This heater consists of flower pots and tea lights, but promises a lot of heat at a small cost. However, experts not only advise against tea light ovens or heaters. They even warn against it.
Fire brigades, chimney sweeps and insurance companies: they all warn against the use of tea light stoves. Why actually?
It's all about this:
Tealight ovens are constructed from two clay pots that are screwed together with a threaded rod, nuts and washers. Tea lights burn inside - and should help to heat the living space more cheaply. After all, a tealight that meets the test criteria of the RAL quality mark for candles should be able to burn for at least four hours.
This is why the oven is dangerous:
If several paraffin tea lights are placed too close together, they can melt each other. The difference from the controlled melting of the wax by the flame: flammable gases that form burn off immediately. When groups of tea lights melt, however, these gases can accumulate and, in the worst case, ignite explosively.
The Quality Association for Candles therefore advises always placing tea lights at a distance of three centimeters from each other. And one should not put several candles under a tea light stove if the safety distance is not possible.
By the way, if something gets out of control: tea lights are usually made from paraffin, a petroleum product. Like burning oil or gasoline, it cannot be extinguished with water. A fire from paraffin candles should therefore be smothered unless you can still blow out the tealights, according to the Candle Quality Association, an association of candle manufacturers.
That's why the stove hardly heats up:
Quite apart from the danger: tealight stoves cannot really heat up a living space. Their heat output is "very low", according to the quality association for candles, among others. The heat from the oven can no longer be measured at a distance of just one meter.
So that means: You would need many such tea light ovens in the room to get it warmer. The quality association speaks of one tea light per square meter. Her conclusion: "A tea light oven is therefore above all a nice and atmospheric decoration."
After all: It is a warm decoration. Anyone who has ever sat directly in front of one of these small tea light ovens will notice the warmth of the candles - especially since the clay pots heat up with them. However, the effect dissipates as soon as you are no longer sitting in the immediate vicinity of the tea lights.
