DIY Paint Can Toilet Paper Heater - Project That Could SAVE Your Life!

this particular one has been in the trunk of my car for over five years today i'm gonna open it up we're gonna light it we're gonna see how long it puts out heat for hey there welcome to get a flight i'm joshua and today i wanna show you a little diy video on how to make a really small compact heater you can make from household supplies all right so these convenient little heaters are made out of a quart paint can an empty one that's never had paint in it some toilet paper isopropyl alcohol matches are lighter and a quarter so this particular can has been in my trunk for over five years we're going to open it up today we're going to light it we're going to see how long it lasts and then we're going to rebuild it and i'll show you guys that process all right so i've got two of these little heaters we keep one in each car and we've kept them in there like i said for over five years and that's been in the northeast and south louisiana and texas all year so definitely the trunk got triple digits and these have been fine we're going to open them up see if if there's still alcohol inside there and it sounds like there is we're going to light them and see how they burn and then we're going to do one with 90 alcohol and one with 70 alcohol because i don't recall which one i used when i made these and we're going to see if there's a difference in the burn time between the 91 and the 70 and if you need to use one or the other so i'm going to jump ahead and show you footage of how i made these and then we're going to come back and do the burn time test all right so to make these nifty little heaters we need our one quart empty paint cans a roll of toilet paper some isopropyl alcohol and then an ignition source and i like to keep a quarter taped to the top just because the lid of the paint can can be pretty difficult to get off if you don't have anything around to get under there and it's a pretty easy cheap way to make sure that you can get this lid on and off but the basic gist is we're gonna get this toilet paper inside there now you're thinking like how are we gonna do that well we're gonna remove a cardboard roll just put your finger in there and squeeze it out and then we're going to crumple this up and you're basically just going to work this in there but with some finagling you should be able to persuade this toilet paper roll to get all the way in there i'm just going to go around and around and around to get over that lip under that lip rather there we go and then it's going to start puffing back out and now we've got our dry toilet paper roll inside the container the reason i like using these cork containers versus something else is that they have a sealable lid so one any of the isopropyl alcohol is not going to leak out wherever you put these they don't always have to stay upright although that's best and secondly if you only want to use the heater for 15-20 minutes and then that's gonna be it these are really nice because they're airtight you you set this lid over that it's gonna cut the oxygen off inside and smother the fire so then they can be reused too but then we're just going to take our isopropyl alcohol and put it in there a little bit at a time imagine about 75 of this bottle will fit then you're just going to put your matches or lighter in a watertight container add your quarter to the top so you can open the lid and that is a complete emergency heater now let's go test and see how long these run all right so that's how you put these little heaters together in a nice tight little bundle uh fits easily in the trunk of your car but now we're going to open up and we're going to light them we're going to burn them see how much heat they produce how much heat gives to the below the heaters and if that's an issue and then we're going to make some with known percentages of alcohol and see if that makes a difference as well so let's open these up again take your quarter and you just pop open the paint can these have not been open for over five years all right so we are definitely still wet you know over time this is going to eat away at the can so but that's five years and this is the amount of corrosion that was in there so definitely something to be aware of that it will corrode over time however not something that i would say you know for less than five dollars for the can that i would not do these once every five years to have that emergency backup source now we're just going to take our matches and see how this goes we are immediately lit nice so after five years it definitely still works all right so we're an hour and 15 minutes and the bottoms of these are still cool to the touch they are definitely going strong there's just slight singing on the top and as you can see even with wind they are staying lit it's not about until about there where it starts to get uncomfortably hot to touch and there's definitely no no heat transferred to the ground at this point all right so we're about two hours and 20 minutes this one has gone out it's used up all the fuel that was down in there feeling down in this toilet paper it's moist but it's not it's not wet and so i imagine just they couldn't wick anymore up to the top but it started to burn the uh the toilet paper pretty pretty well through and i imagine that one's not far behind it so it seems to be about two hours two and a half hours for the can and this one just went out that was two hours and about 35 minutes if i wasn't doing the testing on this i would just add another bottle of isopropyl alcohol and you could reuse this a good number of times i think you know even if you you get significant burning like that you just tear off the top part that burned if it wouldn't relight and you would get many many uses out of the same can and toilet paper by just adding more fuel to the to the wick all right so i'm curious to know how this little