Listed below is a quick snapshot of our family’s home heating fuel consumption and cost over the past year, minus the cost of electricity to power forced air fans in the furnace. As a reminder from past messages, we heat our home with two local fuel sources:

• B99.9 biodiesel made from Oregon-sourced recycled vegetable oil and canola oil crops from Eastern Oregon; this is 99.9% vegetable-derived fuel, refined in Eugene, Oregon. The fuel is made primarily from waste vegetable oil collected from food production facilities (e.g., Kettle Foods) and restaurants (e.g., Sherry’s, Burgerville). The remaining fuel stock comes from newly harvested canola crops. The fuel is burned in a modified oil burning forced-air furnace running at just over 80% efficiency. The furnace is coupled with a new 275-gallon fuel tank installed in our basement. The furnace was upgraded to burn B99.9 in September of 2007.
• Mixed (hard and soft) wood; typically cherry, madrone, cedar, oak and pine; this wood is harvested and seasoned in Northwest Oregon. The wood is burned in a Vermont Casting cast iron catalytic fireplace-insert stove. The stove features a catalytic converter that enables ultra-clean, ‘complete’ combustion, so there isn’t any visible exhaust from the chimney when the catalyst is engaged, making it EPA-certified as a clean-burning stove. The stove was installed in September of 2008.

Here’s a snapshot of our fuel purchases over the past year, from the point when we first started using Sequential Biofuel’s B99.9 biodiesel, until today:

• October 7, 2007
  255.5 gallons B99.9
  $3.04/gallon
  $776.72 ($751.17 actual cost, thanks to a Chinook Book coupon)
• December 3, 2007
  120 gallons B99.9
  $2.94/gallon
  $352.80
• January 28, 2008
  195.1 gallons B99.9
  $3.65/gallon
  $712.12
• May 12, 2008
  201.7 gallons B99.9
  $4.48/gallon
  $903.62 ($883.45 actual cost, thanks to a Chinook Book coupon)
• October 3, 2008
  Two cords of split, seasoned, mixed firewood
  $520 (delivered)
• December 10, 2008
  Well over one cord of firewood remaining
  B99.9 fuel tank level currently sitting at 7/8 full (240 gallons remaining; only 35 gallons used since the May 12 fill)

If you buy 200+ gallons of B99.9 today, the price is $3.38/gallon