No rabbits?!
Posted on 01/09/2014 12:58:24 PM PST by RKBA Democrat
As parts of the United States prepare for record-breaking cold temperatures, a YouTube video showing an alternative way to heat your home might come in handy.
The video, which we first found on Why Don't You Try This, was made by journalist and boat-owner Dylan Winter. All you need to make this do-it-yourself heater are tea lights, a loaf tin, and two clay flower pots.
You can find tea light candles at pretty much any drug or hardware store. A pack of 50 is only $5.99 at CVS, for instance.
In the video, Winter places four tea lights into a loaf tin and covers them with a small flower pot that's turned upside down. He then covers the drain hole on the bottom of the small pot with the metal casing from one of the tea lights. The small pot is covered by a bigger flower pot and the hole is not covered.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
One large container candle will work. I use them to heat our boat at night. It really is amazing how much heat they put off.
You have to be smarter than a flower pot to use it. It doesn’t have to be on the floor, either. People with common sense can surely use this.
and for only 8 pence a day!
Always nice to see flammable materials used as the support base for heating appliances, too.
Nice plug for IKEA though...
One of my favorite alternative energy experts good naturedly mocks people with
“it’s not a light saber”
when they think they’ve stumbled upon THE thing that produces a lot of energy cheaply and simply.
It stops all that convective heat loss.
Tea candles burn out in minutes when it gets liquidy.
Yeah, or just, you know, burn the candles. That's where the heat comes from.
Bingo.
The same kind of people will buy the claim that some electric heaters are more “efficient” than others.
Tea lights burn away REAL fast.
I saw this several months ago and decided to try it. It works. It’s not going to make you all toasty and warm but it will keep a small room from being cold. The smaller clay pot gets warm from the candles which causes the air around it to warm and rise through the hole in the larger pot. that causes air to feed into the area between the pots from the bottom and it gets warm as it passes through. Burning 4 tea candles inside a room shouldn’t deplete the room of oxygen unless the room is air tight. Breathing would accomplish the same in such a room.
Very clever! At last — a use for that bag of tea lights from IKEA!
We have a ton of LED flashlights but we also have eight 19th century indoor lanterns. Those suckers are BRIGHT. They generate a fair amount of heat too, but I don’t want to die of asphyxiation or oxygen starvation. i.e. I don’t want to go to bed and wake up dead.
Maybe I should word that a little better. ;-)
Yes, the expensive ones with the Amish-made cabinets are more efficient. ;-)
Watts in = heat out, pretty much.
I got two of those Brooklyn Latterns that are shown on tv and they work really well.
There have been some schemes where rabbits were kept in the basement, and their body heat kept the upstairs cozy.
I’ve noticed also that hens’ heat will keep their water from freezing...
I posted this link sometime back and the Feedback was lets say less than welcoming:
http://hackedgadgets.com/2009/10/16/terracotta-pot-candle-heater/
But I think that this explanation of how the unit works shows it’s benefits:
The difference here is how the heat is distributed, which is *very* important.
Remember, the only important thing in this context is the *personal perception* of heat. Concentrate the heat near the user, and they’ll notice a significant difference.
Normal candle burning will result in a small amount of IR emission, but most of the heat will immediately rise straight up to your ceiling via gas convection. Instead of wasting all the heat as warm air sitting at the ceiling, this radiates much of it as IR directly to your skin and immediate surroundings (and of course, some will still be transmitted through a more broad general convection.) These are typically meant to be used on the corner of a desk within a meter or so of the user, and they really do make a difference in taking the chill off within a localized area.
“And with the bonus of seeing the cozy flame… ”
The candle flame is still visible, the pots usually rest on a stand a few inches above the flame.
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