Here at The Church Heating Specialist we came across this video that makes an incredible claim.  Dylan Winter demonstrates how he can heat a room for as little as 8p per day.  Being the sceptical bunch we are, we decided to give it  a try!

So we managed to find everything we needed stashed away at home, and the equipment is pretty straightforward: A bread baking tray, tea lights, and 2 plant pots.  The set up is also really simple, place the tea lights in the tray, light them, place the pots over the top, and your good to go.

So how does it work? Basically the heat from the candles warms up the air in the plant pots, due to convection, the hot air rises, but with no way to escape the heat keeps building up. Very simple.

Is it effective? Due to the small scale of the makeshift heater, there is no way it would ever be suitable for large scale use.  Especially in a church.  It’s great for positioning next to a desk for personal use, but we certainly wouldn’t rely on it for anything more than that. Plus it’s a bit of an eyesore!

So in conclusion, we wont be replacing our high end state of the art church heating systems just yet, but it was a fun little experiment.