With the cold waves typical of the time and the price of fuels, it is normal for us to sharpen our ingenuity in search of solutions to have a comfortable temperature, either to stretch the action of heating as good insulation or directly exploring “new” ways of heating up as the commonly known poor man’s stovewhich is based on heating with candles, the original fire in its mini version. If you are thinking of heating your house with candlesIt is better to read this article before to be clear about what you win and what you lose.

What is the winter method

The stove of the poor or “Winter Method” basically consists of create a heater using a couple of pots and some candles. It is known like that because the journalist Dylan Winter called it that in the video that he uploaded to YouTube a few years ago explaining step by step how to make this DIY stove. At the time it became viral (today not available) and when the cold arrives, it reappears among the trends of social networks. Without going any further, this winter 2022-2023 you will find a lot of performances on TikTok under the hashtag #terracottapotheater, which has already accumulated more than two million views.

More concretely, the recipe canonical of this DIY stove It consists of placing four small Ikea candles (of these that cost 5.99 euros for a pack of 100 units or similar) on a metal tray and placing a small pot on them. Above the hole in the base (the one that serves to drain water when the pot is used in its standard mission), the aluminum container of a spent candle. Covering everything, a second, larger pot.

The four lit candles heat the air in that space, which rises by convection to the top, escaping into the room. The bottom line is simply concentrate all the heat at one point and radiate it to the outside.

From now on, every master has his own trick Y there are different variants in the design: there are those who limit themselves to a single pot, others opt for a system of overlapping pots of different sizes to the matrioskas (to concentrate the heat more), some people add washers and screws to the recipe… According to Winter’s theory, four candles would serve to heat the room in the morning and another four in the afternoon.

The accounts are quite easy. Leaving aside the tray and pots, which we probably have at home and which are part of the structure and not the “fuel”, each candle costs about 6 cents, so we will be able to heat a room morning and evening at the modest price of 48 cents.

And works? In El Confidencial they proposed to carry out the experiment under certain conditions (such as that the room had a space of 23.6 cubic meters, lacked windows and they began the experiment at 6:00 p.m. with a temperature of 24 degrees) that allowed us to can serve as a good approximation, concluding that the system is capable of heating the room at a rate of 2 degrees/hour. Slow compared to the standards to which we are accustomed, but effective, acting with foresight and cheap.

Why it is not a good idea to heat a room with candles

From the El Confidencial test it can be deduced that the first thing we are going to experience is a strong smell of melted wax that can throw off some people. On the other hand, we are with a heating system that consumes oxygen and converts it to carbon dioxidesomething not very healthy in small and poorly ventilated spaces.

On the other hand, the popular Ikea candles are made of wax of vegetable origin and paraffin (a petroleum derivative whose combustion, according to a study by the Environmental Protection Agency, contains toxic compounds for inhalation such as benzene or toluene). On the other hand, you may consider taking advantage of those candles that you have at home tinted with chemicals or with zinc, tin or lead wicks.

Due to the system itself, which uses direct fire, there will be some exposure and fire hazard in the event of accidents or manipulation (imagine, for example, an accidental blow from your pet) that causes the candles to fall into a magazine or onto the carpet. On the other hand, the outside of the pot gets very hot (it can reach 200 degrees), so a casual touch can result in a burn. If you are in a room with a humid environment and it falls on the inside of the clay pots, the evaporated water could favor the explosion of the container with the consequent danger it represents.

So far risks inherent in this stove of the poor, but we must also consider its effectiveness. In Consumer they collect the statements of the energy expert Jorge Morales, who explains that no thermal miracles: “The maximum energy to be transmitted is that contained in the sail. And it is not much.” In this same publication, this statement is confirmed by Carlos Gutirrez from the Nergiza energy dissemination website, who points out that “it will provide a very small amount of energy/heating power, clearly insufficient to heat a room.” He also details that “the euro / kWh ratio in this case would also be quite high”. And it is that it is easy to confuse that the pots are set on fire does not imply that they offer a high thermal power, due to their small exchange surface.

Photo by Rebecca Peterson-Hall on Unsplash