heat
Stretching Our Fuel Reserves
After busting through a boatload of firewood during the super-cold temperatures we experienced from December 13 through the Christmas holiday, I checked the level on our B99 biodiesel tank and the gauge is sitting just below the 7/8 marker. This means we’ve got well over 215 gallons of delicious recycled veggie oil fuel remaining. Burning [...]
The Magical Energy Brick
Back on December 4, I wrote about the impressive North Idaho Energy Log. I’m still impressed with this tidy little compressed log, but I haven’t made the decision to purchase any additional logs beyond the samples I carted home on my Yuba Mundo utility bike. Instead, I stumbled upon a new fuel source to test: [...]
Home Heating: the Year in Review
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 [...]
The Magical Energy Log
As I’ve posted here before, we’re heating our home this year by burning two fuels: Oregon-grown/harvested hardwood; and Oregon-sourced/refined B99 bio-diesel. Hardwood is fantastic but requires a good deal of splitting unless it’s aged at least one full calendar year, and even then it needs a very hot fire to burn effectively. In our specific [...]
Gauging Heating Energy Consumption
I’ve had a revelation as of recent, as it relates to energy consumption. I believe that part of the reason that people have a tendency to be less energy conscious than they may be otherwise is that we are sometimes insulated from the levels of our consumption. Yes, we get a bill from our utility [...]
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