Well, excitement on the farm continues at Oz. It has gotten coldish here relative to south Georgia and North Florida. Which means if you live in a house without a heating system of any kind you will be, like me.....chilly. So I set my kitchen on fire. First though, I got myself an infrared heater that the roof contractor told me was great and called an inferior heater. Now turned out his accent and my ears were getting in the way of the proper pronunciation which is infrared. ANYWAY. I was still cold. Got myself an oil filled heater, and listened very closely to the home improvement clerk who is as he termed it a roughing it kind of guy. This is code for poor. At his suggestion I got a thermal lined curtain panel to go over the gaping maw where many people would have a bedroom door, but I dont. Happier nights but I WAS STILL cold. Watched a DIY video from a bloke in Britain who heated a small room with a small heater out of a loaf pan, 6 tea lights, a terra cotta pot with an aluminum stopper in the hole and finally a slightly larger pot that fit over the smaller pot and left that hole open! $5! No electricity involved. I assembled the device. Set it on my kitchen table on an aluminum pad and a hot pad. Lighted my tea lights and . . . . .MAN! Did that thing work! The cold air went in under the pots, the small pot heated up HOT and the air circulating between the hot pot and the cover pot came out the top nice and hot! I was impressed. AND THEN I DISCOVERED that paraffin is really oil. Because at a certain temperature, all my tea lights ignited at one time. NOT just the little candle wick burning Im talkin the whole darned everything! The whole device was so darned hot I thought it might melt through the table protective devices and burn, like radiation fuel rods melting through the Fukushima power plant! I had to put it out! MY largest pot would not cover the apparatus hence I simply ruined it with soot and paraffin deposits. Tried a towel to smother it but couldnt get the towel to the actual flaming candle wax. Rigged an aluminum shroud around it but only made it hotter and never did cut off the oxygen leg of the fire triangle. I would have had to remove the red hot terra cotta pots to get baking soda onto the flames, did not happen. Then I did it. Exactly what you are never supposed to do......I filled a pot with water and poured in into one end of the loaf pan. Flames shot out the opposite side engulfing the pots and melting my vinyl tablecloth to the wood atop my junkyard kitchen table. Interesting. Apparently melting vinyl is not a good fuel SO the flames petered out. I lifted the pots off with an oven mitt and the water bath had put out 3 of the tea lights. I blew out the others. Laughed my ass off and decided I had to tell you all about it! Im still thinking of how I could perfect this........after all the British bloke swore by it!
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 16:15:00 +0000