[Stoves] The goals of my TLUD work

[neiltm at uwclub.net]

On 29 Sep 2017 at 9:26, Jock Gill wrote:

> As for stoves for areas that need better cooking tools, I am all for that.
> It is just not my primary area of focus at this time.  Further, my view is
> that if it is not good enough for the wealthy, why is it good enough for
> anyone else? I expect adoption of new cooking tools would be a good deal
> faster if we could point to their use in the wealthy world

I couldn't agree more, and in the UK at least it is certainly easy to see 
the beginnings of this.  A few years ago a wood fired oven was fairly 
unheard of until the TV chef Jamie Oliver popularised it. Now they are 
rapidly becoming a commonplace installed in vans, or under canvas at 
fayres, cooking pizza for eg.  We will see at least one tonight at a 
street food event which is now a regular weekly event in Milton Keynes 
where we live.  I have also seen open flame wood stoves used for stove 
top cooking at fayres, and advertising 'cooked over a wood fire' as a 
draw, and it proves popular.  The charcoal BBQ has of course been popular 
for some time, whereas I never saw one as a child.

Looking online for companies in the UK advertising 'outdoor kitchens', 
there is certainly a rich persons market for this, and wood fired ovens 
can be part of that, but mostly it's expensive lumps of LPG kit.  This 
could so easily change though I'm sure, and TLUDs and rocket stoves 
become an accepted part of the mix.  Biolite seem to have the slickest 
marketing of the idea of cooking over wood successfully, although how 
much of that is down to the gimmic of the smartphone charging 
(eventually) TEG is a Q.  Their new smokeless fan assisted open fire with 
its cooking options could also open up this further outdoor cooking 
dimension, but I think there ought to be room for more stove options, and 
as I suggested to Dr Nurhuda, his new 'toroidal vortex' fan driven TLUD 
'Prime' stove if he/they do decide to make it in a wood version ought to 
be a winner I feel - the possibility to cook over a wood fire with no 
soot on the pans to clean up afterwards - what's not to like?  Then you 
would have an identifiable 'third world' stove as a desired object in the 
first world.  Currently I see no such possibility of getting hold of any 
of these stoves in the UK, although I did see one of Paul's Champion 
TLUDs I could have bought at an eye watering price to match the eye 
watering postage.  I'm personally not going to pay silly money for 
something, but I would be prepared to buy two or three and donate one or 
two if I could pay the local price, which would neatly avoid customs 
charging 20% tax on importing as they would come in under the cut off for 
imposing the tax, but how prohibitive postage charges, way exceeding the 
cost of the stove might be avoided is a Q I don't have answers to, but 
the Chinese seem to have uniquely abolished the problem!

Otherwise, without direct marketing, batches of imports might prove more 
practicable.

An approach to Jamie Oliver to try one or two could easily start a whole 
new trend as he already did with the wood ovens.  It has to be doable, 
even in damp, grey skies UK.

Neil Taylor