Candles as an Emergency Fuel Source for Warmth, Light, and Cooking

our candle is part of your emergency fuel storage perhaps they could be high candles are inexpensive and safe to store they can be used for emergency lighting emergency cooking and emergency heating join us as we explore what you can use candles for in an emergency candles although not as powerful as some other fuels are worth considering as part of your emergency fuel supply one of the first questions that came to our mind is is it safe to burn candles indoors so we did some research and found some studies that help define this one of the research studies that we looked at was in candle science and testing and it was a report on the OCO metric wax and emissions study it says this study found all of the waxes burned cleanly and safely with no appreciable difference in burning behaviors their combustion byproducts were virtually identical in composition and quantity far below most restrictive of any applicable indoor air standards this study found that burning candles is very safe from an air quality perspective as part of the study they produced high soot candles that would produce greater emissions than normal reference candles and they found that even these were far below the most stringent of the air quality standards all that taken together means that they found that candles are safe to burn indoors when it comes to the air quality one thing that should be noted is that exclusively non colored candles without decorative additives were used in the test program there for further examinations with colored and enameled candles need to be performed overall in the research that I did it showed that fragrant candles and candles with a lot of other additives did produce more emissions however they were still within safe levels the candles that we've store for emergency preparedness are always unscented when using candles it is important that you stand the wick straight up trim the wick to 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch depending on the recommendations of the manufacturer to extinguish candle flames it is best to smother them as this creates less soot and smoke however you'll notice in the end of this video the kids blew out the candles and yes John had a serious heart attack another safety concern is that sometimes the wax can ignite we had that happen a couple of times as we were using the her coven and so it is important that you stay close and be aware of what's happening with these candles when this happens it's not really a big deal if you're right there there's just a metal plate that they have you just quickly place on top and it smothers it and everything's okay but it is important that you realize that candles can be dangerous candles are a good emergency light source they produce a soft light that has kind of a comforting glow they have an indefinite shelf life which means pretty much if you store them in a cool place candles will store forever they provide a little bit of heat they are safe to use indoors they do have an open flame so you must use open flame percussions and keep them away from small children or pets or anybody else who is fascinated with flame and wants to stick objects that are flammable into them they can be really dangerous click on the card in the corner to see the original post for more details about specific candles and burn times the post is entitled candles as an emergency fuel source for warmth light and cooking at the Provident prepper candles do provide some light although it is minimal 13 lumens is about what they produce when you consider a 40 watt light bulb that has 450 lumens a candle is very small in comparison it would take 35 candles to equal the light of 140 watt bulb in other words it wouldn't be as good for reading or task lighting but it would be great for a romantic dinner absolutely it's simple to make a little tea light emergency heater with a metal can some tea lights and some matches it may be a good option for a vehicle emergency light or heating or just to stash away someplace so that if something happens you've got you a little heater that you can just pull out this is that heater working and you can adjust the number of tea lights according to the amount of heat that you would like it to produce be careful about putting too many tea lights in there the temperature on that little heater with 70 lights ranged from 210 degrees to 230 degrees so it was a wonderful place to put your hands over and warm up however if you touch the side of the can it is hot enough to burn you be careful that you only use it on a non flammable surface so this little heater is really good for warming your hands and it will provide a little bit of heat for a room but in reality it really won't do a whole lot for heating a any sized room at all we as this little candle heater when we were doing our grid down challenge in January and I can tell you that while it provided a little bit of warmth it definitely did not make me warm so we experimented a little bit with the concept if you look on the internet you'll see all kinds of little tea light heaters and the concept is very simple you have the little tea lights inside of a container such as a bread pan and then you put a terra cotta pot on top and you block the hole on the top of the actually it's on the bottom of the terra cotta pot with some type of non flammable material like aluminum foil and then you place a slightly larger pot over the top and what this does is it adds thermal mass to that original heater that we showed you in the little can and so it warms up the mass it doesn't create any additional heat that's still the same amount of heat from those tea lights it just kind of puts it in a more available place to use it however this design for us was really unstable I was very uncomfortable that the kids would knock it over and so we came up with this design I used that round cake pan and it seemed to be much more stable but it still is only producing about 249 degrees which isn't bad if that's all you have that can be a great source of heat when there's no other heat available as we experimented we actually changed the design and move from candles to safety which