Do USAsians really not have storage heaters?
Let alone understand the concept!
I've noticed a tendency on Youtube, which has a heavy American content aimed at the UK under the misapprehension that we speak the same language, that when temperatures in the upper Northern Hemisphere are dropping a lot of cold weather preperation DIYs get shown. One of these is a cute idea, where you use ceramic flower pots or the like and a candle to help heat a room. The comments sections on these videos is always full of nay sayers, some disputing them by quoting all sorts of pseudoscientific data and ideas. I have just watched one that claims to show the fallacy by 'testing' one under supposedly scientific conditions.
They are wrong.
Most of the naysayers against it as a heating source are under the mistaken understanding of what heating means in this case. It is not a means to warm your cold toes or backside in front of when you come in from the cold. A candle flame standing alone in a room will, much like any flame, expel heat into the room which rapidly dissapates. By putting the pot over/around the candle more of it is held within the fabric, and it is this that retains heat which is more slowly let out into the room, keeping the chill off.
This is no different to an open fire, where you can get a rapid flash of heat as flames leap up from paper or brush, but it is the bed of coals that keeps the temperature in - not to mention, for thousands of years we have used stones heated in a fire to warm our feet and beds. It is exactly the same principal, of storing energy from one heat source to an object that will slowly release that heat over time. Come to think of it, that might be a better way to describe this sort of thing; The pot/brick/stone is a heat battery, being charged with the heat energy which is slowly but surely expended over time.
Storage heaters (used a lot in the UK) also work on this principe - bricks inside are heated while electricity is cheaper (usually at night) and they stotore the heat. This allows the heater to radiate it during the day. There's a better explanation here
As for this 'scientific' test, the guy made an enclosed space (a box, rather than a closed room) and measured the heat within the box by first burning a candle, then repeating this with a candle in a flower pot. His readings show (and I'm not disputing them) that the temperature inside the box rose more rapidly for the standalone candle, and the temperature within the box remained slightly lowere for the covered one throughout. He concluded from this that the covered candle was in fact a poorer heat source *stands back and smugly points at his own data*
Okay, but he fails to see the problem with his conclusion. He tested each method, with the same ambient temperature to start, the same type of candle, and the same burn time within the same box. He ran the test for half an hour for each; and that is where he failed.
As he remarks, the temperature inside the box ran hotter for the candle than the potted candle. As both candles burn the same and are within an enclosed space, where did the missing heat go?
Yup, into the ceramic!
If he had done this properly, he should have run the experiment with the candles burning for the same duration, then continued to moniter the temperature inside the box after that. In that way, he would have realized that the heat inside the box would have remained warmer than the first method by way of the stored energy. In that half hour it looked to be less efficient, but come back an hour after the candle's extinguished and it is another story. His data was incomplete, so his conclusion is faulty.
Me? I'm seriously considering looking around for a suitable pot or two and a tealight to keep the chill off our bathroom overnight - I'm not expection miracles, but it has to be better than the brass monkey temperatures of a morning!
This entry was originally posted at https://eoforyth.dreamwidth.org/1130458.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I've noticed a tendency on Youtube, which has a heavy American content aimed at the UK under the misapprehension that we speak the same language, that when temperatures in the upper Northern Hemisphere are dropping a lot of cold weather preperation DIYs get shown. One of these is a cute idea, where you use ceramic flower pots or the like and a candle to help heat a room. The comments sections on these videos is always full of nay sayers, some disputing them by quoting all sorts of pseudoscientific data and ideas. I have just watched one that claims to show the fallacy by 'testing' one under supposedly scientific conditions.
They are wrong.
Most of the naysayers against it as a heating source are under the mistaken understanding of what heating means in this case. It is not a means to warm your cold toes or backside in front of when you come in from the cold. A candle flame standing alone in a room will, much like any flame, expel heat into the room which rapidly dissapates. By putting the pot over/around the candle more of it is held within the fabric, and it is this that retains heat which is more slowly let out into the room, keeping the chill off.
This is no different to an open fire, where you can get a rapid flash of heat as flames leap up from paper or brush, but it is the bed of coals that keeps the temperature in - not to mention, for thousands of years we have used stones heated in a fire to warm our feet and beds. It is exactly the same principal, of storing energy from one heat source to an object that will slowly release that heat over time. Come to think of it, that might be a better way to describe this sort of thing; The pot/brick/stone is a heat battery, being charged with the heat energy which is slowly but surely expended over time.
Storage heaters (used a lot in the UK) also work on this principe - bricks inside are heated while electricity is cheaper (usually at night) and they stotore the heat. This allows the heater to radiate it during the day. There's a better explanation here
As for this 'scientific' test, the guy made an enclosed space (a box, rather than a closed room) and measured the heat within the box by first burning a candle, then repeating this with a candle in a flower pot. His readings show (and I'm not disputing them) that the temperature inside the box rose more rapidly for the standalone candle, and the temperature within the box remained slightly lowere for the covered one throughout. He concluded from this that the covered candle was in fact a poorer heat source *stands back and smugly points at his own data*
Okay, but he fails to see the problem with his conclusion. He tested each method, with the same ambient temperature to start, the same type of candle, and the same burn time within the same box. He ran the test for half an hour for each; and that is where he failed.
As he remarks, the temperature inside the box ran hotter for the candle than the potted candle. As both candles burn the same and are within an enclosed space, where did the missing heat go?
Yup, into the ceramic!
If he had done this properly, he should have run the experiment with the candles burning for the same duration, then continued to moniter the temperature inside the box after that. In that way, he would have realized that the heat inside the box would have remained warmer than the first method by way of the stored energy. In that half hour it looked to be less efficient, but come back an hour after the candle's extinguished and it is another story. His data was incomplete, so his conclusion is faulty.
Me? I'm seriously considering looking around for a suitable pot or two and a tealight to keep the chill off our bathroom overnight - I'm not expection miracles, but it has to be better than the brass monkey temperatures of a morning!
This entry was originally posted at https://eoforyth.dreamwidth.org/1130458.html. Please comment there using OpenID.