Can tea candles heat up a room?
There’s a lot of people interested in alternative ways to create heat besides using electricity.
One of the most popular reasons that people search these things out is simple survival in an emergency situation.
For instance, candles are a household item that in a power outage, are an easy go to for getting some light inside of the house.
Most people have an assortment of candles around the house including tea light candles.
But what if the weather is cold outside and you’re stuck in a power outage without not only light but heat too?
Are candles good for heat? Can tea candles heat up a room?
Tea candles are very small candles and compared to the average small votive candle, only create about 30 watts of energy compared to the 80 that you might expect to get out of a votive candle.
But they do have a uniqueness that other candles do not have. And that is that they are surrounded with metal. (This is an important point that will get back to you in a second).
According to multiple resources, a candle is worth about 80 Watts of heat. In comparison to a small space heater which all space heaters are 1500 w on high, a candle can create about 120th of the heat that a small space heater can.
So with that math, it would take roughly 20 candles burning at the same time to create the amount of heat that a small space heater can in a room.
That’s a bunch of candles.
But tea candles only create around 30 watts of heat per candle. So if you were to compare the amount of heat of a tea candle to a small space heater, you would come up with a number more like 50.
It’s doubtful that you have 50 tea candles hanging around in the house and if you did, lighting 50 tea candles is a whole other story. Not to mention the risk of starting a fire with that many candles lit.
So yes, technically you could heat a room with tea candles provided that you had at least 50 candles burning at the same time, but even in an emergency situation like a power outage, 50 tea candles burning is not going to last you long enough to justify lighting all the candles. My opinion.
But, there is an alternative for using tea candles to generate some heat if you were to get into an emergency or survival situation.
And this is where the point that tea candles sit in a metal cup comes in.
The idea was this,
You can take an empty metal coffee can and simply burn three or four tea candles inside of it, to get a small alternative heater working if you have no heat otherwise.
Because the tea candles are sitting in metal themselves, they tend to heat the metal coffee can up as they are burning.
And since the coffee can keeps the heat concentrated inside of a small area, you can get a fair amount of heat coming off of the coffee can by using this method.
A couple of things to remember if you decide to try this are:
One, The coffee can is going to get hot and could possibly scorch whatever it is sitting on. So pick a place that is not going to get burnt.
Two, make sure that you take all the paper or label off of the outside of the coffee can before you light the candles inside of it. Paper is flammable. And you will up your risk of causing a fire by having paper on the can.
Summary,
Tea candles can heat a room provided you have a mountain of them lit.
That’s about 50 candles. So even though technically it’s possible, you probably shouldn’t do it. Imagine the fire risk involved.
But, survivalists and other unique geniuses on our Earth, have discovered that burning a few candles in the bottom of a metal coffee can can generate enough heat to warm your hands.
You may be amazed at the amount of DIY coffee can heaters you can put together in a small amount of time with things you probably have around the house.
It might not be enough heat for a whole room, but warming your hands when you are freezing is a big deal at that moment.
