About This Project

For years, makeshift heating solutions for homeless individuals have involved burning unsafe materials like grease, garbage, or wood, posing both fire hazards and health risks from toxic fumes. Our project aims to enhance a low-cost, tent-safe heater first developed by an initiative called Heater Bloc. We'll address design flaws and create a website for users to share insights and solutions. We also plan to put our research into action by producing 300 heaters for distribution.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Our project was inspired by an initiative called Heater Bloc. This decentralized movement encourages people across the country to take community care into their own hands through an open-source guide to building tent-safe heaters they can distribute to their houseless neighbors. In the context of the worsening homelessness crisis and the fact that 20% of hypothermic deaths occur in the homeless population, we found this to be a salient issue. Using their guide, we built heaters in 2023 and distributed them. We noticed a few challenges with the building process as well as numerous issues with the efficacy of the heaters themselves. Through the course, Frugal Science, we worked on improving the design of these heaters.

What is the significance of this project?

Those looking to build and share these heaters often encounter challenges, much like we did. Currently, they have to troubleshoot on their own, trying to figure out why they're having problems. This process is inefficient because others in different places might have already solved similar issues, like inconsistent flames or slow ignition. Without a central forum to discuss these problems, people might get discouraged, feeling like they're wasting materials and time. It's crucial to improve these low-cost solutions because they can mean the difference between health and sickness, or even life and death, for homeless individuals. Creating an open source forum to share troubleshooting tips has the potential to bring far more individuals into the effort and increase the scale of impact.

What are the goals of the project?

The funds will be used to purchase materials for prototyping and manufacturing to distribute.

We will quantify our target issues and iteratively design and test solutions. This includes testing the capillary action of wicking materials, the efficiency of copper coil shapes, the stability of bases, and overall heat generation of the system.

We will document our findings such as the causes and effects of changes to the design. Inputting this information into the database will allow users to understand how changes to the design results in performance differences including how materials sourced in different settings change outcomes. We hope to improve the build quality and process by making it systematic and controlled.