avatarworf

I just wanted to share a great idea, that came to us courtesy of Ray (biketouringtips.com), who also posts here. We had the pleasure of meeting Ray and his wife recently and they gave us the materials to make the cyclist's tea cozy, out of heating duct insulation and velcro:



It helps you keep your tea warm, and you can cook pasta faster by just boiling the water, putting the pasta in and taking it off the burner and covering for a few minutes. It also doubles as a cool bag to keep things better in hot weather.

Brilliant! Thanks Ray

raybo

Friedel,

Julia was asking me how the cozy was working out. It looks like you've managed to get it put together and are using it.

I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, fuel it saves.

Happy cycling.

Ray

avatarworf

Hi Ray! The cozy is just great. How much fuel? It's hard to be exact (we don't have a gauge) but we can cook pasta now by using the stove for just 3-4 minutes instead of 10 minutes. We tried rice too but we didn't take it off the stove as quickly as the pasta. Instead, we let it cook about 5 minutes and then wrapped it in the cozy. Perfect. It was the best rice we've made so far on the road! We have also been using the cozy during the day to keep things like cheese cool in this 100F heat.

Truly, this is one of the best little gadgets we've had the pleasure of using on tour.

Camel

That insulation is nifty.

I've also used it to cozy up a Nalgene bottle. Keept beverages nice and hot below zero, and is easy to regulate heat by just sliding the cozy.

4000Miles

That's quite a nifty little gadget you've got there... mind posting up a quick tutorial? What did you use to hold it all together? Where did you get the insulation? Do these vans get good gas mileage?

raybo

This cozy is made from a roll of heating vent insulation that, essentially, is plastic bubble wrap with a kind of heat resistant plastic on the outside. It looks and feels like a thick bubble wrap with a rugged exterior. I bought a large roll of it in the heating/cooling section of a local, well-stocked hardware store. This roll is about 8 inches high.

The wrap is silver on the outside and white on the inside. The inside also has a sticky strip on it that I used to stick two plys of the wrap together so that all you see is the silvery outside. I created three pieces: One to wrap around the pot, one for the top and one for the bottom that I velcro to the sides to create a better seal. The top is simply stuffed inside. I think all of these pieces are readily apparent from the photo.

I sealed the ends with a kind of metal tape that was also available in the same section of the hardware store. But, I suspect that any kind of tape would work and that this sealing is not even necessary (given that the stuff I used could be stuck together using its own stickum).

I made it from three pieces so that I can fold it down to almost nothing when it isn't in use. If I made it all a single piece, I don't know that I could do that.

Since I have two different sized pots, I have made liberal use of stick-on velcro to allow me to adjust the circumference of the pot I can wrap.

It never occurred to me to use the cozy to keep something cold. I'll have to try that on my next tour.

If these directions aren't clear enough, do a google search for "pot cozy" and you'll get pages more of them.

Some people make the cozy out of closed cell insulating pads, like the kind people sleep on. If you have an old one of those, it will also work. Here's a set of directions for doing that: https://sourcetosea.net/how-to-make-a-pot-cozy/

I used the bubble wrap because it is lightweight, easily folds down to almost nothing, and I didn't have any of closed cell foam.

I hope this helps.

Ray

4000Miles

Cheers!

Don Johnson

Why not post this here (a DIY thread) too: https://www.bikeforums.net//showthread.php?t=539304

avatarworf

I will post a full tutorial will pictures one day but could take a while. Thanks Ray for leaping to the rescue in the meantime. It's really not hard, only takes about 10 minutes to make. Just get the insulation, measure out the right size for a top, bottom and wrap-around piece for your pot (using two pieces of insulation back to back) and add the velcro to hold it together. A bit of duct tape seals the edges.

AsanaCycles

its called reflectix

https://crew445.org/philmont/potcozy.htm

there's a ton of this stuff, easy google search.