A few weeks back I was contacted by Kevin’s Kandles as something I may want to share you fine folks. They’re touted as “A Safer, Cost-Effective, and Environmentally Friendly Emergency Candle” and more specifically one that won’t burn your house down, well, they didn’t put it *exactly* like this but that’s the idea, after all.
And, since I’m well aware that candle fires are a HUGE source of house fires to begin with–and one of the biggest causes of fires after a power outage if not THE biggest reason–I had to try them!
So I jumped over to their website, ordered a pack of the candles for less than $10 and waited. To be honest, I had no idea what I was actually purchasing. (I really spent all of about 30 seconds at the time buying them.) I figured it was $10 so whatever it was, the purchase wasn’t going to sorely disappoint me.
That said, when the package arrived I was a bit taken aback because I actually expected to see a few candles arrive on my doorstep but, instead, wound up with a very small package that contained this:
What you see above is a package of 100 small cotton wicks and five clear plastic floats. Again, not candles. Since I was confused I choose to consult the directions when it became obvious to me I was creating a DIY oil candle.
Ok, what gives? How was this supposed to be safer than an ordinary candle? IMO, an oil candle is likely to be LESS safe given that oil can spread quick when knocked over. This wasn’t what I expected at all!!
Well, after watching this video, I get what they’re doing now (note: the video also shows how to assemble which is super easy too)…
Here’s what my own oil candle looked like:
Sure, it’s not going to produce much light (no makeshift candle will) but you can definitely combine them into a larger bowl, for example, and use more than one wick/float combo at a time to make something you can actually use.
There are others reasons you may be interested in these candles, including being fairly low cost per candle-hour (one pack is supposed to provide up to 100o hours of light) and they’re also apparently environmentally-friendly since the wicks are made from cotton.
As for me, it’s all about being safer. And while Kevin’s Kandles weren’t at all what I expected to see, I’m not disappointed either. Even if the idea saves one life, these candles was well worth mentioning here. At the very least this concept could be a good one to implement for any of your own DIY oil candles in the future. Check ’em out. Help a small business. Save a few lives. 😉
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