user801028

Only slightly? How about the huge advantage of not cracking like glass. :) Yes sadly a must is that it has to be sealed, thus ruling out many options, in order to keep the diesel fumes contained in the appliance's chamber and exhausted outside. Seems taking my chances with glass again is my only viable option. I suppose £60 for 8 months of daily usage is not the worst as a lot of things require servicing every 6 to 12 months and would cost more. Certainly not ideal and a faff to have to change it out each time. I would try and prevent by keeping a cleaner stovetop as I suspect the uneven base due to old food and general muck may have caused the overheating and cracking where the pot was not flush with the surface.

Looking online it seems very hard to find a piece of cast iron metals making this option seem unattainable. All that is sold is raw iron bars. Any other options that would actually within reach or ways to get a 30cm x 30cm cast iron sheet repurposed from something else? I think the latter is unlikely since it would be a real fluke to be the right size and depth and no way I want to try and fashion it myself. Would stainless steel be no good? As discussed earlier that doesn't seem to warp under heat when looking at pots and pans and is superabundant. From the previous replies stainless steel should have similar thermal expansion properties to pyrex? Hmm that is weird...so mild still should have even performed better due to lower rating yet it is the one which spurred this thread in the beginning. Lower is better right? I am presuming so because the pyrex and such glasses, made for heat resistance, are also low listed here. I don't get how the mild steel which caused me problems from the start is supposedly the same range for thermal expansion as pyrex?

Yes that was the crux of the statement that there is no none toxic level of alcohol as it was debunking the long held belief that one glass of wine a day is good for you. I just looked it up again and it seems David Nutt is also advocating the moderation approach so not sure when he changed his tack. However I just found this who article which is rounding up what I was getting at. From the above article: So it is the 'first drop' argument that is in question. Perhaps it is hyperbole and we have no clear data that just one drop is harmful and as alluded to above in the thread we can assume it probably isn't due to trace elements existing in the body already? I am asking for the reasoning for holding that view. Well what all I am trying to get at is whether the trace elements coming from outside of the body consumed as food would increase the baseline risk to any degree above the static gastro levels.

Since I saw the good Dr. David Nutt state that any amount of alcohol is toxic and that there is no safe amount it made me shun it in every form. Not that I was a drinker before that, having hated it for years, but it made me think of those foods which may contain it in small quantities. I read that even the smallest amount can have effects for up to 30 years before you would turn to none alcohol exposure equivalent status, similar to smoking. As such is it rational to avoid foods that contain only incidental trace amounts as byproducts? Vinegar has a little doesn't it, since it is made from wine? I do love salt and vinegar snacks but have generally stuck to only salted due to the above reasoning. Strangely enough I have not been as strict about bread, which I would sometimes make myself. I have read it can even contain up to one beer's worth of alcohol in a loaf. No specific reason for thinking this is different it is just since I was making the bread myself I did not think about what the by products would be as much. Haven't made it for some time though due to not having an oven any more. I suppose there would be tiny amounts in other foods that I eat that I am just not aware of? I am not sure what though and maybe not because I eat only legumes and pulses and rice mostly now. Lots of fruit so maybe if I eat a tiny bit of bruised fruit the fermentation would have a little in there. :D Fermented foods I think are more likely to have them aren't they? These have their own health benefits and are usually very tasty so I wonder if the puritan view of alcohol consumption, or lack thereof, is rational? Would such trace amounts of alcohol increase risks of cancers or other alcohol related diseases to any real degree? Or is it like in quantum mechanics where anything is theoretically possible, like falling through a solid wall but the chance is so infinitesimally minute as to be inconsequential?

