Just a few pointers: 1. The sand is not a heater--it is a heat sink. The 'heater' design in the video is actually not a very good design at all. 2. The combustion of the wax & vegetable shortening is where the heat is generated. The sand just absorbs the more intense heat from the flame & stores it & then re-radiates it at a slow rate. It would be better to suspend the pail of sand above the candle to heat it than the method that was used in the video. You would also not have to buy expensive copper to heat the sand. The purpose of a heat sink is to absorb an intense heat source so that it doesn't rise too quickly out of the zone where the heat is needed. For example, if your heat rises quickly to the ceiling in a room, then it takes quite a long time for a candle to heat a room because it can only output so much heat per unit of time. By heating the sand, the sand absorbs the heat & re-radiates it more slowly at the level that a person can benefit from that heat because that heat will rise slower than from the flame of the candle. The sand isn't a heater--it is a heat sink that absorbs higher heat intensity & releases it more slowly. Also note: There is more energy per $ from paraffin wax than from Crisco Shortening, so it would be better to use multiple candles below the metal bucket that is filled with sand. Here's the data: Material MJ/kg) $/kg MJ/$ Paraffin Wax 47.38 3.86 12.27 (more heat per $) Crisco Shortening 38.56 6.02 6.40 (~ half as much heat per $--burn wax instead)
I works also put a clay pot over the top to further radiate out the heat. I would also like to see the temp change in a room. How long is a really really long time?
I watched a vid showing dry coffee grinds soaked in wax. The idea is that its a little block of slow burning fuel thats perfect to add to a fire. Waterproof too. I made a small and big one. Not sure how to try it out though. I think I might put a wick in, and see if it burns like a candle. If its bollox, then at least it might have a nice aroma. The Viet cong used a 50 cal casing for light when moving in the tunnels. They stuffed it with cotton wool and soaked it in petrol. Very efficient because its a small flame. That lasts a long time, but if youre holding it in front of you it blinds you slightly. But, they just put a finger on the top and its extinguished. They show it in that crap Uwe Boll movie ; Tunnel Rats.
yeah this works well, although the copper in this was contacting walls of bucket so it would radiate faster but lose heat faster also if they made sure it was a good inch or 2 from the sides of bucket it would work better
Would like to see a video of a small room being heated with just a crisco candle overnight, temps recorded, vs the sand heater overnight, temps recorded. It would show the usefulness of, or not, of both methods of alternative heating.
The total energy (heat) produced is a constant. Heating the sand with copper does not increase the heat produced. It simply elongates the amount of time the heat is distributed.
Yup, same energy released to a controlled environment, effectively same effect apart from specific heat from the "thermal battery" delaying things at both ends. A thermal battery makes more sense when you have a high-intensity heat source that puts out more heat than you can immediately use and then release it over time later. That is the principle behind earthen fireplaces. Thick walls to store heat while the fire is burning, then release it overnight after the fire is put out so the choke can be closed to avoid drawing cold air in.
Yes, the heat in the candle only makes so much heat. The heat doesn't get any hotter just because it's surrounded by sand. But I can see how this might be a fair little heater in a car in an emergency situation, because it gives a long burn and will maintain the heat in the sand rather than dissipate as quickly. Keeping one in the trunk of your car if you live in the snowy areas might be a lifesaver if you are stranded in freezing weather.
This is how education works. To bad so many are running away from it. When is someone going to say that kerosene can also heat sand and is less expensive.
The crisco candle under a cooking pot of sand would work just as well, but I've NEVER seen proof that this or the terra cotta candle heaters actually put out MORE heat than the candle.
You do not want to keep the vegetable shorting in the can it came in. It will eventually catch on fire, because it is not metal. Best to use an old three wick glass candle jar. Line up in a straight row to be under the copper strip using bees wax birthday cake candles. You can use 2 - 3 candles. Also do not use plastic terra cotta color plant feet, use the actual pottery terra cotta plant pot feet. The plastic ones will melt, also will become a fire hazard. Do not use a zinc dip metal pail. Do not use a metal pail with a wood handle. If you use a terra cotta pottery plant pot you risk the heat cracking it. Make sure you have at lease two inches of sand between the bottom of the pail and the copper strip.
@ I have the same can, the trim is metal, but the body of the can is foil, plastic, and paper. Crisco no longer uses all metal cans for their shorting product. The materials that they are using now, does not keep the product fresh for as long as the metal container does. Manufacturers are taking shortcuts and trying to make sure you buy the product more often.
Also the plant feet you can tell they are plastic. I have the same ones, I also have the real terra cotta pottery ones. So I can look at it and tell the difference. This ideal will work, but you have to use the right items, keeping safety in mind. There is a video on TH-cam of someone else doing this, he shows you the right way f doing it, with all the safety precautions and measures the amount of heat this ideal can produce. This video has the concepts, but not the precautions. Like not all metal cans are made a like. Lowe’s metal cans are hot dip in zinc and you should not use them for this project because of the fumes they may give off. You’re better off buying a fire place ash can, because although they are normally painted black they are made to hold hot ashes and not give off unwanted fumes.
Nice construction! Suggestion, put the lid back on the crisco can while you fill the bucket with sand. Then there is less chance of getting the sand into the crisco. Also, I would use two copper bands, perpendicular to each other, which would heat all four sides of the bucket of sand.
I read an old Popular Mechanics article that showed how to build a heat sink from cinder blocks, filled with sand, built in the crawl space / basement but underneath a wood stove. Ingenious idea in that old book.
You can use a similar idea for solar heating purposes. Stack up a bunch of cinder blocks filled with sand in an area that gets consistent sun. Paint the outside as dark black as you can. Put some reflectors around it. Wrap or cover it (with a bit of an air gap) in some kind of translucent material (acrylic lets in even more visible light than glass). By the end of the day, that pile will get warm and stay warm for most of the night (to keep it warmer longer at night, put an IR reflector over it after the sun goes down so it won't lose heat to the cold vacuum of space). Then pipe the warm air into whatever area you need warmed. In the summer, you can put an ultra white, sky-window IR radiator material over it, and turn it into a system that cools. See Night Hawk In Light's videos about making ultra white, sky window IR radiating materials (one of which is just a specifically sized calcium carbonate).
@@TheRealCheckmate Oh, so many, you have no idea. Stick around and we’ll make you wacky too! Source- a lady in her 40’s that lives in a tent on a homestead, who was homeschooled and married to an Air Force Academy grad/Air Force officer. 😜
We use the typical glass enclosed candles to provide light and a little warmth during an outage that’s expected to be temporary, only pulling out the generator to keep the fridge and freezer running if there's an extended power outage. Recently we bought a vent-free natural gas heater that doesn’t need electricity, prior to that we used a kerosene heater but weeks later we discovered a dark residue covering the walls.
I have seen comments from people who used Crisco candles for long outages, they said it blackens the walls and your lungs. However, for a few freezing nights without electricity, I would use it.
lol made one out of a 100# lp tank half full of sand 5'' copper gutter downspout and 4 gal of crisco with big candle, burned 44 days in my shed , kept it in the 60's 30's outside 10x10 insulated. needs 3 rows of copper with small 5v fan run off solar, fyi wet the sand in bottom, not soaked ,
That'd be really good thing that video on do that. Are you saying that you used copper downspout guttering play somewhere like tubing? Copper water tubing copper pipe tubing soft copper tubing
A great idea to place in my basement near the water pipes to prevent them from freezing. I had a couple of them do that last year, had to replace them. Concrete floor so no prob. 😊
@@Jerralyng49 did you do that and did it work . I have a barn room where my well water pipes are . Usually I have to use a wood stove . But it would be good idea to use this if it keeps the room at zero atleast ! But for how many days?
My car "heater" in my 1959 Ford Fairlane was a shoe-box, filled w/sand + bottle of "rubbin alcohol". Carried me thru 1 winter of temps down to "single digits". Then, in spring went to "junk yard"/ found/replaced "heater core". But kept shoe-box/sand/alcohol following winter, "just in case".
my heater's acting funny too, so you put sand in the cared board shoes box and soak the sand with the alcohol? and then what? also I'm glad your makeshift worked for you how awesome and can you tell me how it works thanks >>
@ravenbloodommo waal, one does hafta be smart enough to use small amount of rubbin alcohol, AND LIGHT IT! THEN DRIVE CAREFULLY. But it worked/I made it to work/back.
@@michaeldaltonsr8954 Also try it with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol if you have q tips you can spend some time taking the swab cotton off those too. Put it in the sand and put the sand I wonder how that 1 would work also.
No, you'll just heat up a pot and that will need more calories. If the burning flame is inside a structure or home it is 100% output. No waste at all. You cannot do anything to it to give the heat a better effect. All you can do is slow the effect which ultimately makes it less effective. And that's exactly what this thing does.
I appreciate your safety related comments. I have the bucket, the sand, and the Crisco. My Crisco can is the same size, but I have used 3/4 of it for baking. No matter, I have another full one. However, Crisco "cans" are made of cardboard. Probably not a fire hazard in this application, but I have seen other presentations where they definitely would. be. You could certainly put the Crisco (melted in order to prevent gaps in filling) in another container, perhaps a real can.
@@Angela-f4g You can, but olive oil is a very expensive oil in comparison. And the stuff that is less expensive, is often cut with other oils like canola.
A remedial physics course would be appropriate. However this does show that "seed oil" (i.e. vegetable oil) is a good fuel, but probably not for the human body.
This looks Awesome!!! But I'm in Miami... I I do spend some cool nights on the beach... so I'll try this instead of a big fire that alerts the Police! 💋
Thank you for a highly informative video! And special thanks for NOT having spoiled it with annoying AI-plastic-music! What a pleasant exception on YT! God bless! 😎
Soapstone holds heat probably better than a majority of stones. I notice that the area around soapstone rocks, the snow melts away fast. Especially large soapstone. Be good to use pieces of soapstone in the sand...
Soapstone is on the expensive side. Meanwhile, soapstone is essentially made up of compressed talc, and powdered talc is relatively inexpensive. It won't be as good, because the material is not compressed and there will be plenty of air pockets within any powder, which reduces the heat capacity. The property involved here is called specific heat capacity. Interestingly, water has far higher heat capacity than many other common materials, way more than sand and even way more than soap stone. To put things into perspective, soap stones specific heat capacity is 785.2 J/Kg while water's is 4182 J/Kg. Fully dry sand is around 800, salt is around 880, and aluminum is almost 900. That last one might surprise you. Aluminum's ability to store relatively large amounts of heat though, is offset by its very high thermal conductivity. Aluminum is a great material to use if you want to store up the heat and then release it more quickly. You can help aluminum to store the heat by insulating it well, and then when you need the heat, you remove the insulation. This is helpful if one has cheaper electricity at night or during specific parts of the day, you can run a heater in aluminum during that time and when electricity is more expensive, you turn it off and uninsulate it.
