Cross posted from the main blog: Off grid post, 1-3-23

 

2/3/26:

  This one is a off-grid post, so why is it over there?

  I can be disorganized at times.

  Anyway, off-grid posts should go in this blog, now.  Hence, the cross-post.

  Now that the "splaining" is done, what the heck did I want to write?

  Oh yeah. You know I did melt that expended candle wax, and made new candles. But it really wasn't all that fun, after all.   Pretty sure I didn't do that again.

  After thinking about it, maybe a better solution would've have been to make long skinny candles instead of the fat ones.  The fat ones melt down too fast.  The shorter the wick, the shorter the burn time.  Or so the theory goes.  Never did it again.

  You know that burning those candles in tight places might generate enough warmth to feel it in a cold day.  But there's not that much energy in just a small thing like a candle.  This can be experimented with, for better results.  I figure you could put the candle under a pot, and see how long it takes to make the water hot.    Then set up a heat exchanger, like I did with ice in a big ice chest one summer. It was in 2017, if memory serves.   I didn't like all the work back then, and bought a window unit to keep cool.

The original post :

Today was kinda satisfying because I did something that pleased me to do. It wasn't that long ago that it got really cold. Prior to this, and when it was in the forecast, I noted something I wanted to try. It was candles for heating in an emergency.

Lots of people lost their power during that cold snap a couple years back. If power is lost in cold weather, without anything to back up, that could be a problem. This seemed to be the most elementary of solutions, and not that expensive nor complicated. Too good to be true, though.

The result was pretty disappointing, as I should have expected as much. A candle doesn't produce much heat. It might work okay in small places, but the living area here was too big for something that small to produce enough heat to do the job that might be needed. You can call that a failure, but that's okay.

It does seem like a pretty neat idea though, because it looks like you can recycle the wax and make new candles out of the old. The only new thing you need is a wick. So I got some wicks, and today, I melted down the candles and made some new ones. A little thing, but very satisfying.

Maybe the simple pleasures are the best.

Beats the hell out of a few things that I could mention, but won't.