Fancy a sauna in the back country? I thought I had pretty much sorted out Bathtime on the Trail with that post as well as The APC and the Sponge Bath and Keeping Clean on the Trail & etc, but the ingenious Tim Tinker has now come along with a modification of my Hiking Desalinater which enables a half-hour sauna even in the snow!
Instead of simply utilising a can lid and some cheap plumbing fittings (as I did) to create the desalinater Tim has made one out of ultralight silnylon. Not only is this lighter (and works) it also allows for the through-put of a greater quantity of steam – enough to supply a small (also silnylon presumably) sauna in which you can thoroughly warm and clean yourself even in the depths of winter.
Because he is a professional scientist Tim is able to supply all the (correct) calculations to prove that it works – scientifically. He has taken siliconisation to yet greater heights than I thought possible after his remarkable DIY Universal Stove Jack. Of course he is utilising a DIY Tent Stove to power it. It is a remarkable addition to the concept of Ultralight Personal Hygiene.
It is a truly remarkable achievement. Read all about it here: Backpacking Steam Generator
Several important points: I was gobsmacked by the enormous increase in heat output of such a Ingenious DIY Blower Stoves and by such a simple DIY Fire Blower. We are talking about tripling the heat output from roughly kilowatt to around 3 kilowatts! That’s an impressive amount of heat from half a kg or so of twigs per hour!
The other thing which is worthy of mention is his impressive materials technology experimentation with siliconised fabrics. I mentioned before his use of silicone in the stove jack, but the creation of a silnylon pot lid and a silnylon tube is a further giant step for mankind!
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