Why does everyone want to use pain in the rear copper ? putting the candles under the sandpot is much better than some hokus pokus copper strips. There is no better way to exchange the heat from the candle to the sand than to put the candle under it, so the flame from the candle does or almost touches the bottom of your sand pot. This eliminates any hokus pokus copper strips that are hard to come by and always are very expensive and way too complicated to heat a damm pot full of sand. Set the sandpot on some bricks to shim it up to work with your candles. Lastly even one or a few candles stink up the place with soot, in the olden days there was a lot of lungdesease because of candle soot.
I’ve heard that 100 proof alcohol burns very hot & very clean; also that indoor fireplace fuel burns slower and safely, (lung-wise). If true, could these be an effective, long-storing fuel sources for either the under battery burn version, copper core version, or some combination of both, followed by say, indoor safe fuel candles under sand battery to regulate & slow heat dissipation? When I’ve thought about these designs over the years, cast iron has appealed to me as a vessel both for the sand heat sink and, (in smaller form), to hold liquid fuel, such as alcohol, more safely than cat food or tuna cans. I don’t know if alcohol would react with cast iron to produce additional fumes, but if unseasoned, there wouldn’t be other oil residues, though burning off ahead of time might be good if factory residue might be an issue? Unsure how to research this question, or if it’s just out of my league, but design is fun to ponder… I love the comment section too. Interesting channels with heat sink trials are Riverside Homestead, (crisco candles & firebricks) and Desertsun1, (alcohol with stove pipe as well as copper sand battery trials). Good stuff, (here and there). Thx all for time & thoughtful comment contributions. Such educational dialogue. 👍
a candle gives off about 100 watts of heat. normally the heated air mostly rises as convective heat and mixes in the air already in the room. in this setup the same 100 watts is used to heat a pail of sand and the 100 watts of heat becomes mostly radiant heat as the same 100 watts of heat radiates in all directions from the metal sides of the bucket. same amount of heat as you get from a normal tealight candle. same 100 watts of heat. this contraption with the enormous fuel supply would just last much longer, but by the time it started to radiate any heat you would have already frozen to death so what would be the point...
Well, if you lose power your heat is not going to dissipate right away. If you have this made already and just have to light it it could heat up fast enough. If you are in an enclosed smallish room? Or go somewhere safe but use this to keep pipes from freezing? I want to try it in a small greenhouse on really cold days.
A whole new meaning to the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" thing. AGAIN, this is just a heat flywheel, but so is the entire room the heat is being dumped into.
100 watts is not very much. A space heater by comparison, that might heat a closet, uses 1500. If you had 15 of these burning in a closet, you'd probably asphyxiate yourself
That assumes a perfect conversion of the approximately 80 BTUs of heat to the bucket of sand. That's not nearly going to happen. It's impossible for the copper to absorb all the heat being released by the candle. There will still be plenty of convective heat even before the radiant heat begins. This is, in essence, a less efficient immediate heat source for a longer term one, albeit at lowered but still appreciable efficiency. Never forget the curse of entropy. While perhaps not ideal, if you're already in a situation where this setup would lead to hypothermic death if the crisco candle were to operate at lowered efficiency, then you have a lot more immediate problems. While this isn't an ideal setup and I will agree that it may not be the best idea in many circumstances, you're applying frictionless void logic to it, which is never something that you should apply to a survival situation.
As much as adding copper strips or tubing will greatly help the transfer of thermal energy to the sand bucket heat sink its never going to put out more than roughly 80 -100 BTU an hour and depending on the temperature differential you are trying to overcome its probably a sad choice in an emergency. Your body produces(looses) around 4x that amount at rest, i.e. you are a better heater than this candle is. At best this is a " better than nothing, warm up my hands" device.
Warmth is warmth and if it produces heat then it produces heat. You are trying to read into this video a whole lot more that it was produced to convey.
Now make another pail that would sit on top of that one, with a one inch space between, so it heats up above the lower one. May as well absorb the heat lost above the copper. Great job!
You're not going to get carbon monoxide poisoning from a Crisco candle. And long johns are not going to keep you warm in extremely cold temperatures. Certainly not when you're older and not producing as much body heat. Plus these are useful for other things besides keeping your body warm.
@@pamelarobbins1462 If you do that, most of the heat will go right up that vent. Fireplaces are notoriously inefficient and require releasing large amounts of heat at a time to even do anything. Wood stoves are much better. Rocket mass stoves even better than wood stoves.
@@cgray8969 At least use a thicker kerosene wick. This video reminds me of a Harold Floyd movie, I think. The guy is trying to warm his hands over a stove, then he reaches down open the stove and pulls out a single candle he had going in his stove. Makes me feel cold every time I think of it.
Wouldn't call that a heater. It's a heat sink. It will not heat up a room any more than a single candle would. It simply lengthens the time the candle emits what little heat it produces.
We use a forever wick candle with this. Olive oil put off less toxic fumes. With the forever wick it burns on the fumes so it last longer. For those that say it doesn’t work…when you’re freezing you’ll wish you had did some research. Great for greenhouses too.
I bought copper strips scraps, they are on Amazon too. I bent them into a 7 shape. I have a lot of sand and stainless steel bowls of various sizes. Filled the bowl with sand and buried the candle in the sand. I lit the candle and pushed the 7 into the sand with the short side just touching the copper. I didn't test for hours because soot started dripping down. Not sure if it was the shortening or the taper I put in the crisco. The next test will be with a cooking oil candle that is just a one inch wick threaded through a stainless steel scrubber chunk. The wick is for oil lamps. Getting ready to make some forever wick olive oil candles and the person from the video stated that the olive oil doesn't bother his breathing, allergies are great, plus the olive oil burns hotter. I also bought some stainless steel utensils holders to go over the candles in the sand. These can be used to cook on too.
Brilliant! This is a great use for USED cooking oil, as it's a carcinogen to cook with twice, and hey, recycle-repurpose. But you run the risk of the house smelling like French fries.. or fish... depending on the majority of the food that was cooked in it, lol
The kind of money you're spending negates the whole purpose - olive oil? Stainless steel utensil holders? Check thrift stores for little metal fryer baskets for use in stove top pots & restaurants or cafes (their big coffee cans) & if you're in a city (remote island Alaska here), go to a restaurant supply house for the silver ware 'baskets'. a couple of bricks. Also - hardware store for new / empty paint can. Take cardboard out of center, compress TP into the can. Pour 70% - 90% rubbing alcohol over it - burns without burning the TP, good heater, bricks stacked around & suspended over it can be used to hold pot to cook, absorbs heat. Be imaginative. Unless you're rich.
Just remembered I have a copper container and another 6" pc of thick copper pipe. Your video just in time for winter. Now just the vegetable lard. We also have a wood stove and use clay pots and tea lights.
I think people believe one can heat a room up with this, and it's certainly RADIANT heat, however, I think it's more survival and to keep from freezing. Like the lady above said, to keep her basement pipes from freezing AND it would take the moisture out of the air and help prevent mold as well. This would be useful if you work in the garage or the power goes out for a few weeks. Survival. Maybe for a 10x10 bedroom, so a few for a 12x20 living room and hang blankets over the doorways, sleep in the middle. Stay warm out there. 🔥
Nope. Don't sleep in a room with a burning candle, you might never wake up again. Carbon monoxide is dangerous, especially with blankets around all ventilation openings.
I have a small house in a small community w/frequent power outages. Not so concerned about keeping mySELF warm, but bn wondering how I'd keep my pipes f/freezing. I don't wanna hafta deal w/butane or logs; natural gas, not an option. One each of these near the under-sink kitchen and bathroom pipes should do the trick. Thanks for posting this!
Really neat idea. I might be tempted to use a shallower dish for the candle, a second copper strip to form a cross and to add water to the sand as water holds 5 times as much heat than sand.
Great idea! You got my mind thinking how to take make it even more efficient. I wonder if taking off the label around the Crisco can would allow the heat from the interior can to radiate more effectively into the sand? Also, what if if there was two copper coils 180 degrees from each other that could radiate even more heat into the sand, or would a second coil only serve to dilute the limited heat (BTU) from the candle and not allow enough heat to make it into the sand?
Despite what a previous commenter ab_ab_c bashed about your design, I think it's brilliant! It's a very cheap and simple design which I like. The commenter is more wrong than right about what he said, especially regarding the sand; it is mostly an insulator here. It is definitely NOT a heat sink. The copper is the star heat sink in this show; it distributes the heat throughout the sand "good enough". This design keeps the heat centralized to the local area excellently and then only slowly dissipates the heat because of the sand. That is what you want in something that has max efficiency in KEEPING a room heated, not how fast you can heat a room. Love it. keep up the good work. Of course this design has inefficiency due to a flame losing a lot of heat to air, but the heat that is not lost and kept in the sand is a fantastic idea. ab_ab_c's alternate suggested idea, I hate to say, is garbage and would not retain any significant amounts of heat compared to your design in the vid because once again, sand is NOT a good heat sink! So, great job!
curious how many sq ft this will heat? also, does this emit smoke and where does all the grease go from the Crisco I feel like it would wind up in your lungs or on the walls/ceiling?
Absolutely fantastic video. In Australia, our power prices are through the roof. All our natural resources? Our government now wants to charge use for solar we sell?😢We have so much gas won't sell it to us? I am doing this in winter. In my bedroom. Well below zero. Great for camping. Fantastic video.
Neat idea, but I'm not really sure what the point of the copper/sand is for actual heating efficiency. If the whole thing is in the area you want to heat, all the heat from the candle/fat burning is already being released into the room. The sand/copper is just being heated by the heat that would've otherwise been used to heat the air surrounding the candle flame. The room with the heater is for all intents and purposes a closed system, so you're not losing any heat produced by the flame copper or not. I'd recommend rigging something up where you could suspend a tea kettle filled with water over the flame. It would accomplish the same slower-release of heat, but would also make the air more humid as the water converts to steam. Humid air 'feels' warmer to humans, and you could always use the hot water for tea/coffee/soup.
I actually thought about keeping the sand moist - both because wet sand would hold (and radiate) more heat and also provide some humidity as it evaporates/dries. Taking a spray bottle full of water around the top of the sand from time to time would help keep the sand moist.
Or you could just buy a Dietz #08 Air Pilot lantern. They put out a surprising amount of heat for their size (around 1500 BTUs I think) and with the larger 7/8” wick they produce a lot more light, of course. But if you don’t have that option and this one is available to you, more power to you. :)
Great Idea; I would suggest more copper loops at different angles. Adding a cup of antifreeze to the sand. Mix the sand with something non-toxic that has a melting point just above your optimal heat and a solidifying point at your resting temp. This will increase the amount of heat you can store. A peltier module on top of the copper could also be used to extract some electricity from this as well. Again Great Idea :D
I don't know why these sand "heaters" have made such an impression. The flame heat is being conducted into the sand when it could be going directly into the room. The big thing here is using the big can of grease as a candle.
