Please stop wasting my time with candle heater memes!!!

     This seems to be a continual urban myth on the internet.  We've all seen pictures, and plans on how to build these supposed heaters with a flower pot, and candles.  The idea is that you can supposedly heat a room with this, as if the flower pot somehow magically makes a candle into a furnace.

You cannot break the simple laws of physics, no matter how many times the internet says you can!!!

     Here's the bottom line folks.... The standard residential furnace in America is rated in something called "BTU's".  A BTU is really called a "British Thermal Unit".  One BTU is the amount of energy it takes to heat one pound of water..... by one degree Fahrenheit.  Stay with me here, it takes 8.36 BTU's to heat one gallon of water one degree... It takes 1,036 BTU's to heat a 200 pound adult male human.. One degree (We are on average 65% water.)  Follow me so far???  An average Natural gas furnace for your home is rated at being able to burn 80 to 100 thousand BTUs per hour worth of gas (This can vary quite a bit depending on house size.)

     Alright, so the amount of energy it takes to heat a room depends on how well it's insulated, how many windows and doors there are, are the windows double pane etc..  If it's one degree colder outside than it is in your house, you will need a lot less energy to heat the room than if it's minus 20 outside.  These things are just common sense.  We're going to use an example of a small room with

A calculator for determining BTU loss in a small room.             

good insulation.  It's 20 degrees f outside, and we want it to be a comfy 70 degrees in our room. There are a lot of calculators for this on the internet to help contractors decide how big of a furnace to install when building houses.  I found one that tells us our little room will require almost 12,000 BTUs per hour to heat. with standard insulation.

     A candle creates both heat and light.  It does so by burning the wax that it's made of, and X amount of wax has X amount of energy available to be given off per ounce, or pound, etc., when you burn it.  This is a constant number, and a flower pot can't inject more BTUs into that wax.

A standard "Tea" candle when burned, will on average give off 600 BTUs per hour!!!!

     It's simple math folks.  It will take 20 candles burned up per hour to heat a small room, or 480 candles in a 24 hour period.  At 50 cents retail to buy a candle, you would spend $7,200.00 a month to heat a small room with candles!!!  This is the bottom line whether the candles have a flower pot on them, or the occupants of the room have a tin foil hat on their heads!!!