Tripod Torch

You are too kind, thank you. Not our first rodeo either, but it is the first with dementia. We knew something was happening, but it was in 2019, when Mom had a TIA, that it became obvious what was going on.

Since then, it has just been making the best decision possible out of a list of bad possible decisions. In this case, the 'worst' (skilled care) is probably the best. The ONLY thing that would be better would have required us to purchase a house about a thousand square feet bigger than we have now. We simply can't do that.

Thursday is the move day.

BUT!!! On a lighter note -- maybe, if the weather holds out, and they don't put down a layer of salt, Saturday is supposed to be near 50, with an overnight low of 30 on Sunday morning. This gets me thinkin' bad thoughts

My Torch will be here Friday

 

I agree; having spent some time with Sweeney and his wife; they are really good people!

I look forward to his review on the torch as well.

 

awh shucks. How can I keep up my curmudgeonly lifestyle if people say things like that?

 

Some how I think you'll find a way.

 

Wait, you've been talking to that woman I live with, haven't ya?

 

You must be near Rockville where my grandparents lived. I sure loved Turkey Run and the Shades state park when I was a kid. And of course, all the covered bridges in Parke County.

 

I'm on the otherside of Indianapolis, but Rockville isn't too far. One of my best friends lives in Avon/Brownsburg area, so I'm over there quite a bit.

If you know Turkey and Shades, you probably spent some time at Racoon Lake too Nice parks. I've stayed in all but 3 state parks/sra's campgrounds. I'm missing Prophetstown, Harmony, and Dunes (which is now federal)

Prophetstown (near Lafayette) is, I am told, not really teardrop-friendly. Though, I will stay there (maybe this year) so I can remove the except. Besides that, I like to visit Indiana Beach every now and then. I'm a sucker for dark rides -- and as long as the Frankenstein's Castle is there, you can count on a semi-annual visit at least.

Harmony is near Evansville, we were supposed to go there last summer by we had a family emergency. Strange town started by a religious cult.

Dunes, I've never visited because its dry As in the 21st Amendment doesn't apply here dry. I'm sorry, campfires and cold barely pop are a requirement, though not necessarily at the same time.

As for new parks I have been too? Here's one for you to make an excuse to visit again. Charlestown is really interesting. Here's two videos. Right on the Ohio river, with the ghostly remains of an old resort called "Rose Island" and neighboring (now torn down) munitions plant from WWII. The main loop in the campground isn't great...but the two "side loops" both are fantastic, and one of them contains what I consider to be the best campsite I've ever stayed in.

 

It’s kind of interesting that Zodi, the maker of hot water heaters, had a similar device years ago. They didn’t keep it on the market long.

 

Ya the Tripod definitely has that neanderthal steampunk Burning Man vibe...
I expect to read about Sweeney dancing about it howling at the moon...adult beverages...

 

Only if by that you mean a Renaissance Polyphony and a good bottle of whiskey. Green Spot if you please. Personally, I prefer to avoid neo-paganism.

Steampunk is cool -- I just wish I could find the retrofit for the Thomas Dolby trailer! Thinking about it, the flame is probably more Dieselpunk.

 

Hmmm, Green Spot. Oh ya.

Cary

 

Told ya so.

What's even better, but impossible to find at this point, is "Green Spot Chateau Montelena" which is aged in barrels from the winery.

The movie "Bottle Shock" with Alan Reichman is a fun watch, it's basically a 2-hour advertisement for Montelena. Watching Alan eat fried chicken in the car makes me laugh every time I see it.

 

Were you able to give your Tripod Torch a good test run on your recent adventure?

 

No, not yet. This last trip I did put my solostove with pellet insert into heavy use. I honestly thihnk that hits the sweet spot. A bag is $7 or so, and gives 2 two hour burns, with a cool-down/emptying in between, which is what 1 bundle of park wood sells for, and thats good for starting a coal bed or about an hour. Rip off.

Even if I have to go to walmart and buy a 20 pound bag of pellets intended for a pellet grill -- thats STILL cheaper than park fuel.

Now back to the tripod, I did do a test firing and it produced acceptable flame, but weaker than direct to the tank... As I needed the propane for the furnace and cooking, I opted not to run out. It works, but I'm not sure I trust the fuel usage rate...

The other big challenge is that when I've had an opportunity --- its been 30mph winds!!! Like today. :\

I'm going to try to get out again in the next couple days...hopefully I can get this done....

