UCO candle lanterns are aluminium lanterns, used since the early 70’s, designed specifically for UCO’s own candles as a form of light and heat. They can be also be used with any regular candle that fits.

Type of Wax: Soy wax is one of the best options because it is slow-burning. Paraffin is common, but it is potentially toxic. I don’t like paraffin wax for candles because it often makes smoky residue when it burns, so it is harder to reuse the wax. Beeswax is also an excellent alternative to paraffin. Even though bathrooms typically require more foot-candles, you can probably get by with one or two candles in the bathroom. You probably will just be carrying a candle into the bathroom with you when you go instead of leaving it constantly illuminated. Three versions of the candle are available, the Original Wax candles, Citronella to keep insects at bay, and both have a burn time of 9 hours. In winter (when most power outages occur), the sun sets very early, and there is a lot of darkness. Even if your curtains are open, you will probably need lighting from around 7 pm until 7 am.The UCO candle lantern also claims that it will reduce damp and condensation in your tent. I can’t really comment on this as I haven’t used it for long enough yet. I have experienced condensation inside a tent, even ice but the temperatures we experienced in Scotland did not cause us any condensation problems. The UCO candle lantern was used by us for 2 nights and we didn’t experience any safety problems with it. Clearly you have to act appropriately around it and not bash into it, but from our perspective it was safe. The lantern hangs on a metal chain so that it is away from the ceiling of the tent and there wasn’t any hot liquid wax pouring out of the bottom, it was all rather uneventful (despite my initial concerns).

But it probably takes more than 1 candle to produce adequate lighting for your home. So, you also need to calculate how many candles you need to illuminate the space. A bit weird at first coming from a safety perspective, but it didn’t take long to become comfortable around it and more confident that nothing dangerous was likely to occur. Since you probably won’t be using just candles as your emergency lighting, figuring out the number of candles to buy can be confusing. To simplify things, let’s calculate it like you will use just candles. 1. Determine how many hours of lighting you will need per day. number of hours of lighting per day required) x (number of days you are preparing for) = Hours of lighting you need 4. Don’t forget to calculate how much space you need to illuminate As a kid, candles were the way to go for emergency lighting. This was mainly because flashlight batteries were expensive, and rechargeable ones weren’t common.I’m looking forward to using the UCO candle lantern in the tent again as soon as I can. I’m actually quite looking forward to using it wild camping over the winter months during those early long dark evenings, I’m sure it will make us feel really cosy, warm and maybe even damp free. Once you get the wax out, you melt it in a double boiler (it can catch on fire, so always use a double boiler!!!).

I was a bit dubious as having a flame inside the tent was not something I would have ever considered doing before. But having got my hands on one and doing a bit of research online, I thought we would give it a try. Just remember not to mix different types of wax because they burn differently. Here are instructions on how to reuse candle wax to make new candles. Tips for Using Emergency Candles Even though they use liquid paraffin, they don’t create much odor or smoke as typical paraffin candles do. If you have a suitable, sturdy candle holder, taper candles can be great for emergencies. They make it easy to collect the wax for reuse. And, since these are made from beeswax, you’ll want to save that wax!That comes out to 50 hours of lighting. However, you want to add a margin of error of 50%, so you instead calculate 75 hours. Technically these aren’t candles – they are lanterns because they use liquid paraffin. Because they are so popular, I thought they were worth adding here with the best emergency candles.