It still will radiate heat from the sand itself, so no heat is ever lost. Heat transfer is just slowed down into usable space. If you blow out the candle... the heat will still be there in the sand that's why they call it a sand battery or a heat sink. Even when the candle is out you'll probably still have about 45 mins to 2hrs of heat still radiating from the sand potentially keeping your hands warm, and maybe four other people's hands too.
@cgray8969 Yea, I know. I'm not sure they understand they'll have wait for the sand to heat up. I call it thermal inertia (and it's due to heat capacity).
And we only saw the results from a "full" candle, what happens when the flame is 6 inches below the copper. Needs a better designed "cap" to catch the heat.
I built an LP gas flame (instead of Crisco) rocket mass heater that works on the same principle. I run it for about an hour before I go to bed, then turn it off so there's no gas on or flame on while I sleep and the heated mass radiates into the room keeping it warm all night. As for your tiny Crisco flame . . . ?? Physics dictates. You will recover ONLY as much heat as you can create. I'm sticking with my LP setup, but in a pinch, that bucket of sand might take the edge off, like in a tent. My "bucket of sand" mass weighs 1,000 pounds and holds a huge amount of heat.
Mostly firebricks? Do you have any consistent sun near a 1st level window? If so, it would be very easy for you to build either a direct Solar-air heating system, and/or a Solar battery thermal air heating system. I wish I had the sun to do this on my property, but our property is just way too shaded. The few areas that do get sun for more than an hour or two, are too far away from any windows to be practical.
@justinw1765 My room heater mass is 8Kpsi concrete, 996 pounds, with 25 feet of single-wall conducting vent tube running in a repeating loop. As for solar air heating, the numbers don't work out unless your south-facing window is the size of a baseball diamond. Just do the math. The thermodynamics aren't there.
@@WhatDadIsUpTo Thanks for the info. What I meant by Solar heating wasn't a large south facing window, but rather Solar collectors outside of a window that pipe in hot air through an insulated window insert. These solar collectors are large, highly insulated boxes, painted ultra black (inside), with thermal absorbing materials inside, and reflectors on the outside. Basically sort of like Solar ovens, and they can get quite hot inside (a properly insulated and set up Solar oven can reach around 400* F after a couple hours of direct sun). There is a guy in Canada where they have quite low temps, and he does all his daytime heating with Solar collectors. At night, he has to run his wood stove, but using the Solar collectors saves him _a lot_ of wood because he rarely ever has to run the stove during the day.
@justinw1765 I don't mean to one up you, but may one up that, please? I have a homemade (not parabolic) mirror that tracks the Sun and focuses the sunlight on a single line one foot in length and gets the temperature upwards of six thousand degrees fahrenheit. That is too hot for anything except stainless steel. So what I do is run peanut oil through the system. I can heat 40 gallon of peanut oil on a clear day in about 40 minutes up to 500°F and then use that in a heat exchanger or to heat air or water or whatever you like. Currently, I use the mirror to make charcoal, because cooking oil is just too dangerous & I'm 75. BTW - I am not comfortable sharing my mirror design, but I will tell you it is silverized flat metal and a basic geometrical shape & cost me about $30 to build. I'm high-functioning autistic, if that helps. My favorite reply when I'm asked if I think out of the box is, "There's a box?" 😀
cool! can you do it with temp off in room to see how warm the room gets? may help with determining how many buckets may be needed plus how long it lasts. thank you! great idea.
Yes, i did read a comment on another video about using Terra cotta over the top..... it does get brittle and will break....may cause a fire.... that was from the UK
VERY VERY COOL! Im in a rural area that looses electricity quite often. Im come up with some innovative lighting and heating tricks out of necessity. This is neat! ...I have really sandy soil in certain spots with mini rocks that i could see working in a pinch
BTW.... Sometimes the containers are Plastic not Metal like the one in this video. I would be sure to put the crisco in a non flammable container if you cant find the metal kind.
Two things to think about. One, yes sand holds heat, and it'll give off heat after the candle flame goes out. For about as long as it took the candle flame to heat up the sand in the first place. You don't gain anything, You just shift the heating down the timeline a bit. Secondly, a candle flame gives off about 100 BTU of heat per hour. That equates to around 29 watts. You're not going to heat a space or a room. But it will make a nice hand warmer.
The people surviving in Asheville North Carolina need to know this. It is getting very cold there and still many people are trying to survive on their land. Great Video.
Great idea! One thing I'd suggest is a second copper strip perpendicular to the first, forming a +, over which you could place the water dish for a small terra cotta pot. The second strip will help heat the sand more evenly. The crossed copper strips should support the terra cotta dish and still allow air flow to the candle, while the dish will help to contain and reflect the heat of the flame back onto the copper strips. This should help to increase the efficiency of the assembly.
Copper coil is hollow and filled with air, so it will depend on the relative mass of either the copper strip or copper coil as to what will work better. If you're going to use a copper coil, you can turn it into a *heat pipe* and/or fill it up with a highly thermally conductive material, and then it will work much, much better. To make a heat pipe, you cut a strip of thin fiberglass cloth as long as the coil, run it through from one end to the other (this just acts as a wick for the water). You seal up one end of the copper coil. You put in a little distilled water into the coil. Then take a torch and heat up the whole coil and then seal the other end (quickly, before all the water evaporates out) while it is still hot. It helps to pinch that end before heating it up, so that it limits the water vapor escaping some (you don't want to pinch it completely closed so that it pressurizes and potentially becomes an xplosive of sorts. After all the whole point of this heating is to get rid of the air). Pre-pinching that end also helps to make using solder to seal it easier and faster. If you haven't seen a heat pipe in action, I suggest looking it up. It turns regular old copper tubing into something more closely resembling a super conductor (of heat). That is because as the water inside phase changes from a liquid to a gas, it carries a tremendous amount of heat with it (as it spreads through the inside of the tubing), and in turn the copper is pretty good at conducting that heat through. And by putting the water under vacuum, you've lowered its boiling point quite a bit, much closer to regular room temps. (Depends on how hard the vacuum is though).
@@mosart7025 Once you've heated and sealed it, it won't have enough air in it to pressurize too much, so it should be fine to reheat. But that depends on how hot you got it the first time when you initially sealed it.
my uncle worked the night shift. in the winter when he parked his car he lit a candle in a pale of sand .when he got off work came out to his car it was all defrosted.everyone else would be scrapeing rhere wind shilds.
You're still loosing heat. Maybe put a stove grate on top somehow and boil water. The escaping heat will boil the water and steam will help distribute the heat around the space. A camping tea kettle will even let you eat freeze dried meals or hot drinks.
Either this is stupid, or there is a very specific application where this might do something valuable. The source of heat/energy is the candle and the crisco. If you just burned them by themselves (no copper or bucket of sand) they would introduce the same amount of heat, at approximately the same rate, into the room. In this case, a portion of the heat is absorbed by the sand/bucket first, which would somewhat delay it from heating the room air. A candle flame just isn't much heat. Maybe it would keep a utility closet from freezing if you lost power to your house. I doubt it would add any warmth to an ice fishing shed. What's a real application for this? In the size of room he has it in, it would do practically nothing heatwise. Can someone please explain this to me.
(1) Wouldn't using it under a sink help to prevent pipes from freezing? (2) Seems like it could warm a small bathroom for quick sponge baths, dressing, and undressing.
If you can convert more of the heat into direct, radiant heat and then reflect it towards your body, then it would have some merit. No iteration of a single candle though, will appreciably heat up an average room (not unless the room is both very small and extremely well insulated). But to convert it into more radiant heat, you should ditch the sand and copper, and instead suspend a high temp black painted metal can (with a few very small vent holes in the top) above the flame. The metal will heat up and then reemit IR (in the more correct range). Then put an IR reflector in between the shape of a U and V near it, with the open end pointed to you, and with you sitting near it. You can get some local, direct, radiant heating with this set up, but the issue is that you have to stay in that one position for awhile to get warm, and again, your room most likely isn't going to warm appreciably. Anyways, this is a similar principle of how a camp fire outside on a bitterly cold, windy night can still warm you despite no insulation around the fire and you, the heat sink of the outside, etc i.e. its direct, radiant heating which is very efficient at very _locally_ warming human bodies (but not large spaces necessarily).
Wish you would’ve shown temperatures around the outside of the bucket. I have a hard time believing that will produce enough heat to make a difference for survival or even in a small room. Great idea and very creative. Thanks for sharing.
Lots of opportunity for obvious improvements to this design; (1) Use wet sand rather than dry sand for better heat conduction. (2) Use large pie tin filled with Crisco and a tea candle in the center, to keep the candle burning at a continuous depth. Refill pie tin as needed. Best if wet sand is fully sealed within pie tin and bucket, to prevent water evaporation. (3) Two copper bands rather than just one.
I just wanna say for the record Mr. cool is not America's number one choice for do-it-yourself air-conditioning. It's Mitsubishi. And we are all very grateful for that.
It's basically useful only for light and to warm your hands. But its near useless as a heat source. I've been experimenting with vegetable oil and using four candle wicks. It takes like 1 hr to raise the temp one degree in my poorly insulated room. How much gain you get depends on the outside temp and the size of the room. The downsides include trimming the wicks to avoid sooty flames and the smell of burned vegetable oil.
Have a look at Robert Murray Smith. He does an everlasting candle with oil ,small copper tube and welders felt. Throws out a lot of heat compared to normal candle wicks.
@@jennyansell42 I've seen his videos. The issue with using carbon felt and vegetable oil is that oil is thick and doesn't do a good job of wicking up the carbon felt. It can maintain the flame, but to light the carbon felt you need to add alcohol or kerosene, which doesn't make it practical. Carbon felt is best used with kerosene or alcohol. I'm not convinced that I would get more heat from those carbon felt lamps compared to my 4-wick oil lamps. I use 3mm wicks, thicker than your average candle wick. Vegetable oil is cheap and so are candle wicks.
@@hermanhale9258 You can try it. If you want the best results do it in a room that has insulation. If it's not insulated you can run a dehumidifier if humidity is above 40 and you can also use plastic sheets of window insulation to cover the windows. Use a hygrometer and thermometer to track the effectiveness. Your best results will be in the day time when the sun is out but at night it will be less effective and you might as well run a space heater for a bit in combination with the candle heater. It's important to trim your candle wick or else you'll have a room that smells like smoke.
Sand is good to use as a refrigerator when placed in between 2 large terra cotta planters. 1 planter wider than the other leaving room for the sand between the two. Then wet a natural fabric sack over the planters to help keep it cool inside. Sand is cool and will keep the inside cool. Store refrigerated items inside the one empty planter. No ice needed. Keep out if the sun of course.
