Making a heater/lamp from tin cans & cake tins

I saw a video recently in which a British inventor makes what he claims to be a "very effective heater" out of ordinary household items, so I thought I would give it a go. The video can be seen here if you are interested. I recommend you check out his whole channel if you like this kind of thing.

Unmotivated by the recent warm weather I forgot about this project but just in the last few days it has become colder and it won't be long now before there is snow outside and the power cuts are upon us.

Love doing things like this, even though I am by no means an expert.

Brass door handles for the base gives it a good weight. This is important for stability.

The only thing I would say about these cake tins is that they are too thin, so the metal is weak and easy to bend our of place, taking away some of that stability. So make sure you buy decent ones!

On the top I put a metal handle, so I can use this also as a hand held lantern. Though one may need to wear the oven glove to hold it ;)

For the reflector I have these two pieces of aluminium which I attached together.

Bending them into semi circles was a serious challenge and wasn't possible using this red bin, which buckled under the pressure.

But two beers and a little smoke later, I figured it out :)

With the lid attached to the top I am almost there.

Unlike Robert Murray-Smith the inventor I chose to use four bolts to hold the tin cans in place. (He used a metal cup of some kind).

To me this seems simpler and more stable.

Jammed between those two tin cans is a layer of 100% carbon felt which will act as the wick, sucking up the fuel.

For the lid on the top of the grill he suggested using half a tin can but we have this children's saucepan which seems to fit perfectly. So that's it! Let's get this baby going...

WOW! It seriously works!

That lid is so hot it's glowing red. These first tests were done outside to let any noxious fumes burn off the metals.

I wanted to try out using different sized tins to see how this changed the flame. Notice the length of the coke can in this one, producing a long yellow flame from the centre.

For this one I cut the can smaller and immediately the flame spread to the edges of the tin where I want it to be, with more of a blue colour. My goal is to heat the full length of the grill sitting on the tin can.

This was quite effective but after a while the flame became large and yellow again.

It does however serve as a very effective lamp!

They switch off our street lights at 11pm now so i was able to go for a walk around the village to test it out and it worked great as a lantern, even with a light wind which was unable to blow it out.

The last thing I tried was a tin with no hole in the top and this was certainly the most effective at keeping the flame around the edges.

Notice how the grill is now red, which is exactly what I wanted to see.

The yellow flame is still too big however and burning up the fuel faster than it needs to. I don't really need light. I need a heater.

If any of you have ideas on how I can solve this problem I would love to hear them.

We paid €7 for 2L ethanol which at this rate will last no more than three nights. Thinking about it, around €2 per night is not all that expensive. I just know it can be more efficient than this.

Robert Murray-Smith tells us in the following video how to make our own methanol which burns in a very similar way to ethanol. Turns out all you need is a basic distiller and oak bark. We have plenty of oak trees no more than 30 meters from our home so this fits nicely.

Another potential fuel is a mix of used cooking oil & paraffin. The cooking oil can be acquired for free from local restaurants and then cleaned using gelatine before being diluted 10% with paraffin.

Certainly if you have restaurants around you, this is a very low cost alternative!

In conclusion

The total cost for the heater was €80. And with this investment I still have spare carbon felt and steel grill to make another.

The only thing I would say about burning ethanol is that the smell is pretty strong and breathing it for long periods will most likely have a detrimental effect on health. So, smaller rooms should be ventilated regularly when using this kind of heating system.

In summary, the heater I have built is indeed effective as claimed, however it burns the fuel too fast and smells pretty funky.

According to Murray-Smith the cooking oil/paraffin alternative burns with no smell. That sounds amazing, so I will be contacting our local restaurant in due course to put this one to the test.

And you can be sure I will post results here.

Love & Light everyone 🕯