I struggled to find a good heating and humidifiying solution for my small indoor greenhouse. It’s a small terra cotta pot with some holes drilled in. On top is a terra cotta plate with LECA pebbles and water. I can’t think of reasons why this idea might be bad but wanted feedback from y’all before I place it in the greenhouse
by woopstrafel
13 Comments
Fire bad.
How small are we talking? Fire needs ventilation. You’d be surprised how quickly even a little candle will use up all the oxygen in a space. Then, when you open the door, you could get a [backdraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdraft) and start a fire. Just seems unnecessarily risky to me.
Just use warming pads underneath the plants.
That candle will only burn for a few hours max. Then you will have to replace it a hundred times, opening the door and letting in the cold. It also could consume all the oxygen depending on how big the greenhouse is.
Since you already have it, I would probably try it but prepare for disappointment.
Buy a couple of heat mats. My farmer friends even use them in the outdoor greenhouse for young plants. They last forever and are safe… If you follow the directions.
a candle is about 80 watts worth of heat. a small electric mat or heater is easily double that. where i live a kilowatt is about 15 cents an hour so you can get an electric mat or small heater that pulls ~2 cents an hour worth of power to keep things warm or buy candles all the time
Would it be feasible to use an incandescent bulb in the bottom instead?
What about an electric essential oil diffuser? Get one that uses water and don’t add any oils, it will act as a mini humidifier.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Little tea light candles are perfectly safe. If that pot is terracotta, you can even soak it in water first and that adds moisture to the air (but that small wouldn’t do much).
A 1’x1’x6′ (30x30x180cm) cabinet with twinwall (r value around 1.8), in a 20° f environment, built pretty tight that wants to be 40°f will need a bit more than 260 BTU/hour to maintain that 40° temperature in that 20° environment
The candle gives you 80, so you would need at least 3 – 4
At that point, I’d rather use 80 watts worth of incandescent light or a small space heater
Reading some other people’s comments, i wonder if having 8x 5 gallon buckets filled with water and painted black could collect sunlight throughout the day and release during the night be equivalent to having a 1 candle continuously burning.
Depending on how small and sealed your greenhouse is, you might bring the CO2 level too high where it’s toxic to plants (.15%) and theoretically using up all the oxygen. I’m not sure how other people put in diesel heaters in confined spaces like trailers or greenhouses (possibly it’s difficult to seal something perfectly).
Other than that, I would place the clay pot inside a metal pail.
But if it were me, I would just do it as is. This seems harmless. And I would make my own candles out of vegtable shortening or some other cheap alternative.
Good luck.
The malt balls are gonna melt…
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