Thanks for this video. I might have to try this, but I think I would try copper tubing instead of the strip. I think the tubing would would work as well by conduction but also provide a pathway for hot air to reach the inner part of the sand. Thoughts.
Copper tubing is fine. But hot air in the tube isn't going to provide any more heating than the copper tube alone. Air isn't a very good conductor of heat (its actually an insulator). You can put your hand in a 400°F oven and not burn it, but try holding a copper strip at 130°F or dip your hand into water at 130°F and you will burn/scald your hand. Ultimately, the larger cross sectional area of the copper the higher rate of heat transfer you will get.
Interesting project. Thanks for sharing it with us. I do have a couple of initial reactions to the idea, though. First of all, heat rises - and, this design attempts to direct the heat downward. I don't think this is particularly efficient. The copper element also represents a significant expense in what could otherwise be a cheap project. What I would suggest is, perhaps, use two metal buckets, one lower chamber that would have air holes at the bottom. Install a few angle brackets near the top to support the upper bucket that would hold the sand. So, you would have the upper bucket containing sand positioned over the Crisco candle in the lower bucket. You might want to also put a few exhaust holes at the top of the lower chamber. This would allow the candle to directly heat the sand from below. The heat would continue to rise until all of the sand was heated. I think I would probably install other candles in the Crisco can so that I could produce more heat. Having just the one flame extends the burn time, but reduces the area that could be effectively heated. Thanks, again!
There is some merit to converting more of the released heat into direct, radiant heat. Otherwise, the candle by itself will neither heat the room or _you_ appreciably, if barely at all. By converting more of it into radiant heat, you can at least somewhat _locally_ heat you/your body more so (again, of course the room will not appreciably warm, because it is just not enough heat being released). Same principle why a camp fire outside, despite bitter cold temps, wind, no insulation, and all that heat sink of the ambient conditions, can still warm you up if you are close enough to it. It's direct, radiant heating which is more efficient at warming human bodies than indirect heating via conduction and convection (which is what most traditional heating relies more on i.e. you heat up the air which gradually transfers heat into the surrounding objects, which then the combo eventually warms you up). It will work even better if you take a piece of cardboard, paste some aluminum foil on it with the shiny side on the outside, and fold it into somewhat between a U and V shape, and put that on the other side of the candle/sand/metal bucket/copper, and you sit right near and across from that. You will get even more direct IR heating in this case, because you are directing and reflecting the IR more specifically towards you. (IR normally acts like a diffusive light that goes out in all directions/360* equally from the source of heat. But you can reflect it to harness/concentrate it some). But if you want to use radiant heating, you will need to instead suspend a high temp painted metal can above the flame so that it gets warm enough to re-emit in the IR range. (That, or a catalyst mesh, which would be even better, but more expensive and harder to source). Meanwhile, you can take out the sand, copper. Keep the metal bucket just for safety reasons (or use a more shallow tray).
Two things, one, use a cast iron container, two, double up on the copper using two ovals crossing each other above the flame. Those two changes will double your heat output. I think this would work even better if the container was suspended. Air passing the container is what heats the space, so make sure you have adequate air flow around the container. I love your idea I just think it needed some tweeking. 😎 Sorry, I'm not trying to troll you.
How many BTUs do you really think you’re getting from that candle? I hate to say it, but your encouragement for this sort of nonsense has resulted in lost respect for your channel.
I love this. But maybe put the plastic lid on the crisco when you’re filling the bucket with sand. Also when not using it put the lid on because you might store it during the summer.
Pretty cool. Those Terra cotta supports likely serve an added beneficial purpose by improving convection currents around the can improving heat distribution.
Neat idea, but like others said, i would like to see real readings over time in a room. I've tried many different things myself, followed many ideas we can find on youtube, but so far, only heating pads make the difference, so instead of heating the room, i heat my body directly, and that helps pass the winter with less cost (100 Watts per hour with a pad containing jade stones)
Actually, we did think of this earlier! Using Crisco as a makeshift candle has been around for ages-it’s one of those survival tips that pops up from time to time. But here's the thing: it doesn’t magically generate more heat than a regular candle. It’s just a slow-burning fuel, like wax. The sand around it is probably just for stability or aesthetics, not for heat. So yeah, it’s a neat hack if you’re out of candles, but don’t expect it to heat your house or anything!
The sand/bucket/copper strip is a waste of time and resources. Just burn the candle… the fancy heat transfer bucket does nothing to increase heat output.
Agree. First law of thermodynamics. In a closed room, transferring energy into the air vs a bucket of dirt leads to the same amount of energy. Not saying there might not be use cases for this, but as presented, this isn’t it.
Other use case factors make this desirable to me. 1) I have to store cooking oils to potentially support more people but don’t use/rotate regularly. First part provides way to use expired cooking oil as heat source. 2) main challenge is not heating for people (can crawl under blanket) but keeping water stores from freezing. Since heat rises my solution is to put them on a shelf enclosed with plastic/blankets and out some heat source on the the bottom. This providing a slower and wide distribution could help distribute better within the shelf micro environment of water storage.
Yeah, just rig a hammock direcly under the ceiling to enjoy the heat rushing up there from the candle only. It's pretty stupid to trap that heat at ground level
While that heater does look neat I thought it is all about BTUs. How many BTUs do you get out of a candle VS lightning the burners on the gas stove for heat? Yes, I know about CO. Just asking how a candle can heat up a room.
Thank you so much for putting out this video. It's very informative, understandable and thorough. I was already writing my review in my head, but you beat me to it. The mention of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, always having someone there and awake to monitor the burning, right down to the little feet under the bucket. Something I wondered about - would it be even better if you put two of those copper diffusers (for lack of a better word), one just like you did it and a second one to cross over the first (if your's pointed North/South the second one would point East/West)? Another question - what if you used a wick (like in a kerosene lantern) in place of the candle?
Wonder if he didn’t fill it all the way to the top with sand & maybe left about 2-3 inches off the top of the bucket & drilled some holes & maybe used a smaller can of Crisco or other cooking oils in a can, maybe 🤔 …would it help produce more heat outwards. (Hope that makes sense) but all in all it would work for an emergency situation. Very creative. Much love.💗
Just a few pointers:
1. The sand is not a heater--it is a heat sink. The 'heater' design in the video is actually not a very good design at all.
2. The combustion of the wax & vegetable shortening is where the heat is generated. The sand just absorbs the more intense heat from the flame & stores it & then re-radiates it at a slow rate.
It would be better to suspend the pail of sand above the candle to heat it than the method that was used in the video. You would also not have to buy expensive copper to heat the sand.
The purpose of a heat sink is to absorb an intense heat source so that it doesn't rise too quickly out of the zone where the heat is needed. For example, if your heat rises quickly to the ceiling in a room, then it takes quite a long time for a candle to heat a room because it can only output so much heat per unit of time.
By heating the sand, the sand absorbs the heat & re-radiates it more slowly at the level that a person can benefit from that heat because that heat will rise slower than from the flame of the candle. The sand isn't a heater--it is a heat sink that absorbs higher heat intensity & releases it more slowly.
Also note: There is more energy per $ from paraffin wax than from Crisco Shortening, so it would be better to use multiple candles below the metal bucket that is filled with sand. Here's the data:
Material MJ/kg) $/kg MJ/$
Paraffin Wax 47.38 3.86 12.27 (more heat per $)
Crisco Shortening 38.56 6.02 6.40 (~ half as much heat per $--burn wax instead)
Best comment.
Excellent work
🤔🤔🤔
YOU WIN!!!!!
Thank you 👍👍👍
Now do a video in a space you would use this in and test how much the temp change is in the space.
My crisco is in plastic container.. will plastic melt being so close to the copper etc?!
I works also put a clay pot over the top to further radiate out the heat.
I would also like to see the temp change in a room.
I works also put a clay pot over the top to further radiate out the heat.
I would also like to see the temp change in a room.
How long is a really really long time?
This would only be helpful in a very small space, like a bathroom or for those who live in cars or tents. @@jacquelyndevitte4992
Agree should of been in video
My dad would keep a fat round candle in an old metal can of nuts in the car trunk in case we broke down in the winter.
A squirrel built a nest in my engine bay recently..
I watched a vid showing dry coffee grinds soaked in wax.
The idea is that its a little block of slow burning fuel thats perfect to add to a fire.
Waterproof too.
I made a small and big one.
Not sure how to try it out though.
I think I might put a wick in, and see if it burns like a candle.
If its bollox, then at least it might have a nice aroma.
The Viet cong used a 50 cal casing for light when moving in the tunnels. They stuffed it with cotton wool and soaked it in petrol. Very efficient because its a small flame.
That lasts a long time, but if youre holding it in front of you it blinds you slightly. But, they just put a finger on the top and its extinguished.
They show it in that crap Uwe Boll movie ; Tunnel Rats.
Smart man.
@@olliephelancool 👍🏻
yeah this works well, although the copper in this was contacting walls of bucket so it would radiate faster but lose heat faster also if they made sure it was a good inch or 2 from the sides of bucket it would work better
Would like to see a video of a small room being heated with just a crisco candle overnight, temps recorded, vs the sand heater overnight, temps recorded. It would show the usefulness of, or not, of both methods of alternative heating.
Absolutely it's a good idea maybe but you got to prove it that it actually works.
Also is this healthy ? Like Co2 poisoning
Yes
why don't you make that video. hater.
why don't you do it and get back to us
The total energy (heat) produced is a constant. Heating the sand with copper does not increase the heat produced. It simply elongates the amount of time the heat is distributed.
Yup, same energy released to a controlled environment, effectively same effect apart from specific heat from the "thermal battery" delaying things at both ends.
A thermal battery makes more sense when you have a high-intensity heat source that puts out more heat than you can immediately use and then release it over time later. That is the principle behind earthen fireplaces. Thick walls to store heat while the fire is burning, then release it overnight after the fire is put out so the choke can be closed to avoid drawing cold air in.
@@teardowndan5364 I wonder if a terra cotta pot would be a better alternative to the tin bucket.
Yes, the heat in the candle only makes so much heat. The heat doesn't get any hotter just because it's surrounded by sand. But I can see how this might be a fair little heater in a car in an emergency situation, because it gives a long burn and will maintain the heat in the sand rather than dissipate as quickly. Keeping one in the trunk of your car if you live in the snowy areas might be a lifesaver if you are stranded in freezing weather.
@@deniseward002not at all
This is how education works. To bad so many are running away from it. When is someone going to say that kerosene can also heat sand and is less expensive.
Thanks to this video, I can now keep my sand warm.
😂
The crisco candle under a cooking pot of sand would work just as well, but I've NEVER seen proof that this or the terra cotta candle heaters actually put out MORE heat than the candle.
And dry.
"Warm sand, Cold heart."
@@seeharvester It's a heart of gold.
