My Frugal Adventure Into Candle Power
So many people have posted (or shared or commented or reposted) about the ability to heat a room for 8p per day using a simple candle heater that it was beginning to annoy me - mainly because the information is so outdated and so few people were reading the full story concerning the tiny dimensions of the original room in the article. I remember trying this heating method many years ago, possibly while attending Girl Guides, so it isn't anything new.
Inflation has to count for something and I expect current candle prices and room sizes will negate any possible financial benefits, but I do have a good stock of candles and will happily number-crunch my way to the 2014 prices.
My Candle Experiments
Our bathroom is, I believe, a conversion from an old stable and, as such, has 3 external walls. We haven't fully refurbished it yet, other than having to fix the immediate problems when we first bought the house - roof, window, floor, water pipes and some plasterboard on one wall. There is sheep wool insulation in the roof and the one re-lined wall, but the place gets very cold without heating.
I lit an 8-hour taper candle and left it burning overnight with no other heat source. We had a touch of frost overnight, temperatures dropped to around freezing, but the candle was still burning and the bathroom was 3 Degrees C the following morning.
A bit of online research showed me the cheapest 8-hour candles I could buy would cost about 10p each, if bought in bulk. (I can't use tea lights through the night because I do like to sleep then, not stay awake to relight candles every couple of hours!)
Subsequent searching showed me that these taper candles can produce about 80-100w, whereas a small tea-light is, at most 30w, presumably because of much shorter burning times. I'm not too hot with watts, so I won't go into this part any further and I can't guarantee the facts, only say that's what I read when researching.
To calculate how much energy you need to heat a room 'comfortably' (whatever that means), you measure the length x width x height in metres and then multiply it by 0.07 My bathroom requires 637w to heat it.
Based on all of the above, 1 + 2 + 3 = 8 taper candles per 8 hours x 3 = 24 candles per day to heat the smallest room in the Frugaldom household. £2.40 per day - not 8p per day, as per the grossly over-shared, long out of date, candle heater articles.
I am currently paying approximately 17p per kWh for electricity (after factoring in the standing charge), so heating the bathroom with an electric heater would cost about £2.60 per day
Interesting stuff, but a few words of caution - sufficient ventilation needs to be maintained to ensure there's no risk of poisoning from any potentially hazardous fumes. And if you're trying this in the house do NOT try it anywhere you are likely to spray flammables such as hairspray!
Having raked out all my old candles, there was one major flaw in this experiment - lack of candle sticks! Many years ago, households possessed candelabras for holding the multiple candles but none have come my way recently. I'd to use an empty wine bottle and a big jar - it did not work!
Yes, the bathroom felt warmer while the candles were lit - it had to, there were 8 naked flames dancing in my shower cubicle! As soon as they got to jar height, one by one they melted until all were extinguished. This morning, I had a cold bathroom and a jar of candle wax sitting inside my shower. The room thermometer was ready 4 Degrees C.
Undeterred, I did the experiment again using tea lights placed inside an old stock pot, for added safety. The bathroom temperature was 4C when I lit them. They are the cheap, bulk-bought ones, so I'd need many more of them to generate the near 700w necessary to heat the room. I burned 8. Even at 2p each or 16p per hour, that's still cheaper than electricity, right?
Did this raise the room temperature to a comfortable level?
No!
By the time all 8 candles had burned out, the thermometer was reading just 6 Degrees C and I could still see my breath.
Meanwhile, I wanted to devise some sort of contraption for concentrating the heat to try and radiate more of it outwards, rather than upwards... cue the 3-tier, stove top steamer! I am currently burning only 2 tea light candles inside this and it is already too hot to touch. It's sitting on the stovetop, reminding me of the Christmas tin can lanterns we were making not so long ago, albeit on a much grander scale. And this, frugal readers, brings my right back to the beginning of the experiment -
Can you heat a room for 8p a day?
In a nutshell - NO!
Candle power may be sufficient to prevent a tiny space from freezing if you have no other source of heating, but it is neither economically viable nor safe to heat a room with candles for any prolonged period of time. In a well-insulated and draught-proofed house, the condensation, soot and fumes generated just cannot be healthy, so perhaps buy a pet canary and keep it in the same room as the candles if you must use them, just to be on the safe side. Again, not very frugal - perhaps best just buy a carbon monoxide sensor and an extra smoke alarm.
What have I learned?
A simple candle heater, such as my converted steamer, makes a great experiment for both small space warming and attempting to heat a meal during an emergency power cut. It would most certainly prevent a tiny room from freezing, perhaps even a little greenhouse, but I couldn't recommend it for any modern-day, well-insulated household and it most certainly wouldn't be cost-effective to heat an entire room - there are just too many cheaper alternatives to stockpiling a candle mountain.
As an example of the above, I'll use my own sitting room.
The calculations of L x W x H x 0.07 would suggest I need 2565w to heat this room 'comfortably', which equates to 32 quality 8-hour candles - that's £3.20 per 8 hours, or £9.60 for a full day. (Cheap tea lights may burn for only 1-2 hours, so that's over 100 per day needed for my sitting room alone, plus someone there to keep relighting them while ensuring the house doesn't catch fire.)
Need I continue? I think I will...
£9.60 x 7 days = £67.20 for a week and this is just to 'comfortably' heat one room in the house. It really doesn't take a number-crunching, moneysaving, frugal living genius to see the flaw in this plan, does it? Candle heating is not about frugal living or money-saving. Apart from anything else, can you imagine the colour of your ceilings from all that sooty residue?
I know my figures are not scientifically accurate, but they do reflect real costs associated with modern lifestyles. We need to march boldly on, shoulder to shoulder with progress, and just do our best to be prepared for any hiccups along the way.
Now I'm off to light my 6kw multi-fuel stove for a bit of instant heat and a hot cuppa. It costs about £10 per week to run, call it £15 to cover a shovel of slow-burning coal to keep it alight overnight. although it hasn't got cold enough to do that, yet.. I can boil the kettle and cook dinner on it and there's sufficient heat radiated to send some out into the hall and up the stairs to the bedrooms. :)
I'll keep my candles for genuine emergencies, if you don't mind.
NYK, Frugaldom
Regular updates on our great new frugal living and working challenges. Keep up to date at http://www.frugalforums.co.uk