Home Heating Options for Rural Midwest Residents?

Many folks do burn the waste veggie oil directly (we do), others make biodiesel out of it (we do as well). Many folks are using the biodiesel in their home heating oil furnaces, where using veggie oil is harder to do. If you have a brand new diesel car or truck, you may not want to install a veggie oil conversion kit (or you might, which is why we are giving a class on how to do it on Oct. 2nd), when biodiesel requires no vehicle modifications.

Reply to
Steve Spence
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Heat pumps don't use as much electricity as you seem to think. My heat pump draws just 9 amps at 240 volts when running. Heat pumps don't manufacture heat, they just move it around, which accounts for their

300% to 500% efficiency.

You are right about the resistive backup heat being expensive, but you can use any backup heat that you like. On cold nights, I light a fire in the wood stove, so the heat pump never kicks on. The hearth doesn't cool until the middle of the next day, when temperatures have normally risen again. In mild weather, we just let the heat pump do its thing.

I pay more to heat domestic water than I pay to heat my house. A solar water heater is definitely on my wish list.

Larry

Reply to
Larry Caldwell

Hell with all that. Can you ship a rack of ribs to CA?

Reply to
G Henslee

I'm sure the gas truck was delivering propane, not natural gas. You had a big (500 or 1,000 gallon) tank it was put into correct?

Reply to
Jonathan Grobe

Lou wrote

That last is likely wrong with the higher oil prices.

They do however usually have higher maintenance costs, and more variable in the sense that the outside conditions make more difference to the cost of the heat. Not that hard to have cheap solar for the outside heat collector tho which can make quite a difference to the cost of the heat.

Reply to
Rod Speed

Do they make a portable vented unit?

Something one could use in an apartment but move easily if needed?

Reply to
me

I said I make biodiesel. I never said I make vegetable oil. You seem to be confused.

No, it shows a big spike in demand.

We have business plans. They didn't forecast Katrina and $3.60 / gallon gasoline. The claim was that "normal" people aren't making biodiesel. I have lawyers, farmers, accountant, mechanics, and pastors coming to our classes. They all seem pretty normal to me. The numbers are increasing. I spoke with one Canadian farmer today who is pressing his own mustard seed oil, and using it in his farm equipment. I think the abnormal folks are the ones who reside on this newsgroup, telling those who are doing, that it can't be done.

Reply to
Steve Spence

Clark W. Griswold, Jr. wrote

Not necessarily with a heat pump.

Nope, because very little electricity comes from oil in the first world.

It wont have any effect on the price of electricity.

That is just plain wrong, and you carefully deleted what I did have to say about doing something about that as well.

No it doesnt if its designed for that situation.

Mindless stuff.

And that isnt the only way to do something about freeze up with a heat pump. And there are plenty of real world heating situations where freeze up isnt a problem too.

Reply to
Rod Speed

It has a very meaningful impact upon the demand of the user who decides to go that route.

Reply to
Steve Spence

You would be surprised. It takes diesel to run the equipment to mine the coal, and diesel to run the trains to transport the coal to market, and diesel to distribute the coal to local jobbers. Of course, the price of coal is determined by mining and transportation costs, so DUH!

Reply to
Larry Caldwell

And assuming he's scavenging waste oil from restaurants, he's stealing someone else's property. Waste oil is a valuable chemical feedstock. When it's sitting in the tank behind the restaurant, it does not belong to the restaurant operator.

By either not charging for the pickup or even in some cases, paying for it, the restaurant operator signs an agreement with the waste oil processor to a) put all his waste oil in the supplied tank and b) not to allow it to go anywhere else.

My agreement is typical. Title to the waste oil transfers when it leaves my fryers. It is not mine to give away. If this guy is scavenging the oil from restaurant waste oil tanks then he is stealing from the waste oil processor. If he has "permission" from the restaurant operator then the operator is violating his agreement with the processor and is stealing the oil from them. This guy is receiving stolen property.

I've chatted with my waste oil processor and know that this theft is becoming a major concern to the waste oil processors. Someone is going to be made an example of. In this state one only has to steal more than $100 for it to be felony theft. That's not much oil, particularly if the thief is doing it on a regular basis.

A couple of other thoughts for those folks considering using waste fryer oil.

We restaurant operators remove heat-induced polymers (the yellow gel that collects on fryers) from the oil by filtering it with treated pumice. Some amount of this stuff remains in the oil and causes fairly rapid wear of the roller type pumps we use to pump the oil. The cute little filters included in the veggie diesel kits that I've looked at will NOT remove this fine abrasive material.

