This newsletter is being sent as an educational service to your Church. This is the seventh in a series of short articles on getting the most out of your altar candles. These will be excerpted from the booklet “The Light in Your Church – A Guide to Carefree Money Saving and Green Use of Candles in the Church” authored by Ross Raby, President of ChurchWares Direct. We hope you will find this very useful.
Cost Versus Price
These two things are always getting confused! As an example, one supplier may offer candles of a particular size at a price of $5.00, while another’s price might be $5.50 for the same size candle. The true COST, however, may be something quite different. It may be that the higher-priced candle is made from superior materials and may burn 50% longer and therefore offer a much lower COST even though its PRICE is 10% more.
Here’s another important consideration: for a given diameter, a longer candle actually costs you less than a shorter candle. Why? Because there is less waste. No candle burns down completely – there is always a stub, usually of about 3 inches or so. This 3-inch stub left over from burning a 9-inch candle represents 33% of your church’s candle budget wasted. The same three-inch stub represents 25% of a 12-inch candle and only 18% of a 16-inch candle.
There is, of course, a practical limit to the appropriate length of candles for a given situation, and, as with so many things in life, there is a caveat to this: a longer candle requires greater care in ensuring that it is positioned correctly so that there is no waste from dripping. That aside, however, it is a good general rule that longer candles mean less waste by providing more BURNABLE candle.
Sockets
The type of socket used can also contribute to your savings and help reduce waste. Typically, a candle is replaced as it becomes too short. A deep “cup” type socket conceals the last few inches of the candle resulting in it being replaced sooner than if all the candle is visible. “All-Purpose” and “Tenex” type of socket fit INSIDE the candle, making more of the candle visible and allowing more of it to be consumed. Although the “Tenex” type candle end has no wick in the bottom 2 or 3 inches, so that all of it can’t be burned, the “All-Purpose” type allows all the candle to be exposed without drilling out the wick in the candle’s base, making this the efficient choice.