Ah yes, useful comments thanks. Cast iron sounds a good idea as also @Externet suggests. Yes, as you say, with regards to the surface contact of pot to stovetop I think that might be a likely cause because the instruction manual clearly states 'no idle cooking' which I took to mean no cooking with no pot on the stove due to risk of breaking the glass. When the hood is down the fan then blows the hot air out and into the room, forming the heater part of the cooker/heater combo. When lifted the fan is not engaged so there must be something to absorb the heat. I have been doing a lot of outdoor work lately so lots of gunk and gravel being brought into the van floor, where I set the pot down. Also I must admit I had been lax on cleaning the stove surface and quite a bit of gunge including a bit of lentil overspill having caked it when I looked this morning. So I wonder if it was a case of the pot not being flush causing the crack. Seems the most likely culprit. For cast iron it would have to be a sealed plate as otherwise there will be diesel fumes being released in an enclosed space - which would be a nono :). Also, as above, the pot must stay flush to absorb the heat so would be no good to put a cast iron onto a glass surface. Cast iron, from my experience of stoves is usually very thick, to the order of several cms or so. This glass was only 5mm and there is little more clearance for thicker, maybe a couple more mm, for the hood to be able to go down without obstruction. Would a thinner piece of cast iron still have the same thermal expansion resistance properties. That has not been discussed either - what is the thermal expansion or lack thereof of cast iron. As per the OP, due to the sealed nature, it has to have very little so as not to break the seal, releasing diesel fumes, during operation. Besides the expansion properties will it have similar thermal transfer to the glass? As it is used so much for other cooking tops I guess it must be pretty good. It doesn't have to be identical and the cooker is rather efficient so I could lose some efficiency in place of reliability and sturdiness of the top.

Ok to resurrect this thread, the glass cracked after what is that 8 months since making this thread when I bought it? That is disappointing. It has a rating of 700c and yet the crack was certainly from the heat rather than an impact, the latter of which what caused it in the first instance for the one it originally replaced. I was boiling some food and there was a definite pop/crack sound. I raise the stove off and the crack is in a circular region right where the diesel flame hits it. For the number crunchers what average top temperatures should a diesel flame produce or is it too much how long is a piece of string? I couldn't imagine the direct diesel flame from a small stove would amount to higher temperatures than a log burner, which the glass is also geared for I think. Anyway, regardless, it worked fine for those months in the interim so not sure why it would happen all of a sudden. I can only guess that the daily placing on an off of the heavy pot perhaps weakened it causing micro fractures and then on that day the heat broke the camel's back so to speak. Still it was sold as stove glass so would expect it to be able to handle that too. I am wondering where to go from here as it seems I paid around £60 for that glass and having to pay that every 8 months, not to mention the tricky job of replacing the glass, is not too enticing. Winter is coming too, where I want to use it as a heater most. Looks like I will be getting a lot of early nights in the double sleeping bags if I don't fix it. I have been doing that already though due to working a lot of manual labor lately and just because it is going dark early so might not be much of a deprivation. So the idea of metal would be out for something which would be comparable in price for comparable thermal expansion qualities?

Thanks. Hmm interesting. Even if the theory is valid the question also would be how effective commercial products using the technology would be. I have never heard about the smell of the sea maybe it part because I never lived by it but I have heard about the sweet smell after rain but that is something else called patrichor right? What about the sweet smell on model railways and also any engines. Is that right? I once posed the question what the sweet smell was when I run my diesel cooker as I was concerned it could be leaky diesel and someone suggested it could just be ozone.

I have seen ozone mentioned in various contexts when researching off grid living. Some when discussing how all engines create it and it gives off a distinctive smell. From all industrial engines down to the model railway sets. I was told the sweet smell of the railway sets is ozone. Another is that when I wanted to stop mold in my van I was advised to use an ozone generator. The latest I have seen is to be used for water purification. I have been assured that this is based on established and proper science not hocus pocus but I can't help but get the feeling it sounds like 'phlogeston' or the 'humours' or other pseudoscientific theories of old. The only legitimate discussion of ozone I remember is when it used to be talked about in the 90s often when they would say there was a hole in the ozone layer. I had no reason to disbelieve the sources in that case but I don't know about these new uses of the term and reading the wiki on it I still do not understand it any better as to whither these other uses of it are legit or not. The feeling I get is that it is like Deepak Chopras hideous misuse of quantum theory.