Fryer oil is treated with a small amount of silicone oil to prevent foaming. This oil is inert at frying temperatures and remains in the waste. It decomposes at high heat to make silica dust which is a fine abrasive. Since the oil remains a liquid until burned, the silica can't be removed by filtering and probably not by any reasonably inexpensive treatment.

How much of this makes it to the combustion chamber is anyone's guess but considering the cost of injector pumps (older diesels) and variable direct injection injectors (modern engines), I'd certainly not fool with it. Modern injectors such as the ones used on the current production Ford diesels contain parts finished to micron-level tolerances. Even microscopic wear ruins these parts. At an estimated replacement cost of nearly a thousand bux a cylinder, a few cents per gallon saving using veggie oil just isn't worth it.

Yeah I know there are fleets testing the stuff but few if any are using pure veggie oil, none are making the stuff at home and there is little high mileage wear data.

Every individual can do as he pleases, of course, but for my fleet, nothing but high quality diesel goes in my trucks' tanks.

Probably for the same reason fuel line magnets and other quack devices sell so well. P.T. Barnum commented on that....

John

Reply to
Neon John

I'm not stealing from anyone. I have contracts setup with local restaurants. They were paying to have the local trash company landfill the stuff. Now they put it back in the 4.3 gallon jugs for me to pickup.

Reply to
Steve Spence

I suppose they use biodiesel for transportation. Again, why not burn the material you make the biodiesel out of directly?

Reply to
Jonathan Grobe

No you don't. You are recovering a rather limited waste stream. Someone else produced that oil.

This would demonstrate a lack of product but not much else.

You need a business plan.

Best, Dan.

Reply to
Dan Bloomquist

"Wood" came to my mind too. Our old neighborhood was a suburb of Indianapolis, and the house I'm thinking of was probably 2700 - 3000 sf.

He heated it with wood all winter, and I never knew it until he told me. It was nice and cozy.

He did invest in a log splitter of some sort, but most of his wood he got either for free or by offering to remove fallen trees for a small fee after big storms came through.

A
Reply to
Angrie.Woman

Not in the states you haven't. No one gives a shit about something you read somewhere.

Coming from a family that has worked in both deep and strip mines, you are full of shit. Draglines, front-end loaders, rock trucks run on diesel. Most on-site conveyers at strip mines run on diesel engines. Even many underground operations use diesel shuttle cars. I hauled diesel to strip mines for years. What's your real-world experience?

Only in your drug induced world, wanker. Strip mine and deep mines are located where the coal is, power plants are located where there is water for cooling. Has nothing to do with what's most efficient.

The power company isn't going to absorb the cost of coal transportation, douchbag. The coal doesn't fly through the air to the generating station by some magic power. The local generating station has over 100 trucks per day hauling coal to it. Trucks owned by coal companies and owner-operators. Trucks who's fuel cost has tripled in the last few years. I've also hauled enough diesel into the fly ash disposal area of the generating station to know what goes on there. Again, your real-world experience is?

Lie.

Reply to
R. Halford

Afraid not.

Pity you haven't a clue as to what goes on there, as always.

Wrong again. I fueled them for years.

Lie. What the hell are you smoking? Conveyers don't run to the coal face asshole, shuttle cars do.

Nope.

You have proven you are, no need to state it again.

Which many aren't, wanker. Let me guess, all the coal trucks and trains across the US are hauling coal back and forth just for fun.

Nope.

Nope.

Lie.

Bitch-slapped AGAIN.

Reply to
R. Halford

Indeed, it was informative. Mostly wrong, but still informative. I wonder where folks get their notions ....

Reply to
Steve Spence

Fraid not.

Finally you admit it.

You don't know shit, you've proven that in spades.

Lie. You shuttle coal from the face to the conveyer, dumbass.

Which has NOTHING to do with the price of power in the states which is clearly what is being discussed, moron.

AGAIN, which has NOTHING to do with the price of power in the states which is clearly what is being discussed, moron.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with what's being discussed.

Reply to
R. Halford

This is not quantitative. Let's see. Say you have a source of ground water heat. Then it would be reasonable to expect a COP of 3 or 4. Fuel oil will run some $3/100,000btu unless you bought futures. Electricity at say $.08/kwh would translate to $.70/100,000btu. Resistance heating to $2.35/100,000btu.

If you have the ground water there should be no rollover.

Capital cost for such a system is higher than fueled heat so of course must be considered.

Best, Dan.

Reply to
Dan Bloomquist

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