Plant pot heater test - Do they really work?

can you really heat a van with a flower pot and a few tea lights like many YouTube videos and Facebook posts say you can I've seen these post four years of my science theory has always said no way but let's use some thermal imaging to really find out if the results are as I expect you might want to watch our video on other options have an heating which you can find by clicking here thanks for watching our video and as always consider subscribing in this experiment we're only going to test the heating efficiency of using tea lights and flower pot I'm not going to consider if it's toxic or fire risk having seen firsthand what fire is capable of check out our campsite fire video here if you haven't already just the fire risk would be enough for me not to consider using this however let's see if it does actually work as an effective heater we're going to take a basic flowerpots heater set up from a random YouTube video so after a trip to the local budget store we've got a pot we've got some tea lights and we've got a metal tray to raise the pot and protect the surface I'm going to use three tea lights let's have a very quick look at the theory one tea light gives off approximately 40 watts of heat to give a comparison a resting human adult gives off around 100 watts of heat so theoretically getting some mates around could be a more effective form of heating as I said in this experiment I'm going to use three tea lights which will equate to around 120 watts heat output let's consider the space we've got to heat so roughly two meters by 2 meters by 5 meters with 2 square meters of windows and insulation based on an average room and do remember our valleys likely to be worse than this theoretically you would need at least 750 watts heat output to keep it comfortable year-round based on UK weather conditions so it sounds like the hundred and twenty watts of 3t lights probably isn't going to do a lot you would need around 19 tea lights to give you that 750 watts output let's take a look at a practical test we're gonna do two tests the first with just the three tea lights and then repeated with the three tea lights covered by a plant pot I'm going to position these targets 20 centimetres 60 centimetres and one metre distances away from the heater to represent a person trying to keep warm the 20 centimeter target is going to be on the same level as the candles the 60 and the 1 meter are going to be above the candles over the next few hours we'll measure the ambient temperature in the van and the temperature of each target away from the heater for consistency we'll be keeping an eye on the outside temperature the van to make sure there isn't any big fluctuations we've started by taking a baseline figure of the three targets and then we light the candles few hours we measure the temperature of each of the targets and then after letting the ambient temperature return to normal we repeat the exercise with the plant pot in place you can see from the thermal imaging that the plant pot is absorbing the heat from the candles and doesn't take long to get to a good temperature however you can also see that heat doesn't radiate very well with very little of it even reaching the target 20 centimeters away again we measured any temperature difference on all the targets over the next few hours so here in the results firstly looking at the temperatures with just the candles we can see little to no variation in temperature the targets that the ambient air temperature did slightly increase interestingly probably due to the convection currents we actually saw the closest target reducing temperature this could also cause the rapid cooling of the 60 centimeter target after the candles were extinguished now let's look at the temperatures with the plant pot in place there's no increase in the ambient temperature of the van but the 20 centimeter target does increase by just one degree my conclusions are does it generate heat yes of course it does it's a flame does the plan but actually do anything yes it diffuses what little heat there is and it's better at the cam alone at heating something that's 20 centimeters away from it does it keep her van warm uncomfortable no absolutely not you'd be far better off with a good sleeping bag or jumper or thermals or hot water bottle so if you're serious about heating for your van that will actually keep you comfortable check out our video here [Music] [Music]

Channel: ExploreVan UK

Views: 24,264

Rating: 4.3282442 out of 5

Keywords: van, heater, pot, plant pot, candles, tealights, caravan, rv, motorhome, campervan

Id: dTALg4l-dUU

Length: 5min 36sec (336 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019