trick works in something that's not so confined so i've got an old coffee can here and i'm just going to put the entire toilet paper in there as is and then add the 70 because that's going to be most readily available and do a time on that just to see if space was not an issue if you're just using this like as a heater in an output tent like a big canvas tent or something or an ice fishing chanti you know what is the difference between the small compact ones that don't really have much airflow around the fuel and something a bit bigger like this so we're going to run that and see what the time and the performance is on this guy as well so we've got 70 isopropyl and 91. we're gonna light these and see if they uh if one burns out before the other all right just compare the flames 91 alcohols on the left 70 on the right definitely a big difference all right so these have been going for a while and uh the bottoms of the court ones are still quite cool you know as you get up towards where the flame is it's definitely hotter um however the the coffee can is definitely hot all the way to the bottom there's something to to note and be aware of obviously it's because the flame can go down the sides because of the air gap now one way that you could make that get this concept into that is just take a second roll toilet paper add it to the first until it makes it as big as whatever canister you're using then you're going to have more of an insulation at the bottom and more of a wicking versus this one because there's an air gap the wick is basically every open surface of that toilet paper roll instead of just the top as it is in these cork cans all right in just about an hour and a half the 70 alcohol in the coffee can lost its flame and now it's just kind of smoldering so an hour and a half for the seventy percent in the coffee can all right so we're at 2 hours and 15 minutes on the 91 alcohol and it is used up all the fuel the 70 is still going and for the 70 we're just over three hours of burn time three hours all right so what did we observe well these little heaters they're quite effective they put out a decent amount of heat for a reasonable amount of time and i definitely am going to redo them and put them back in our vehicles for emergency heat i don't know it's definitely not something that you're going to put inside your car so you get stranded in a snow drift you're not going to light this inside your car the open flame is is too much of a fire risk you're going to be in a worse problem than than you were but if you were to make a sort of makeshift shelter off the side of the road or you needed hand warmer there's they're very inexpensive to make and uh super effective so would i choose 70 or 91 alcohol well that's a that's a choice that you're going to have to make that 91 definitely burn hotter but it burned shorter so i think if you had a controlled space someplace where you were trying to heat a closed base 70 percent might be better because it's going to be a sustained heat for a longer amount of time however most emergency situations what we're going to be using these for we might want the higher heat output of a 91 percent you know use it for a hand warmer and you're not often going to have a controlled space to heat it for but if you have an ice shanty that you're ice fishing on and you're going to use these the 70 might work just fine because after it heats up that space it just needs to keep it warm so you're gonna have to decide 70 or 91 91 slightly harder to find but most stores are going to carry 70 for sure and then 91 percent at all your drug stores and big box stores and you know this is something that you can also scale up if you needed to get a bigger heater get that coffee can and either wrap one toilet paper roll around the other to make it wider or you can even try this with cutting a piece of paper towel in half to the the height of the coffee can and filling it that way that would last quite a long time so they're a cool project it's something fun to do with the family and it definitely provides an emergency source of heat it's self-contained you know you got your isopropyl alcohol put your quarter on top to be able to open up the paint can and i like the paint cans because you can close it back up you can snuff it out and you don't have to use the whole thing you got everything with you and then just make sure you have an ignition source matches lighter and again they're not necessarily windproof so if you haven't matches make sure you have enough matches should it go out that you have enough to re-light it because again this is going to be emergency heat the last thing you want to do is have the heater available and ready and run out of the way to light it all right so if you're planning to do this diy project let me know below what are you going to use this is going to be the court paint can is it going to be a gallon paint can is it going to be the coffee can and then which alcohol you're going to use 70 91 a different liquid fuel i'd like to know below and uh i really like these because they're totally self-contained you know they're sealed and with the quarter and the matches it's it's a tight compact emergency heater and they work well if you like diy projects like this make sure you check out our free group diys tinkers fixtures and makers i'll make that the link to that group available to you totally free and a great growing community over there until next time i'm joshua and you've been watching gander flight take care and pay it forward see you in the next one you

Channel: Gander Flight

Views: 124,263

Rating: 4.9133425 out of 5

Keywords: diy, diy heater, alcohol heater, rubbing alcohol, isopropyl, isopropyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol uses, 70 vs 91 isopropyl, 70 vs 91 isopropyl rubbing alcohol, diy alcohol heater, alcohol heater diy

Id: JWs8hq48RZw

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020