You do not want to keep the vegetable shorting in the can it came in. It will eventually catch on fire, because it is not metal. Best to use an old three wick glass candle jar. Line up in a straight row to be under the copper strip using bees wax birthday cake candles. You can use 2 - 3 candles. Also do not use plastic terra cotta color plant feet, use the actual pottery terra cotta plant pot feet. The plastic ones will melt, also will become a fire hazard. Do not use a zinc dip metal pail. Do not use a metal pail with a wood handle. If you use a terra cotta pottery plant pot you risk the heat cracking it. Make sure you have at lease two inches of sand between the bottom of the pail and the copper strip.
Seriously....you assume he is using the plastic can instead of the metal one? For crying out loud....look at the can at 2:00 in the video
@ I have the same can, the trim is metal, but the body of the can is foil, plastic, and paper. Crisco no longer uses all metal cans for their shorting product. The materials that they are using now, does not keep the product fresh for as long as the metal container does. Manufacturers are taking shortcuts and trying to make sure you buy the product more often.
Also the plant feet you can tell they are plastic. I have the same ones, I also have the real terra cotta pottery ones. So I can look at it and tell the difference. This ideal will work, but you have to use the right items, keeping safety in mind. There is a video on TH-cam of someone else doing this, he shows you the right way f doing it, with all the safety precautions and measures the amount of heat this ideal can produce. This video has the concepts, but not the precautions. Like not all metal cans are made a like. Lowe’s metal cans are hot dip in zinc and you should not use them for this project because of the fumes they may give off. You’re better off buying a fire place ash can, because although they are normally painted black they are made to hold hot ashes and not give off unwanted fumes.
@@nessay720 thank you for your information. I knew that about the Crisco container, but had no clue about metal buckets 😒
@@TheRealRennThe cans they sell in NY are made of cardboard with a thin strip of foil on the outside.
Nice construction! Suggestion, put the lid back on the crisco can while you fill the bucket with sand. Then there is less chance of getting the sand into the crisco. Also, I would use two copper bands, perpendicular to each other, which would heat all four sides of the bucket of sand.
Or 3 copper bands, since it’s in an oval, for more temp coverage? Agreed on the lid.
I read an old Popular Mechanics article that showed how to build a heat sink from cinder blocks, filled with sand, built in the crawl space / basement but underneath a wood stove. Ingenious idea in that old book.
You can use a similar idea for solar heating purposes. Stack up a bunch of cinder blocks filled with sand in an area that gets consistent sun. Paint the outside as dark black as you can. Put some reflectors around it. Wrap or cover it (with a bit of an air gap) in some kind of translucent material (acrylic lets in even more visible light than glass). By the end of the day, that pile will get warm and stay warm for most of the night (to keep it warmer longer at night, put an IR reflector over it after the sun goes down so it won't lose heat to the cold vacuum of space). Then pipe the warm air into whatever area you need warmed.
In the summer, you can put an ultra white, sky-window IR radiator material over it, and turn it into a system that cools. See Night Hawk In Light's videos about making ultra white, sky window IR radiating materials (one of which is just a specifically sized calcium carbonate).
Can you do a video on it and send us the link?
how big we talking? 6 feet by 6 feet of sand surrounded by cinder blocks?
Please explain,,, very curious..
@@justinw1765
I've found that the sand at the beach on a hot day will stay warm through the night.
Only works in the summer though.
We are blessed having a wood stove
That’s not the point.
@@lilyLily1824 They were just sharing. Not every comment has to address the exact point in the video! Happy Thanksgiving!💗
I LOVE a wood stove ❤. It is my FAVORITE.
@@99garcon99 Me, too. I'm tempted to get a fake wood stove. My tenant had one, and it just cozied up the room so well. She loved it.
Me too! Its definitely a blessing!
Best Crisco sand candle and explanation I've ever seen on TH-cam after watching lots of them. Thank you and subscribed!
You mean there's more than one of these wacky ideas?
@@TheRealCheckmate
Oh, so many, you have no idea. Stick around and we’ll make you wacky too!
Source- a lady in her 40’s that lives in a tent on a homestead, who was homeschooled and married to an Air Force Academy grad/Air Force officer. 😜
I tried it but couldn't seem to get the sand lit. 🕯
We use the typical glass enclosed candles to provide light and a little warmth during an outage that’s expected to be temporary, only pulling out the generator to keep the fridge and freezer running if there's an extended power outage. Recently we bought a vent-free natural gas heater that doesn’t need electricity, prior to that we used a kerosene heater but weeks later we discovered a dark residue covering the walls.
I have seen comments from people who used Crisco candles for long outages, they said it blackens the walls and your lungs. However, for a few freezing nights without electricity, I would use it.
lol made one out of a 100# lp tank half full of sand 5'' copper gutter downspout and 4 gal of crisco with big candle, burned 44 days in my shed , kept it in the 60's 30's outside 10x10 insulated. needs 3 rows of copper with small 5v fan run off solar, fyi wet the sand in bottom, not soaked ,
That is Awesome. 🙂 Thanks for the tip !!
That'd be really good thing that video on do that.
Are you saying that you used copper downspout guttering play somewhere like tubing?
Copper water tubing copper pipe tubing soft copper tubing
THIS SEEMS TO BE PERFECT FOR A COLD BATHROOM AND A GREEN HOUSE 👍LOVE THIS. IDEA
I was thinking that it would be perfect in my small greenhouse.
@@vickiparrish3235 Me too!!!
Same here! This looks perfect for a greenhouse.
A great idea to place in my basement near the water pipes to prevent them from freezing. I had a couple of them do that last year, had to replace them. Concrete floor so no prob. 😊
@@Jerralyng49 did you do that and did it work . I have a barn room where my well water pipes are . Usually I have to use a wood stove . But it would be good idea to use this if it keeps the room at zero atleast ! But for how many days?
Copper is toxic when burned
@@leeinwis😲
@@leeinwis it isn't being burned, only heated. It's a huge distinction.
Heat tape: electric heating strip you wrap around the pipes. Can get them with built in thermostat or with separate thermostat.
It won’t most likely keep you warm but will keep you from freezing. I kept a survival candle in my truck in Alaska for emergencies.
17 years in Alaska - I kept 4 cans of Sterno in the truck. One candle just doesn't cut it.
Very good demonstration. Easy to follow and understand. Thank you.
My car "heater" in my 1959 Ford Fairlane was a shoe-box, filled w/sand + bottle of "rubbin alcohol". Carried me thru 1 winter of temps down to "single digits". Then, in spring went to "junk yard"/ found/replaced "heater core". But kept shoe-box/sand/alcohol following winter, "just in case".
my heater's acting funny too, so you put sand in the cared board shoes box and soak the sand with the alcohol? and then what? also I'm glad your makeshift worked for you how awesome and can you tell me how it works thanks >>
@ravenbloodommo waal, one does hafta be smart enough to use small amount of rubbin alcohol, AND LIGHT IT! THEN DRIVE CAREFULLY. But it worked/I made it to work/back.
@@michaeldaltonsr8954 yes like a small dribble of alcohol in the middle of the sand nice >>
@@michaeldaltonsr8954 i might have to do that 1 day with the window cacked thanks for telling me.
@@michaeldaltonsr8954 Also try it with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol if you have q tips you can spend some time taking the swab cotton off those too. Put it in the sand and put the sand I wonder how that 1 would work also.
put a big terra-cotta pot upside down over that pale, and itll radiate the heat better.
Unglazed terracotta is safest. Otherwise there's a fume problem with outgassing
No, you'll just heat up a pot and that will need more calories. If the burning flame is inside a structure or home it is 100% output. No waste at all. You cannot do anything to it to give the heat a better effect. All you can do is slow the effect which ultimately makes it less effective. And that's exactly what this thing does.
My cats would love that. It's a litter box and it's made of warm. 🐱
😹😹😹 sillyyyy😂😁🤣😆
I'm going to put a heating pad under my litter box now, genius idea thanks
Cooking cat poop😅
@@jeffccr3620 Glad I could help. Cat parents/slaves unite!
That room is going to stink, and the cats won't go near it. @jeffccr3620
I appreciate your safety related comments. I have the bucket, the sand, and the Crisco. My Crisco can is the same size, but I have used 3/4 of it for baking. No matter, I have another full one. However, Crisco "cans" are made of cardboard. Probably not a fire hazard in this application, but I have seen other presentations where they definitely would. be. You could certainly put the Crisco (melted in order to prevent gaps in filling) in another container, perhaps a real can.
Try getting an unused paint can that the Crisco can be transferred into for this project
@@pamm2230Sounds like a fine idea. And cover the can as you are adding in the sand. Easy to keep it clean that way.
Think I might try olive oil instead of wax candle is it OK,?
@@Angela-f4g You can, but olive oil is a very expensive oil in comparison. And the stuff that is less expensive, is often cut with other oils like canola.
A remedial physics course would be appropriate. However this does show that "seed oil" (i.e. vegetable oil) is a good fuel, but probably not for the human body.
so true, my ancestors ate seeds and roots just so I can avoid all of that
Rocks/stones also work as well as sand
Just not river rock … it can explode
This looks Awesome!!! But I'm in Miami... I I do spend some cool nights on the beach... so I'll try this instead of a big fire that alerts the Police! 💋
Thank you for a highly informative video! And special thanks for NOT having spoiled it with annoying AI-plastic-music! What a pleasant exception on YT! God bless! 😎
Soapstone holds heat probably better than a majority of stones. I notice that the area around soapstone rocks, the snow melts away fast. Especially large soapstone. Be good to use pieces of soapstone in the sand...
Soapstone is on the expensive side. Meanwhile, soapstone is essentially made up of compressed talc, and powdered talc is relatively inexpensive. It won't be as good, because the material is not compressed and there will be plenty of air pockets within any powder, which reduces the heat capacity.
The property involved here is called specific heat capacity. Interestingly, water has far higher heat capacity than many other common materials, way more than sand and even way more than soap stone. To put things into perspective, soap stones specific heat capacity is 785.2 J/Kg while water's is 4182 J/Kg. Fully dry sand is around 800, salt is around 880, and aluminum is almost 900. That last one might surprise you. Aluminum's ability to store relatively large amounts of heat though, is offset by its very high thermal conductivity. Aluminum is a great material to use if you want to store up the heat and then release it more quickly. You can help aluminum to store the heat by insulating it well, and then when you need the heat, you remove the insulation. This is helpful if one has cheaper electricity at night or during specific parts of the day, you can run a heater in aluminum during that time and when electricity is more expensive, you turn it off and uninsulate it.
Whats stopping you from using two copper strips making a cross over the flam adding a total of 4 copper lines going into the sand?
That's what I was thinking.
Big brain 👏🏼
Was thinking the same thing. Then place a ring on top and you can heat water or possibly cook on it.
