks again for your interest... Sorry it took me a while to respond feel free to contact us with any other questions.

Have a great day
Trish

Wildcoast,

Interesting selection of items at your website.

These EcoZoom stoves seem well suited for pre-positioning at camp or BOL or used in conjunction with a camper or 4x4 unit. They seem a little large for a bugout bag item.

Do you own or have you used an EcoZoom stove?? Which model is the best in your opinion??

One other question, the roof top tents you sell, where are they manufactured?? China?? Australia?? South Africa?? or locally??

Thanks. And best success with your business.

Cheers,

Mountainman.

Hello Trish,

Thanks for the information.

Maybe you could post more pic's of the stoves and the roof top tents in the General Gear section and write a review. I am sure many members would like to see more pictures of these pieces of gear in action.

Best success,

Mountainman.

Mountainman thanks for the suggestion I will def get round to doing that! One thing I haven't tried which we are doing this weekend, is pressure canning on the EcoZoom...so will post pic and details, on our experiences on all the gear as soon as I have more time! Really appreciate your feedback. Have a great weekend. Trish

Create wind blocks when canning, water bath good, pressure canning, not so good! Be prepared to need to babysit it the whole time, use good quality hard wood for best even heat.. at least that has been what i have learned for my own use.