Many people keep candles in their emergency supplies, so I
thought I would do a little experiment to see what kind of candle will burn the
longest.
I used six different candles in my experiment as follow:
Candle A is a bee’s wax candle. It is six inches tall, 7/8 inches in
diameter, and weighs 46 grams. I weighed
each candle so that I could more accurately compare their burn times.
Candle B is a paraffin decorative taper; the kind of
candle that you stick into a candle holder when you have a fancy dinner on the
table. I cut this candle down so that it
was also six inches tall. It has a
diameter of 7/8 inch and weighs 40 grams.
Candle C is a paraffin emergency candle. These candles are sold in supermarkets and
variety stores and are specifically labeled as emergency candles. The candle I used is four inches tall, ¾ inch
in diameter, and weighs 20 grams.
Candle D is a bee’s wax votive candle. It is 1 7/8 inches tall, two inches in
diameter, and weighs 35 grams.
Candle E is a paraffin votive candle. It is 1 ¾ inches tall, two inches in
diameter, and weighs 39 grams.
Candle F is a paraffin tea candle. It is 3/8 inch tall, 1 3/8 inches in
diameter, and weighs 10 grams. The tea
candle is contained in its own little aluminum foil tub, presumably to keep the
melted paraffin from running off.
So, let’s get started.
All the candles were lighted at the same time.
I turned off the lights and closed the drapes to try and get
an idea of how much light each candle produced.
I don’t have anything to measure the amount of lumens each candle
produces, so I just had to eyeball it.
They all look to be about the same with the exception of the tea candle which
is noticeably dimmer, and the emergency candle appears to be just slightly
brighter than the others.
At the end of the first hour the emergency candle has burned
down quite a bit.
By the end of the second hour the emergency candle is
getting very short.
The two votive candles are starting to form large puddles of
wax around themselves. I don’t know for
sure, but I think that this is because the votives only get hot enough to burn
the wax that is right around the wick area.
The wax that is farther away from the wick doesn’t burn. It just gets hot enough to melt and run off.
After two hours and thirty-five minutes the emergency candle
is the first to go out.
By the end of the third hour the two votive candles are
getting very low.
The tall bee’s wax and paraffin candles are still doing
well.
After three hours and twenty-five minutes the tea candle
goes out. It has not burned the longest,
but remember, at only 10 grams weight it is the smallest candle in the test.
After three hours and twenty-nine minutes the paraffin
votive goes out. You can see that it has
left a large pool of melted (unburned) wax.
In fact of the original 39 grams of wax there are 23 grams that remain
as unburned waste.
The bee’s wax votive lasts for a total of three hours and
thirty-seven minutes; just eight minutes longer than the paraffin votive. The bee’s wax votive leaves behind 21 grams
of unburned waste.
It appears at this point that the paraffin taper will last
the longest,
but for some reason it starts melting and pooling wax rather
than burning it. After four hours and
fifty-eight minutes the paraffin taper goes out.
The bee’s wax taper burns for over another hour and finally
goes out after six hours and four minutes.
So to summarize the burn time of each candle:
A bee’s wax taper
- 6 hrs. 4 min.
B paraffin taper
- 4 hrs. 58 min.
C emergency candle -
2 hrs. 35 min.
D bee’s wax votive -
3 hrs. 37 min.
E paraffin votive
- 3 hrs. 29 min.
F paraffin tea candle – 3 hrs. 25 min.
Now it would be easy to say that the bee’s wax tapers burn
longer than other candles, but let’s remember that the tested candles were all
different sizes and weights. The only
fair way to make an apples-to-apples comparison is to figure out how many
minutes per gram of wax that each candle would burn, and here the results are a little
surprising.
The big losers are the two votive candles. The paraffin votive only burned about 5.3
minutes per gram of wax, and the bee’s wax votive only did a little better at
6.2 minutes per gram of wax.
The paraffin decorative taper burned about 7.5 minutes per gram,
the paraffin emergency candle burned about 7.8 minutes per gram, and the bee’s
wax taper burned about 7.9 minutes per gram. So these were all pretty close to the same.
The run-away champion was the paraffin tea candle which
burned an amazing 20.5 minutes per gram.
By the way, I had some other tea candles that were ¾ inch tall instead
of 3/8”. I burned one of them and the
results held. The ¾” tall tea candles
burned for nearly 7 hours.
So there you have the great candle experiment. Even if you have to burn two tea candles to
get the same amount of light as from the other candles, you are still ahead of
the game. If you are going to lay in a
supply of emergency candles I would say that tea candles look like a winner,
and did I mention that they are also cheaper than any of the other candles. Definitely a winner.
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