As per my previous thread about a stove my venture into living in a van full time has been a great education in self-sufficiency. As such I have to do commonly taken for granted tasks myself, even those thought of as less desirable as per the title. If I am out in the wilds with no one nearby then it is no problem to bury my waste, making sure to use bio degradable bags to hold it, and let nature take its course. I am often not in nature though. The common advice in the vanlife community is that you can just dump it in any public trash bin since that is where baby nappies (diapers for you americans) go as well as dog poop bags. Although I have done this I do not feel right doing it. It feels anti-social and I feel like I am doing something nefarious and makes me uncomfortable. I am wondering if there is a way to mix certain readily available chemicals or whatnot to make the waste matter more benign such that it wouldn't be offensive so I could store in in my van without it feeling nasty as well as feeling better about throwing in the trash mixed in with my other trash. In the vanlife world there are commercially available toilets which incinerate it. Sounds great but they cost a few grand. I know drying out is a way to preserve food and removes smell. Could that help here? Although the act of 'cooking' one's poop would probably cause a huge stink in the process so not keen on doing that in the enclosed space of my van let alone if passers by may get a whiff, unless chemicals could be added to subdue that. I know criminals use hydrochloric acid to decompose bodies so would probably do the same? Too extreme for the job at hand and risk not to mention accessibility but perhaps the theory can inform using a weaker, relatively safer acid to break it down? We know that waste turns into compost if left in the ground for a year or so but I don't have that time or the land to bury it. So I am wondering if I can do a similar process in a compressed fashion. Well it doesn't have to turn to compost. My goal is just to make it benign smelling enough as to be unrecognizable as its original product giving peace of mind to place in public trash bins. Perhaps my question is naive and if anyone could do this they would be very rich selling a proprietary product? Or maybe there aren't market pressures for it since most humans are happy with their home plumbing systems. I know 'water treatment' plants treat human waste to extract water but have no idea of the process or how specialized it is and whether any of the steps are accessible to the lay person.

Thanks both. Your information made me see it is probably better to just go for the glass made for the job. I also learned a new thing in thermal expansion. When I was looking at the ads for the stove glass again I suddenly did notice thermal expansion mentioned for one and lauded at "nearly 0%".

Maybe a rudimentary question for yall but was not getting much useful information from diyers. I have a cooktop in a van with the normal heat resistant glass but due to the bumping around when driving as well probably to poor design quality of the glass it cracked. Rather than replace with another glass one which is liable to crack I thought why not replace with metal instead. The size I want is relatively small at 29x29cm. Thickness 1-3mm will do. In my naivety I did not consider the issue of warping at all and just bought standard 3mm mild steel since it was cheaper. Placing the metal in the recess and firing up the cooker the appliance didn't even have a chance to get through its run up cycle to reach full heat and the metal was already bending. At first I wondered what on earth was happening when I saw it raising off the ground then I twigged it was warping from the heat. This also caused diesel fumes, as that is what it runs on, to bellow out so I had to shut it down quick. Now I still have the option to use glass which is made for the job of withstanding cooking heat but if there is some metal that will resist the bending under cooking temperatures, I suppose a few hundred Celsius, then metal would still be preferable due to lack of breakage factor. As I thought and read a little more I realized stainless steel is used for much cookware and that doesn't warp. Also bbq and fast food cooktops I noticed use some kind of sheet metal where they fry stuff right off the cooktop so there must be some metals which will withstand it. Is that likely stainless steel too? Price wise it also seems not too much more than normal mild steel. So will that suffice? It really does have to be well resistant to bending because once placed on the cook surface, after testing it works, it will have to be sealed with heat resistant sealant to keep the fumes contained in the burn chamber and vented out. So it must maintain its form under constant heat and over time. Will stainless steel still be suitable given those requirements or is something else better, again, considering price? It should be at most as much as a ceramic/glass cooktop which comes to about 40-80 gbp for the size I want.