Fire Performance Fuel Calculator

This calculator sizes how much fuel a fire act needs by working from wick capacity rather than a flat rate per minute. Each wick soaks up a fixed volume of fuel (you supply this per your wick material and size) and burns for a set number of minutes before it needs re-soaking; dividing your planned performance length by that burn time and rounding up gives the number of soaks required — a 10-minute set with 4-minute burns needs 3 soaks, not 2.5. Multiplying wicks-per-prop by number of props gives total wick count, and multiplying that by fuel-per-wick gives the fuel used in a single soak of everything. That per-soak figure times the number of soaks gives raw fuel for one show, to which the calculator adds a flat 20% overhead for dip-tray losses and the inevitable waste of re-soaking under time pressure — so the number shown to carry is intentionally larger than the theoretical minimum.

Multiplying by your number of scheduled performances scales it up for an entire run, and the result is converted to litres, fluid ounces, and US gallons for easier shopping and packing. The cost estimate uses a blended average of roughly $6.50 per litre across common fuels like white gas and lamp oil — swap in your actual local price if it differs, since fuel type here is a modeling assumption, not a selectable input. Total burn time is a simple sum of soaks times burn time times shows, useful for sanity-checking against actual clock time. This is a planning tool, not a safety certification: always follow local fire-performance regulations, use fire-rated containers, and never plan margins tighter than the built-in 20% buffer assumes.