Spoiler:
A few small candles and a couple of flower pots can heat a small room, just like a space heater or a fire in the fireplace. I really wanted this to be true. Unfortunately, it isn’t. There is no way that four small candles can produce enough heat to raise the temperature in a room — not even a small one. The flower pot tea candle room heater idea is a hoax that has been perpetuated by prepper forums and websites such as Pinterest. It looks like a plausible idea, but as much as we would like it to work, it simply will not. Keep reading and check out the attached videos for experimentation and explanations. If afterwards you still believe that this can work, use the photos and diagrams to make your own heater. Let us know how it works for you.
The Theory, The Experiments, and The Results:
As seen in the diagram to the right, the four tea candles are theoretically supposed to super-heat the air in the chambers between the different size flower pots and the clay radiantly heats the surrounding area. In the videos attached below, the hosts experiment with the heat output of a couple of different flower pot and candle configurations. While the flower pots became too hot to touch, none of them heated up their surrounding space. One of the hosts analyzes the BTU output of the candles and explains how it is impossible for them to generate enough heat to change the temperature of the surrounding area. There are time-lapse videos with digital thermometers showing the temperature rise over a specific time. You will not be impressed.
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I just saw a video about this for the first time and I thought it was ridiculous and impossible. Maybe living up north and knowing people who actually heat their homes with wood stoves made me skeptical. The whole idea that a little candle can produce the same amount of heat as 20lbs of wood is ridiculous. Still had to check it out and found this. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
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