Why does everyone want to use pain in the rear copper ? putting the candles under the sandpot is much better than some hokus pokus copper strips. There is no better way to exchange the heat from the candle to the sand than to put the candle under it, so the flame from the candle does or almost touches the bottom of your sand pot. This eliminates any hokus pokus copper strips that are hard to come by and always are very expensive and way too complicated to heat a damm pot full of sand. Set the sandpot on some bricks to shim it up to work with your candles. Lastly even one or a few candles stink up the place with soot, in the olden days there was a lot of lungdesease because of candle soot.
I’ve heard that 100 proof alcohol burns very hot & very clean; also that indoor fireplace fuel burns slower and safely, (lung-wise). If true, could these be an effective, long-storing fuel sources for either the under battery burn version, copper core version, or some combination of both, followed by say, indoor safe fuel candles under sand battery to regulate & slow heat dissipation? When I’ve thought about these designs over the years, cast iron has appealed to me as a vessel both for the sand heat sink and, (in smaller form), to hold liquid fuel, such as alcohol, more safely than cat food or tuna cans. I don’t know if alcohol would react with cast iron to produce additional fumes, but if unseasoned, there wouldn’t be other oil residues, though burning off ahead of time might be good if factory residue might be an issue? Unsure how to research this question, or if it’s just out of my league, but design is fun to ponder… I love the comment section too. Interesting channels with heat sink trials are Riverside Homestead, (crisco candles & firebricks) and Desertsun1, (alcohol with stove pipe as well as copper sand battery trials). Good stuff, (here and there). Thx all for time & thoughtful comment contributions. Such educational dialogue. 👍
a candle gives off about 100 watts of heat. normally the heated air mostly rises as convective heat and mixes in the air already in the room. in this setup the same 100 watts is used to heat a pail of sand and the 100 watts of heat becomes mostly radiant heat as the same 100 watts of heat radiates in all directions from the metal sides of the bucket. same amount of heat as you get from a normal tealight candle. same 100 watts of heat. this contraption with the enormous fuel supply would just last much longer, but by the time it started to radiate any heat you would have already frozen to death so what would be the point...
Well, if you lose power your heat is not going to dissipate right away. If you have this made already and just have to light it it could heat up fast enough. If you are in an enclosed smallish room? Or go somewhere safe but use this to keep pipes from freezing? I want to try it in a small greenhouse on really cold days.
A whole new meaning to the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" thing. AGAIN, this is just a heat flywheel, but so is the entire room the heat is being dumped into.
100 watts is not very much. A space heater by comparison, that might heat a closet, uses 1500.
If you had 15 of these burning in a closet, you'd probably asphyxiate yourself
That assumes a perfect conversion of the approximately 80 BTUs of heat to the bucket of sand. That's not nearly going to happen. It's impossible for the copper to absorb all the heat being released by the candle. There will still be plenty of convective heat even before the radiant heat begins. This is, in essence, a less efficient immediate heat source for a longer term one, albeit at lowered but still appreciable efficiency. Never forget the curse of entropy. While perhaps not ideal, if you're already in a situation where this setup would lead to hypothermic death if the crisco candle were to operate at lowered efficiency, then you have a lot more immediate problems. While this isn't an ideal setup and I will agree that it may not be the best idea in many circumstances, you're applying frictionless void logic to it, which is never something that you should apply to a survival situation.
Maybe you haven't actually met a frozen to death corpse, and you are just slinging slang. 🤔
As much as adding copper strips or tubing will greatly help the transfer of thermal energy to the sand bucket heat sink its never going to put out more than roughly 80 -100 BTU an hour and depending on the temperature differential you are trying to overcome its probably a sad choice in an emergency. Your body produces(looses) around 4x that amount at rest, i.e. you are a better heater than this candle is. At best this is a " better than nothing, warm up my hands" device.
so for someone such as myself with reynaud's disease it would save my fingers potentially in a temperature shift. didn't think about that. thanks.
Warmth is warmth and if it produces heat then it produces heat. You are trying to read into this video a whole lot more that it was produced to convey.
A tealight candle will warm my main room in 5 mins. This is probably warmer, and certainly lasts longer, in case of emergency.
@@MamaMudskipper 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Now make another pail that would sit on top of that one, with a one inch space between, so it heats up above the lower one. May as well absorb the heat lost above the copper. Great job!
For the price you can get set of thermal shirt with long johns and won't have to wary about carbon monoxide poisoning.
Plants don’t wear longjohns 😂😂😂 this would be to save the hundreds of dollars spent over the years on the house plants😂
You're not going to get carbon monoxide poisoning from a Crisco candle. And long johns are not going to keep you warm in extremely cold temperatures. Certainly not when you're older and not producing as much body heat.
Plus these are useful for other things besides keeping your body warm.
@@iahelcathartesaura3887
But in Siberia where I leave, they don't sell Crisco. May as well burn dollar bills, they're cheaper to come by.
You wont get carbonmonoxide poisoning if you put it in your fireplace and open vent.
@@pamelarobbins1462 If you do that, most of the heat will go right up that vent. Fireplaces are notoriously inefficient and require releasing large amounts of heat at a time to even do anything. Wood stoves are much better. Rocket mass stoves even better than wood stoves.
Put it in a cold room with a thermostat and see what kind of temperature rise you get
That's what I want to see. A lone skinny candle wick does what???
@@b_uppywarm up some cold hands maybe?! That is better than cold hands.
@@cgray8969
At least use a thicker kerosene wick.
This video reminds me of a Harold Floyd movie, I think. The guy is trying to warm his hands over a stove, then he reaches down open the stove and pulls out a single candle he had going in his stove. Makes me feel cold every time I think of it.
Just being able to warm your hands is nice. Heating a room is usually not the goal with an emergency.
@b_uppy I take a little candle lantern to elk camp in winter in the mountains. It helps alot for just getting my hands warm.
Wouldn't call that a heater. It's a heat sink. It will not heat up a room any more than a single candle would. It simply lengthens the time the candle emits what little heat it produces.
And it's toxic
It's one BTU. A 1200 sq ft house takes around 70,000 bus to stay warm in winter. A btu is a btu is a btu sorry but that's the physics of it
@@mitchellmahoney3775 We agree, I'm not sure what you're sorry for.
This THEORY, has been debunked so many times I’ve lost count?!?! I guess it makes good click bait?
We use a forever wick candle with this. Olive oil put off less toxic fumes. With the forever wick it burns on the fumes so it last longer. For those that say it doesn’t work…when you’re freezing you’ll wish you had did some research. Great for greenhouses too.
I bought copper strips scraps, they are on Amazon too. I bent them into a 7 shape. I have a lot of sand and stainless steel bowls of various sizes. Filled the bowl with sand and buried the candle in the sand. I lit the candle and pushed the 7 into the sand with the short side just touching the copper. I didn't test for hours because soot started dripping down. Not sure if it was the shortening or the taper I put in the crisco. The next test will be with a cooking oil candle that is just a one inch wick threaded through a stainless steel scrubber chunk. The wick is for oil lamps.
Getting ready to make some forever wick olive oil candles and the person from the video stated that the olive oil doesn't bother his breathing, allergies are great, plus the olive oil burns hotter.
I also bought some stainless steel utensils holders to go over the candles in the sand. These can be used to cook on too.
Brilliant! This is a great use for USED cooking oil, as it's a carcinogen to cook with twice, and hey, recycle-repurpose.
But you run the risk of the house smelling like French fries.. or fish... depending on the majority of the food that was cooked in it, lol
Olive oil is far too expensive to use as a fuel source.
Make sure you don't use the virgin or extra virgin OO. The flash point is too low. Get just regular cooking olive oil.
The kind of money you're spending negates the whole purpose - olive oil? Stainless steel utensil holders?
Check thrift stores for little metal fryer baskets for use in stove top pots & restaurants or cafes (their big coffee cans) & if you're in a city (remote island Alaska here), go to a restaurant supply house for the silver ware 'baskets'. a couple of bricks. Also - hardware store for new / empty paint can. Take cardboard out of center, compress TP into the can. Pour 70% - 90% rubbing alcohol over it - burns without burning the TP, good heater, bricks stacked around & suspended over it can be used to hold pot to cook, absorbs heat. Be imaginative. Unless you're rich.
Just remembered I have a copper container and another 6" pc of thick copper pipe. Your video just in time for winter. Now just the vegetable lard. We also have a wood stove and use clay pots and tea lights.
I'm not comfortable with burning crisco. I love the principle shown here, so I may try this with a cleaner burning oil.
I think people believe one can heat a room up with this, and it's certainly RADIANT heat, however, I think it's more survival and to keep from freezing.
Like the lady above said, to keep her basement pipes from freezing AND it would take the moisture out of the air and help prevent mold as well.
This would be useful if you work in the garage or the power goes out for a few weeks. Survival.
Maybe for a 10x10 bedroom, so a few for a 12x20 living room and hang blankets over the doorways, sleep in the middle.
Stay warm out there. 🔥
May have to remove any vehicles out of the garage. They may have gas fumes. That could cause an explosion!
Nope. Don't sleep in a room with a burning candle, you might never wake up again. Carbon monoxide is dangerous, especially with blankets around all ventilation openings.
That's a really cool idea! My only concern would be breathing the fumes from the heated copper in a confined space.
The crisco fumes would be my concern.
I have a small house in a small community w/frequent power outages. Not so concerned about keeping mySELF warm, but bn wondering how I'd keep my pipes f/freezing. I don't wanna hafta deal w/butane or logs; natural gas, not an option. One each of these near the under-sink kitchen and bathroom pipes should do the trick. Thanks for posting this!
Sounds like a fire hazard to me.
Really neat idea. I might be tempted to use a shallower dish for the candle, a second copper strip to form a cross and to add water to the sand as water holds 5 times as much heat than sand.
Absolutely Brilliant!!!
Great idea! You got my mind thinking how to take make it even more efficient. I wonder if taking off the label around the Crisco can would allow the heat from the interior can to radiate more effectively into the sand? Also, what if if there was two copper coils 180 degrees from each other that could radiate even more heat into the sand, or would a second coil only serve to dilute the limited heat (BTU) from the candle and not allow enough heat to make it into the sand?
Things to consider, what is the temperature rise at a set temperature of the room.
Despite what a previous commenter ab_ab_c bashed about your design, I think it's brilliant! It's a very cheap and simple design which I like. The commenter is more wrong than right about what he said, especially regarding the sand; it is mostly an insulator here. It is definitely NOT a heat sink. The copper is the star heat sink in this show; it distributes the heat throughout the sand "good enough". This design keeps the heat centralized to the local area excellently and then only slowly dissipates the heat because of the sand. That is what you want in something that has max efficiency in KEEPING a room heated, not how fast you can heat a room. Love it. keep up the good work. Of course this design has inefficiency due to a flame losing a lot of heat to air, but the heat that is not lost and kept in the sand is a fantastic idea. ab_ab_c's alternate suggested idea, I hate to say, is garbage and would not retain any significant amounts of heat compared to your design in the vid because once again, sand is NOT a good heat sink! So, great job!
fixmyproperty AI fixes this. Y SAND HEATER concept introduced.
