Have you ever considered using bio-fuel?

Posted by: James Young-Hardy on 28 Jun 2008 at 9:34am

with the price road diesel at £1.30 and I can get biodiesel with road duty paid for £1.10. surly bio-fuel for domestic heating shoud be cheeper than miral diesel

Posted by: Andy on 20 Jun 2008 at 12:31am

Mike C... apart from your inability to spell, you clearly have no idea about science...

an iceberg displaces a volume of water that has a weight equal to that of the iceberg... therefore, the sea levels cannot rise if the ice cap melts. The sea levels can only rise if glaciers or land bound ice masses melt.

Posted by: Suzanne on 30 May 2008 at 12:21pm

We have a oil combi that runs all the rads and gives hot water in a six bed house.
Due to increasing costs and theft(!) we recently installed a multifuel cast iron stove where our open fire had been. The model we bought (£600 all in) runs a small boiler internally and 3/4 rads, so we only have to use the oil boiler now for hot water.
This will change soon as we are fitting a hot water tank onto the end of the system as an overflow and will have more than a bathfull every day!
We are also lucky that we have many fallen or dead trees on our property for fuel.
We also make our own bio diesel for the cars which works out approx 17p per litre and are having the boiler modified to enable us to use recycled veg oil in that also!
So...in regard to paying more for bio-diesel...you don't have to!
Do your research over the net, don't be afraid to ring folk up and ask the questions! This is the only way we will ever beat this greedy government of ours! Good Luck!

Posted by: J B on 12 May 2008 at 7:38am

I have been reading lots of articles on biofuel lately one of them dealt with ways of treating waste cooking oil for use in cars. I can't seem to find out if domestic boilers could also use this stuff. As far as cars are concerned it seems to be mostly Geman makes but people claim that some other makes are ok.
Personally I would not pay a penny extra for biofuel and I am now seriously looking at other forms of heating mainly woodchip stoves. Expensive to buy and certainly not as convenient as burning oil but much cleaner if that is the criteria. I'm only looking at cost, oil is apparently not going to get cheaper only more expensive, the Chinese will make sure of that.

Posted by: JC on 8 May 2008 at 8:48pm

I think bio- fuels are the way to go for several reasons not just enviromental
On the matter of costs - I would be prepared to pay a preminum up to 10p/l if it is produced in the UK, the producer received a fair price and it guarranteed security of supply, with a reasonable price stability. However the UK governments ( of any shade ) will NEVER support Agri produced bio-fuels as they are terrified it would restore farmers
clout and give them a real market for their products - and no I am not a connected with farming in any way just a cynical realist

Posted by: Mike C on 25 Mar 2008 at 11:03am

PERSONALLY AS A PERSON WHO BELEIVES ALL THIS MONEYMAKING ( FOR SOME !) RECYCLING AND CARBON REDUCING WILL HAVE ZERO EFFECT UPON THE EARTH AS A PLANET ! - IM VERY PLEASED THE EARTH IS UNDERGOING A CYCLICAL WARMING - BRING IT ON FASTER - I WONT NEED TO USE AS MUCH HEATING OIL AT PRICES INFLATED BY THE UK GOVERNMENT TO FIGHT ALKIEDA IN OIL PRODUCING COUNTRIES - WE SHOULD BE BUILDING WATER RESERVOIRS TO SELL WATER TO THE AFORESAID WHEN THERE STARVED OF WATER . IF FLOOD PLANE RISES FROM POLAR ICE MELT - THERES LOTS OF HIGHER GROUND .

Posted by: John Webster on 24 Jan 2008 at 11:03am

Bio fuel is a renewable resource - fine, that means it does not need to run out and the carbon emissions from burning it are recycled into the next growth of the crop. So far, so good. BUT (yes, you knew there was a "but " coming) agricultural land can only grow so much, which means competition for the crop between food use and fuel use. Bio-fuel crops, such as corn and rape-seed are internationally traded commodities which means as demand increases the price goes up. This has a direct impact on food prices as well as the price of bio-fuel.

Already in Mexico the poor are really facing starvation as the price of corn - the main staple - has risen beyond their means due to American traders buying up the commercial crop for the bio-fuel market.

As a further environmental downer, the more pressure is put on bio-fuel crops the more land gets turned over to prarie style mono-culture - disasterous for wildlife - and the more nitrate fertiliser gets poured on the land.

By all means lets use filtered waste oils to supplement our fuels, but long term the only solution is for us to use less energy - wordwide - and spend massively to develop technologies that harness the power of nature, such as tidal, geothermal and clean nuclear fusion (which are currently the only sustainable technologies potentially capable of replacing the large coal, oil, gas and nuclear fission powered stations most of us are reliant on for base load)

Posted by: Mike on 24 Jan 2008 at 10:33am

Fuel produced from crops is not a solution. It takes more farmland to produce a commercial quantity than is needed to grow food. The OECD is very concerned about the use of food producing land to grow crops for bio-fuels. We're short of grain crops already and this will get worse if we grow for fuel instead.
Re-cycling waste materials is always a good idea if the energy balance is advantageous (it isn't always!) and we should be collecting the 'waste' gas from landfill, etc to use as fuel. Our local re-cycling depot is entirely heated from this gas (methane) and they run their site vehicles on it too. A farmer in Devon does the same with the gas from his slurry pit!
It just takes a little thought and a careful look at the energy balance equations (remembering to take account of the whole lifecycle requirements for energy - energy consumed to produce, run, remove versus energy created/saved).

Posted by: Terry Dowd on 3 Jan 2008 at 10:42am

I have read through thease messages and by and large agree with most of the sentiments - and therein lies the problem. There are so many opinionated "experts" out there (all it seems in a "good cause") and so much confusion it is difficult to steer a reasonable road through this mire. The government MUST take a lead on this and raising taxes to deter usage is well known to not produce the desired effect. I would like to use "alternative" fuels, make my house even more energy efficient, but the whole process is now totally "out of control" with the "fast buck boys" reaping a "profit" on this "chaos". I think I understand a bit but I feel sorry for those in our society who do not and have no one to turn too.

Posted by: Bio sceptic on 30 Nov 2007 at 9:54am

The use of bio fuels is trendy but only a very small part of the solution. The products of combustion from carbon-based fuels do not become less maveloent if they were bio based. Efforts should focus on burning less, improving efficiency when we burn and cleaning or reducing the resultant harmful emmissions.