A candle heater is one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly ideas we’ve ever heard of. It is also a very cheap and efficient alternative to traditional heating systems as it will cost you less than 15 cents per day to heat up an entire room. The idea behind it is very easy and it can be made at home by anyone, you just need to have some Terra-Cotta pots, washers, bolts and candles. Basically, you will be building a small radiator which will be powered by the candles and the heat inside the pots. You can find a detailed explanation on the following link and step by step instructions on how to build this simple, but efficient heater yourself.
source: heatstick.com
Do you not sell them, because of the safety aspect? I can see major fire hazards with them.,
its a candle, there will always be fire assosciated with candles, its part and parcel of how they operate…..
they dont sell them because they are a home mod, who would want to buy one when its so easy to make one from easily available parts?
Hahaha!
Click on the heatstick.com link. – They do sell them.
the only real fire hazard would be if a person is dense enough to buy the plastic pots instead of clay pots…
LOL
this is good to radiate…i have seen a design for this with 2 pots and the top hole (i think) was left open which allowed for additional convection of the heat…so it some how drew in the cool air and the hot air would be propelled (slightly, of course, but never-the-less) tried that one and it worked…it is on you tube somewhere…from the uk, i believe. Great!…thanks for your design!
Looks like a good back up heater for the fish house!
Great idea for back up heat if your electric goes off.
What about carbon monoxide?
It cannot give more power than if you would leave the candles just as they are. With pot or without pot. Nice design, nice photos but the “product’ itself worth nothing. It will be warm but not warm enough. MAYBE! for a bathroom if you have a dozen of this with 4 candles it can raise the temperature with a few Celsius.
Sorry to ruin your enthusiasm… 🙁
Berci, You are absolutely correct.
Without pot the heat rises directly to the ceiling.
With pot(s), aka baffles, the heat is contained closer to where you are actually living.
Of course the heat rises to the ceiling eventually, but the pots capture the heat and allow it to radiate first. This is the concept of Thermal Mass, a concept often used in passive solar systems to “save” heat for nighttime radiation.
This is utter rubbish. You cannot heat a room with a candle. Well maybe an hermetically sealed, ultra insulated one. The BTUs a candle puts out is grossly inadequate. This BS with the bolts and washers is just that, BS.
Laws of Physics, laws of Thermodynamics, etc. are being completely ignored in this crap post.
Total BS. There are only so many BTU’s in a candle no matter how it is radiated. The candles alone will produce the same amount of heat.
This is so wrong….You are creating more more heat than the candle alone by virtue of radiant heat. Just like an old fashioned radiator conducts more heat than heat pipe. One fin of a radiator is = to three feet of heat pipe. Hence way more heat by radiant heat, same thermostat, same temp. It also last longer in the room as the cast iron stays hotter longer than copper pipe.
You are missing the basic tenants of physics. You cannot create more heat no matter what you add to the heat source. In this case, thermal mass is being added which will slow the heat dissipation from the candle so the clay pots will feel warm after the candle goes out. While there is conservation of energy, there is no way to “add” or “multiply” the output of a heat source.
I live in PA where we get power outages every time there is a big storm. Usually solved in an hour or so…but there have been times when we were out for a day or more. If it was just us…we could bundle up…but I have aquariums and birds in one room that needs to maintain AT LEAST 65 degrees. What I do is get a few candles together…maybe 4 or 5 depending on how much room I have for them on the counter top (this is in my kitchen/dinging area) I fold foil into a stiff sheet, put it next to the candle jars..not actually touching. I might have about 5 or 6 areas in the kitchen like this and maintain anywhere from 68 to 65 degrees in the dead of winter. BTW the room is 425 square feet with a cathedral ceiling. Pretty big area to keep warm but the candle and foil thing works. Bought a bunch of the religious candles from Walmart…ready for the next outage!
The object is to keep the BTUs down where you live not going directly up to the ceiling. Same thought as using a ceiling fan.
I have tried this using a little different pot method, 2 pots with the candles in a small loaf pan, and I was very impressed with the amount of heat I could actually feel. Without the 2 pots, using just the 4 candles, the heat just rose to the ceiling and was gone, but using the 2 pots, it trapped and detained the heat at the level where i was, so it gave me much more useful heat.
I have actually tried this and I have only two comments about it….
1. It did not nothing to heat or maintain the temp of the room (6×8 room)
2. Even buying the candles at wholesale prices, the cost was more than bumping the thermostat a degree. I paid for the heater AND the candles…
It looks great and sounds great but in actual practice, not so much….
The energy produced by the candle is the same but the way the heat is transferred is very different. An open candle’s heat dissipates quickly into the volume of air present but the metal rod and washers distribute the heat to the terracotta pots which then store and radiate the captured energy. It is called radiant heat for a reason.
Carbon monoxide occurs with fossil fuels….
It’s a candle.
A candle.
IF YOU REALLY WANT back up heat, use oil lamps, antique table lamps give off 8,000 BTU, the large parlor lamps give off 10 to 20,000 BTU, the antique Aladin lamps can give off up to 18,000 BTU. I live in a 120 year old farm house and have used oil lamps for over 40 years to heat the house when the power goes out or to raise the temp on minus 5 below winter days by 20 degrees. Look it up.. just do a search on how many BTU’s an oil lamp gives out. Unlike a candle, oil lamps burn very hot with a blue bottom flame.
For all those naysayers and trolls. This method does work it kept my little camper heated half the winter after my furnace broke. The btus are increased because of the terracotta pots bieng heated up therefore giving off built up heat. Some people have to try and ruin a great idea. Btw it only took three of these to heat my 20 foot kustom Koach camper during an Alberta winter.
Rock ON!!! People never think to try something Outside of the Box. Too many theories in the world.. Too many talkers and Not enough Doers…
As much as I prefer natural, environmental, homemade, sustainable etc practices, how exactly are candles categorised as such? The crap in cheap candles made in China are certainly not. Beeswax, is, well, not only harmful to bees – largely imperative to plant life on Earth! – are also expensive.
Good heater for Africa at summertime.
This just looks like an awesome project to keep older kids busy during a power outage! If it actually works, all the better.
This entirely works because of the terracotta pots which retains heat. I tried it when there was a power outage in my town. After I saw people in developing countries baking bread and other sorts of food in a terracotta and/or clay oven after it has been heated through with burning wood. Then, they retrieved the wood when the oven was at the desired temperature for the baking. So in my experience, if it works for baking it shall work for providing heat in an outage, right? So I did tried it and it totally worked for the purpose of providing heat too.
I was living with a broken furnace for a few days in mid-winter in an apartment. The only way to be comfortable was to bundle up and sit in the small bathroom with the three wall lights above the mirror on during the day.. I was amazed how much heat accumulated just from those lights. Ever since then, in cold weather I keep all the lights on in my apartment during the day and never even use the furnace. It’s cheaper than using the furnace.
I believe the terra cotta pots lamp will definitely work from the above experiments I’ve used and other non-conventional experiments I’ve tried also. The current fashion of high ceilings are definitely a drawback when it comes to needing to conserve heat in an emergency situation.
Misting windows with water from a squirt bottle and pressing panels of large bubble wrap against window panes works wonders for keeping the cold from transferring so much into living areas also, especially if you’re relying on emergency measures for producing heat.
What kind of threat do you see?