Thank you for this invention! I will make this! God bless!
curious how many sq ft this will heat? also, does this emit smoke and where does all the grease go from the Crisco I feel like it would wind up in your lungs or on the walls/ceiling?
Thanks!
What happens when it gets warm enough (117F) to liquify the Crisco? Does it allow the candle to tip over into the Crisco?
The candle will go out as soon as the Frisco turns liquid.
Absolutely fantastic video. In Australia, our power prices are through the roof. All our natural resources? Our government now wants to charge use for solar we sell?😢We have so much gas won't sell it to us? I am doing this in winter. In my bedroom. Well below zero. Great for camping. Fantastic video.
just don't kick it over
Neat idea, but I'm not really sure what the point of the copper/sand is for actual heating efficiency. If the whole thing is in the area you want to heat, all the heat from the candle/fat burning is already being released into the room. The sand/copper is just being heated by the heat that would've otherwise been used to heat the air surrounding the candle flame. The room with the heater is for all intents and purposes a closed system, so you're not losing any heat produced by the flame copper or not.
I'd recommend rigging something up where you could suspend a tea kettle filled with water over the flame. It would accomplish the same slower-release of heat, but would also make the air more humid as the water converts to steam. Humid air 'feels' warmer to humans, and you could always use the hot water for tea/coffee/soup.
I actually thought about keeping the sand moist - both because wet sand would hold (and radiate) more heat and also provide some humidity as it evaporates/dries. Taking a spray bottle full of water around the top of the sand from time to time would help keep the sand moist.
Radiant heat heats longer than just heating the air.
Thank you Brother for sharing and teaching us all. This is a Blessing from FATHER GOD 😊❤
Or you could just buy a Dietz #08 Air Pilot lantern.
They put out a surprising amount of heat for their size (around 1500 BTUs I think) and with the larger 7/8” wick they produce a lot more light, of course.
But if you don’t have that option and this one is available to you, more power to you. :)
Great Idea;
I would suggest more copper loops at different angles. Adding a cup of antifreeze to the sand. Mix the sand with something non-toxic that has a melting point just above your optimal heat and a solidifying point at your resting temp. This will increase the amount of heat you can store. A peltier module on top of the copper could also be used to extract some electricity from this as well.
Again Great Idea :D
I don't know why these sand "heaters" have made such an impression. The flame heat is being conducted into the sand when it could be going directly into the room. The big thing here is using the big can of grease as a candle.
It still will radiate heat from the sand itself, so no heat is ever lost.
Heat transfer is just slowed down into usable space.
If you blow out the candle... the heat will still be there in the sand that's why they call it a sand battery or a heat sink.
Even when the candle is out you'll probably still have about 45 mins to 2hrs of heat still radiating from the sand potentially keeping your hands warm, and maybe four other people's hands too.
@cgray8969 Yea, I know. I'm not sure they understand they'll have wait for the sand to heat up. I call it thermal inertia (and it's due to heat capacity).
And we only saw the results from a "full" candle, what happens when the flame is 6 inches below the copper. Needs a better designed "cap" to catch the heat.
Brilliant. A life saver, too. Well done, sir.
I built an LP gas flame (instead of Crisco) rocket mass heater that works on the same principle.
I run it for about an hour before I go to bed, then turn it off so there's no gas on or flame on while I sleep and the heated mass radiates into the room keeping it warm all night.
As for your tiny Crisco flame . . . ??
Physics dictates. You will recover ONLY as much heat as you can create.
I'm sticking with my LP setup, but in a pinch, that bucket of sand might take the edge off, like in a tent.
My "bucket of sand" mass weighs 1,000 pounds and holds a huge amount of heat.
Mostly firebricks?
Do you have any consistent sun near a 1st level window? If so, it would be very easy for you to build either a direct Solar-air heating system, and/or a Solar battery thermal air heating system.
I wish I had the sun to do this on my property, but our property is just way too shaded. The few areas that do get sun for more than an hour or two, are too far away from any windows to be practical.
@justinw1765
My room heater mass is 8Kpsi concrete, 996 pounds, with 25 feet of single-wall conducting vent tube running in a repeating loop.
As for solar air heating, the numbers don't work out unless your south-facing window is the size of a baseball diamond. Just do the math. The thermodynamics aren't there.
@@WhatDadIsUpTo Thanks for the info.
What I meant by Solar heating wasn't a large south facing window, but rather Solar collectors outside of a window that pipe in hot air through an insulated window insert.
These solar collectors are large, highly insulated boxes, painted ultra black (inside), with thermal absorbing materials inside, and reflectors on the outside. Basically sort of like Solar ovens, and they can get quite hot inside (a properly insulated and set up Solar oven can reach around 400* F after a couple hours of direct sun).
There is a guy in Canada where they have quite low temps, and he does all his daytime heating with Solar collectors. At night, he has to run his wood stove, but using the Solar collectors saves him _a lot_ of wood because he rarely ever has to run the stove during the day.
@justinw1765
I don't mean to one up you, but may one up that, please?
I have a homemade (not parabolic) mirror that tracks the Sun and focuses the sunlight on a single line one foot in length and gets the temperature upwards of six thousand degrees fahrenheit. That is too hot for anything except stainless steel. So what I do is run peanut oil through the system.
I can heat 40 gallon of peanut oil on a clear day in about 40 minutes up to 500°F and then use that in a heat exchanger or to heat air or water or whatever you like.
Currently, I use the mirror to make charcoal, because cooking oil is just too dangerous & I'm 75.
BTW - I am not comfortable sharing my mirror design, but I will tell you it is silverized flat metal and a basic geometrical shape & cost me about $30 to build.
I'm high-functioning autistic, if that helps.
My favorite reply when I'm asked if I think out of the box is, "There's a box?"
😀
@@WhatDadIsUpTo Sounds dangerous.
cool! can you do it with temp off in room to see how warm the room gets? may help with determining how many buckets may be needed plus how long it lasts. thank you! great idea.
Yes, i did read a comment on another video about using Terra cotta over the top..... it does get brittle and will break....may cause a fire.... that was from the UK
VERY VERY COOL! Im in a rural area that looses electricity quite often. Im come up with some innovative lighting and heating tricks out of necessity. This is neat! ...I have really sandy soil in certain spots with mini rocks that i could see working in a pinch
BTW.... Sometimes the containers are Plastic not Metal
like the one in this video.
I would be sure to put the crisco in a non flammable container
if you cant find the metal kind.
Two things to think about. One, yes sand holds heat, and it'll give off heat after the candle flame goes out. For about as long as it took the candle flame to heat up the sand in the first place. You don't gain anything, You just shift the heating down the timeline a bit.
Secondly, a candle flame gives off about 100 BTU of heat per hour. That equates to around 29 watts. You're not going to heat a space or a room. But it will make a nice hand warmer.
The people surviving in Asheville North Carolina need to know this. It is getting very cold there and still many people are trying to survive on their land. Great Video.
Great idea!
One thing I'd suggest is a second copper strip perpendicular to the first, forming a +, over which you could place the water dish for a small terra cotta pot.
The second strip will help heat the sand more evenly.
The crossed copper strips should support the terra cotta dish and still allow air flow to the candle, while the dish will help to contain and reflect the heat of the flame back onto the copper strips.
This should help to increase the efficiency of the assembly.
you could use a copper coil instead of strap Air conditioning coil is thick copper
Copper coil is hollow and filled with air, so it will depend on the relative mass of either the copper strip or copper coil as to what will work better. If you're going to use a copper coil, you can turn it into a *heat pipe* and/or fill it up with a highly thermally conductive material, and then it will work much, much better.
To make a heat pipe, you cut a strip of thin fiberglass cloth as long as the coil, run it through from one end to the other (this just acts as a wick for the water). You seal up one end of the copper coil. You put in a little distilled water into the coil. Then take a torch and heat up the whole coil and then seal the other end (quickly, before all the water evaporates out) while it is still hot. It helps to pinch that end before heating it up, so that it limits the water vapor escaping some (you don't want to pinch it completely closed so that it pressurizes and potentially becomes an xplosive of sorts. After all the whole point of this heating is to get rid of the air). Pre-pinching that end also helps to make using solder to seal it easier and faster.
If you haven't seen a heat pipe in action, I suggest looking it up. It turns regular old copper tubing into something more closely resembling a super conductor (of heat). That is because as the water inside phase changes from a liquid to a gas, it carries a tremendous amount of heat with it (as it spreads through the inside of the tubing), and in turn the copper is pretty good at conducting that heat through.
And by putting the water under vacuum, you've lowered its boiling point quite a bit, much closer to regular room temps. (Depends on how hard the vacuum is though).
@@justinw1765 Can you reheat it without opening an end or will it explode? Just asking for a friend, if it is a stupid question.
@@mosart7025 Once you've heated and sealed it, it won't have enough air in it to pressurize too much, so it should be fine to reheat.
But that depends on how hot you got it the first time when you initially sealed it.
Amazing that he kept a straight face for the whole video.
Thanks for sharing
Why do I want you to try this candle setup, but with the triple terracotta pot heater over it also.
my uncle worked the night shift. in the winter when he parked his car he lit a candle in a pale of sand .when he got off work came out to his car it was all defrosted.everyone else would be scrapeing rhere wind shilds.
@@RojaJaneman he put it in the floor board
What kind of candle did he use that would burn for that long?
You're still loosing heat. Maybe put a stove grate on top somehow and boil water. The escaping heat will boil the water and steam will help distribute the heat around the space. A camping tea kettle will even let you eat freeze dried meals or hot drinks.
No matter what you do, a candle is putting out ~80 watts.
Interesting idea. I can think of many different variations of this that may work better. Nice video, it got me thinking about things.
The best part is that when you go to bed, you can blow out the flame and it will continue to heat the room😊 from the warm sand.
For like 20 minutes....maybe
@@johnnyskied Your guess, or have you actually tested it?
@@johnnyskied I'm in California, not North Carolina.
Thank you. Very cool.
Either this is stupid, or there is a very specific application where this might do something valuable. The source of heat/energy is the candle and the crisco. If you just burned them by themselves (no copper or bucket of sand) they would introduce the same amount of heat, at approximately the same rate, into the room. In this case, a portion of the heat is absorbed by the sand/bucket first, which would somewhat delay it from heating the room air. A candle flame just isn't much heat. Maybe it would keep a utility closet from freezing if you lost power to your house. I doubt it would add any warmth to an ice fishing shed. What's a real application for this? In the size of room he has it in, it would do practically nothing heatwise. Can someone please explain this to me.
(1) Wouldn't using it under a sink help to prevent pipes from freezing?
(2) Seems like it could warm a small bathroom for quick sponge baths, dressing, and undressing.