 

We regularly enjoy burning wood in our fireplace at home, but even though I like the aesthetics of a campfire, I haven't been much of a wood campfire fan for all the reasons mentioned above, as well as not wanting to be a smoke chaser, or go to bed smelling like a chimney. So we have very rarely had campfires, and when we have, it's usually been when we camped with someone else who wanted to have one.
I was kind of interested in the Tripod torch, but decided we liked the idea of a more conventional appearing campfire if we are to have one, so decided to give a propane fire pit a try instead.

We picked up one up,( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CLZYDMBK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 ) and now that we are back from AZ, I've been trying to get it setup the way we think we would like to use it. It comes with a 3 meter hose with a tank connection and a regulator which seemed a little short. I originally was thinking I'd like to hook it up to the Aux. port on the CI. So thinking the CI regulator would replace the one it came with, I ordered a 24ft extension hose with a quick connect male fitting for the CI port, and a female quick connection on the other end, and added a 1/4" male quick connect to the 3/8" flare connection on the fire pit to plug the hose into. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09D95C68N/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
After hooking it up I wasn't able to get enough gas flow to keep it lit, so I replaced that hose with one with a male quick connect on one end, and a 3/8" flare female end on the other and attached it directly to the male flare on the fire pit.https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T3PWNX5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 Then I got way to much flow, and large flames coming out from both underneath and from on top.

I finally went back to the original hose and regulator, and added a 20ft ext. hose with a 3/8" female connector on each end, and used a double male 3/8" flare union to connect them together.https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BM3HYS9C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I added a Y tank connection so both the CI LP line and the fire pit line could be hooked up to the CI tank at the same time.https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CNLLBGC7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 This worked as desired. The almost 30 ft of hose wraps around the fire pit for storing as does the Y connector, and all fits well in the included carry case. It also comes with some large and small lava rocks, and I added some small ceramic logs to give it a more realistic appearance.

The output on the fire pit is 58000BTU, and a gallon of propane is 91547 BTU's, so you should get a little over 1.5 hrs burn/gallon on the high setting, maybe double that on the lowest. The Tractor Supply near us fills LP tanks by the gallon and gets 3.99/ gallon currently, so $4 for 1.5 - 3hrs of burn seems pretty good compared to $7 for a bundle of 5 sticks of poor quality firewood. I will probably start using a 20lb tank on the CI to carry some extra fuel for it.
Here are a few pics of the fire pit on low and high in the dark, and in the light.

 

Glad you got it to work. I'm still mulling my non-wood fire-pit solution.

But I'm starting to think that there's a conspiracy amongst propane appliance manufacturers: To devise as many non-universal configurations of adaptors, flow rates, regulators and fittings that our workshops will soon be strewn with enough spare parts to resemble that corner of the hardware store where we first got them.

 

Great results! I was always been a fan of campfires but hated constantly running from smoke and going to bed smelling like a chimney too. Wood in Florida is up to $8.99 now and that broke the camel’s back. We now either carry our Ranger Solo and burn pellets or the Campfire in a Can which burns propane. Both work wonderfully for us.

 

Yeah, I hear ya.
I was surprised when my first two attempts to use the LP port on the CI didn't work, especially the first, when I wasn't able to get enough flow. I could insert the end of a long Allen wrench down into the female quick connect and depress the center, and get plenty of gas flow, but when I would hook it to the male quick connect fitting I had installed on the fire pit, there wasn't enough to even hear it. Almost like it wasn't depressing the center enough, but I measured how much I depressed the center with the Allen wrench, and then how much the male quick connect went in after first contacting the center part of the female fitting, and being locked in place, but both appeared to be the same distance. So it is still kind of a mystery why it didn't work as I had originally planned.
Fortunately I was able to try all of these various options over about a 10 day period, so well within the return window for the items that didn't end up working. So the only accumulation of unused parts are the 5 extra unused fittings included with the extension hose that eventually worked with the one double male flare fitting also included in the fittings it came with.

I did read a couple of complaints in the reviews of the fire pit. One was that the folding legs on it could collapse if the unit was bumped while operating, so I added a locking pin to each leg https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09CTDRPX4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1&psc= There were already holes in the leg mounting brackets to engage the pins, so just had to drill a 1/4" hole in each leg for the pin to extend from that lined up with bracket hole.
The other, was that some of the small lava rocks included with the pit could fall through the air slots in the bottom of the pit, so I added some 1/4" mesh hardware cloth to the underside of the pit, which addressed that issue.

Sorry the whole original post and this follow up explanation has gotten kinda lengthy, but I was hoping to spare others who may be interested in it from having to go through all the various attempts I did before getting it to work as desired.