How To: Heat Your Home in an Emergency Without Gas Using Flower Pots & Candles

Not having power can make everyday tasks really difficult if you're unprepared. You have to find new ways to do things like cook dinner and charge your devices, and if it happens during the winter, you also have to figure out how to heat your home.

If you don't have a battery-powered heater, you can make a simple emergency space heater with a few tea candles and two flower pots, one small and one large. Dylan Winter made this one with a metal baking pan, but you could use just about any heat resistant container.

Winter put four tea lights in the baking pan and covered them with the smaller flower pot. He used the metal casing from a tea light to cover the hole in the flower pot, which causes the heat to be trapped inside so the pot gets warm. The large pot then goes over the small one with nothing covering the hole to create a convective heat transfer.

Each set of candles should last about four hours, and the heater produces enough heat for one room. If you've got enough flower pots to make a few of them, a bag of tea lights can heat your whole home for just a few bucks.

Here's YouTuber Gem Webb testing this clay pot–candle heater:

However, know the risks. YouTube user Norfolk Broads explains the possible danger involved below.