If you can convert more of the heat into direct, radiant heat and then reflect it towards your body, then it would have some merit. No iteration of a single candle though, will appreciably heat up an average room (not unless the room is both very small and extremely well insulated).
But to convert it into more radiant heat, you should ditch the sand and copper, and instead suspend a high temp black painted metal can (with a few very small vent holes in the top) above the flame. The metal will heat up and then reemit IR (in the more correct range). Then put an IR reflector in between the shape of a U and V near it, with the open end pointed to you, and with you sitting near it.
You can get some local, direct, radiant heating with this set up, but the issue is that you have to stay in that one position for awhile to get warm, and again, your room most likely isn't going to warm appreciably.
Anyways, this is a similar principle of how a camp fire outside on a bitterly cold, windy night can still warm you despite no insulation around the fire and you, the heat sink of the outside, etc i.e. its direct, radiant heating which is very efficient at very _locally_ warming human bodies (but not large spaces necessarily).
Wish you would’ve shown temperatures around the outside of the bucket. I have a hard time believing that will produce enough heat to make a difference for survival or even in a small room. Great idea and very creative. Thanks for sharing.
I'll stick with my kerosene lantern. It produces more heat, a useful amount of light, and it wont blow out.
Lots of opportunity for obvious improvements to this design; (1) Use wet sand rather than dry sand for better heat conduction. (2) Use large pie tin filled with Crisco and a tea candle in the center, to keep the candle burning at a continuous depth. Refill pie tin as needed. Best if wet sand is fully sealed within pie tin and bucket, to prevent water evaporation. (3) Two copper bands rather than just one.
Pretty cool , Thank you as I would never have thought of this.
I just wanna say for the record Mr. cool is not America's number one choice for do-it-yourself air-conditioning. It's Mitsubishi. And we are all very grateful for that.
It's basically useful only for light and to warm your hands. But its near useless as a heat source. I've been experimenting with vegetable oil and using four candle wicks. It takes like 1 hr to raise the temp one degree in my poorly insulated room. How much gain you get depends on the outside temp and the size of the room. The downsides include trimming the wicks to avoid sooty flames and the smell of burned vegetable oil.
I would think an alcohol burner instead of candle
Have a look at Robert Murray Smith. He does an everlasting candle with oil ,small copper tube and welders felt. Throws out a lot of heat compared to normal candle wicks.
@@jennyansell42 I've seen his videos. The issue with using carbon felt and vegetable oil is that oil is thick and doesn't do a good job of wicking up the carbon felt. It can maintain the flame, but to light the carbon felt you need to add alcohol or kerosene, which doesn't make it practical. Carbon felt is best used with kerosene or alcohol. I'm not convinced that I would get more heat from those carbon felt lamps compared to my 4-wick oil lamps. I use 3mm wicks, thicker than your average candle wick. Vegetable oil is cheap and so are candle wicks.
Yeah, the nights are getting cold now, we can all give it a try, if we think it is a good idea.
@@hermanhale9258 You can try it. If you want the best results do it in a room that has insulation. If it's not insulated you can run a dehumidifier if humidity is above 40 and you can also use plastic sheets of window insulation to cover the windows. Use a hygrometer and thermometer to track the effectiveness. Your best results will be in the day time when the sun is out but at night it will be less effective and you might as well run a space heater for a bit in combination with the candle heater. It's important to trim your candle wick or else you'll have a room that smells like smoke.
This is a really good idea. I want to try this now.
It would be a lot safer and better than the dangerous propane heaters people use out in North Carolina and Tennessee
How are they dangerous? Was thinking of getting one. Thanks.
Sand is good to use as a refrigerator when placed in between 2 large terra cotta planters. 1 planter wider than the other leaving room for the sand between the two.
Then wet a natural fabric sack over the planters to help keep it cool inside.
Sand is cool and will keep the inside cool. Store refrigerated items inside the one empty planter.
No ice needed.
Keep out if the sun of course.
Thanks for this video. I might have to try this, but I think I would try copper tubing instead of the strip. I think the tubing would would work as well by conduction but also provide a pathway for hot air to reach the inner part of the sand. Thoughts.
❤👍👍
Copper tubing is fine. But hot air in the tube isn't going to provide any more heating than the copper tube alone.
Air isn't a very good conductor of heat (its actually an insulator). You can put your hand in a 400°F oven and not burn it, but try holding a copper strip at 130°F or dip your hand into water at 130°F and you will burn/scald your hand.
Ultimately, the larger cross sectional area of the copper the higher rate of heat transfer you will get.
@MushInSkull
You kin to my 10th Grade Chemistry > Physics teacher Mrs. McKey? She talked like you write.👍
@@Wagner-p7e nope. Not a teacher, and not a woman either. 🤣
@@MushInSkull
Sorry! Didn't infer femininity. Happiet Safe Holidays to you & yours!!
Interesting project. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I do have a couple of initial reactions to the idea, though.
First of all, heat rises - and, this design attempts to direct the heat downward. I don't think this is particularly efficient. The copper element also represents a significant expense in what could otherwise be a cheap project.
What I would suggest is, perhaps, use two metal buckets, one lower chamber that would have air holes at the bottom. Install a few angle brackets near the top to support the upper bucket that would hold the sand. So, you would have the upper bucket containing sand positioned over the Crisco candle in the lower bucket. You might want to also put a few exhaust holes at the top of the lower chamber.
This would allow the candle to directly heat the sand from below. The heat would continue to rise until all of the sand was heated.
I think I would probably install other candles in the Crisco can so that I could produce more heat. Having just the one flame extends the burn time, but reduces the area that could be effectively heated.
Thanks, again!
Put up a tent in the front room so your space to heat is smaller....
It's like people did not pay attention in Science class at school . . . .
There is some merit to converting more of the released heat into direct, radiant heat. Otherwise, the candle by itself will neither heat the room or _you_ appreciably, if barely at all. By converting more of it into radiant heat, you can at least somewhat _locally_ heat you/your body more so (again, of course the room will not appreciably warm, because it is just not enough heat being released).
Same principle why a camp fire outside, despite bitter cold temps, wind, no insulation, and all that heat sink of the ambient conditions, can still warm you up if you are close enough to it. It's direct, radiant heating which is more efficient at warming human bodies than indirect heating via conduction and convection (which is what most traditional heating relies more on i.e. you heat up the air which gradually transfers heat into the surrounding objects, which then the combo eventually warms you up).
It will work even better if you take a piece of cardboard, paste some aluminum foil on it with the shiny side on the outside, and fold it into somewhat between a U and V shape, and put that on the other side of the candle/sand/metal bucket/copper, and you sit right near and across from that. You will get even more direct IR heating in this case, because you are directing and reflecting the IR more specifically towards you. (IR normally acts like a diffusive light that goes out in all directions/360* equally from the source of heat. But you can reflect it to harness/concentrate it some).
But if you want to use radiant heating, you will need to instead suspend a high temp painted metal can above the flame so that it gets warm enough to re-emit in the IR range. (That, or a catalyst mesh, which would be even better, but more expensive and harder to source). Meanwhile, you can take out the sand, copper. Keep the metal bucket just for safety reasons (or use a more shallow tray).
Two things, one, use a cast iron container, two, double up on the copper using two ovals crossing each other above the flame. Those two changes will double your heat output. I think this would work even better if the container was suspended. Air passing the container is what heats the space, so make sure you have adequate air flow around the container. I love your idea I just think it needed some tweeking. 😎 Sorry, I'm not trying to troll you.
How many BTUs do you really think you’re getting from that candle? I hate to say it, but your encouragement for this sort of nonsense has resulted in lost respect for your channel.
I love this. But maybe put the plastic lid on the crisco when you’re filling the bucket with sand.
Also when not using it put the lid on because you might store it during the summer.
Pretty cool. Those Terra cotta supports likely serve an added beneficial purpose by improving convection currents around the can improving heat distribution.
Neat idea, but like others said, i would like to see real readings over time in a room. I've tried many different things myself, followed many ideas we can find on youtube, but so far, only heating pads make the difference, so instead of heating the room, i heat my body directly, and that helps pass the winter with less cost (100 Watts per hour with a pad containing jade stones)
"Such a brilliant and creative idea! This DIY sand heater is both innovative and practical-perfect for staying warm!"
This will create toxic fumes. It's a bad idea to use Crisco! Olive Oil is the safest oil to use in an unvented heat source.
Actually, we did think of this earlier! Using Crisco as a makeshift candle has been around for ages-it’s one of those survival tips that pops up from time to time. But here's the thing: it doesn’t magically generate more heat than a regular candle. It’s just a slow-burning fuel, like wax. The sand around it is probably just for stability or aesthetics, not for heat. So yeah, it’s a neat hack if you’re out of candles, but don’t expect it to heat your house or anything!
The sand/bucket/copper strip is a waste of time and resources. Just burn the candle… the fancy heat transfer bucket does nothing to increase heat output.
Agree. First law of thermodynamics. In a closed room, transferring energy into the air vs a bucket of dirt leads to the same amount of energy. Not saying there might not be use cases for this, but as presented, this isn’t it.
Other use case factors make this desirable to me. 1) I have to store cooking oils to potentially support more people but don’t use/rotate regularly. First part provides way to use expired cooking oil as heat source. 2) main challenge is not heating for people (can crawl under blanket) but keeping water stores from freezing. Since heat rises my solution is to put them on a shelf enclosed with plastic/blankets and out some heat source on the the bottom. This providing a slower and wide distribution could help distribute better within the shelf micro environment of water storage.
Yeah
Yeah, just rig a hammock direcly under the ceiling to enjoy the heat rushing up there from the candle only.
It's pretty stupid to trap that heat at ground level
April first science class experiment.
Cool Video. Im amazed at the amount of Armchair Experts it brought out
While that heater does look neat I thought it is all about BTUs. How many BTUs do you get out of a candle VS lightning the burners on the gas stove for heat? Yes, I know about CO. Just asking how a candle can heat up a room.
It can't.
I look at it more like taking the extreme cold off the room, not heating the room per se, as people think of heat.
Thank you so much for putting out this video. It's very informative, understandable and thorough. I was already writing my review in my head, but you beat me to it. The mention of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, always having someone there and awake to monitor the burning, right down to the little feet under the bucket.
Something I wondered about - would it be even better if you put two of those copper diffusers (for lack of a better word), one just like you did it and a second one to cross over the first (if your's pointed North/South the second one would point East/West)? Another question - what if you used a wick (like in a kerosene lantern) in place of the candle?
Thanks. Great idea.
Wonder if he didn’t fill it all the way to the top with sand & maybe left about 2-3 inches off the top of the bucket & drilled some holes & maybe used a smaller can of Crisco or other cooking oils in a can, maybe 🤔 …would it help produce more heat outwards. (Hope that makes sense) but all in all it would work for an emergency situation. Very creative. Much love.💗