is a form of alcohol that can be burned indoors it's used by caterers and we put it inside the folding stove one of the other problems with that little heater was that the pots are really hot and in order to change out the tea light candles underneath you have to lift that hot pot off put in new candles and then take the pot and set it back on top and that worried me but with this design we have these folding camp stoves where you can just reach in and change the can of fuel as needed you can cook with it or you can heat with it so for somebody who doesn't have a lot of room or money this may be a really good option it's not the best option a wood-burning stove or a propane heater is gonna do a much better job than this but this is definitely better than nothing if you notice this setup reaches about 427 degrees so it's significantly hotter than the setup with the tea lights if you'd like to know more about how to do this click on the card in the corner and it'll take you to the post that we created and help you build it yourself this was one experiment that we did using a rack and some bricks to create a little stove we decided that the tea lights were just not close enough to the pan to work as effectively as they could we created another little cooking device using a cake pan with all the foil lining in it and then put the tea lights in that that put the tea lights closer to the pan and it did a much better job of cooking tea lights cook at a lower temperature it takes longer to bring water to a boil and to cook something but it definitely can get the job done during our 30-day grid down cooking challenge I fell in love with the her coven the her coven uses 20 tea lights and two separate trays to power the oven the her coven cooks at a lower temperature than my regular oven but sometimes this can come in handy we made shepherd's pie in the oven and the girls came home a couple hours after the rest of us ate dinner so I just took out one of those trays of tea lights and left one in and the her coven kept their dinner warm until they got home two hours later we were able to bake pizza in the oven now the Herk oven does not get to 450 degrees so what I did is I baked the crust first and then I added the sauce and the cheese and melted that on top and it really turned out delicious this is John's favorite sliced applesauce cake and some delicious lemon bars we really learned to like the Herk oven and like I said it does not perform as well as my regular oven and Dutch oven will maintain a much higher temperature and cook the food differently but it is so nice to be able to cook indoors during a power and still be able to bake my food candles have an indefinite shelf life as long as they're stored in a cool place obviously you want that away from heat and out of direct Sun they're not harmed by moisture in fact you can put candles in water for 10 years take them out and light them and they'll still work and they are not explosive and they can be safely stored indoors so these are all some really good things about candles that make it something that you ought to consider this is 400 tea lights we paid four dollars for each package of 100 tea lights you can purchase tea lights that have between four and six or seven hours of burn time these happen to be for our tea lights which means that I can cook for 200 hours on the stovetop with eight tea lights or I can use twenty at a time in the her coven and it will give me 80 hours of cook time that is a lot of cook time for the fuel that is in that small space when you're looking at storing the fuel for emergency you may want to store it in a bucket so that you have a lot in a very small space the square bucket on the Left hold 600 tea lights I left those in the original packaging because they're easier to handle and I also put two butane lighters in that bucket when I open that bucket in an emergency I have my lighters and my tea lights and I am ready to go the five gallon bucket on the right will hold up to 800 tea lights if you take them out of the package before you store them in that bucket another creative way to store tea lights is in a shoe box in this case we have a hundred and sixty-eight tea lights in this shoe box along with a lighter this will provide about eighty four hours of stovetop cooking and about thirty three hours of Herk oven cooking and the best part is everything in that shoe box only costs $10.50 that's a lot of cook time in a very little box for very little money a number-10 can will hold 121 tea lights that's 60 hours of stovetop cooking or 24 hours in a her coven when you start tea lights it is best to store them upright it helps that little metal tin contain that wax even if it gets warm we recognize that candles not the ideal fuel source however they are inexpensive they do store very safely and they can store forever they take up very little space they can provide light cooking and warmth and although they're not ideal they can get the job done we invite you to Google the Provident prepper candles as an emergency fuel source for warmth light and cooking this post has a lot of additional information that we weren't able to put in the video and we encourage you to take a look at it also on our youtube channel we have emergency fuel storage and grid down cooking lessons we hope you'll take a look candles are not the answer to all of your fuel storage needs however they do have their place in your fuel storage arsenal and now for the questions they what experiences do you have using candles in an emergency comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music] you

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 17,674

Rating: 4.9449034 out of 5

Keywords: Emergency Fuel, Tea Lights, Candles for Emergency Fuel, Cooking with Candles, Heating with Candles, Emergency Lighting, Candles, Emergency Heating, Emergency Cooking, Candle Storage, The Provident Prepper, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Prepper, Emergency Fuel Storage, Budget Prepping, Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Cooking, Disaster Heating, Disaster Lighting, Emergency Preparedness

Id: YutwRAwmXjg

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 02 2020