I’m trying to figure out a few things before winter hits. I’m not sure if I just wasn’t ready for it or if the air got cooler quicker this fall, but I feel like I’m running out of project-weather. There have been a lot of days recently that were too cool or rainy when we would have otherwise worked but didn’t. Today Nishi and I got a lot of oil strained and buckets washed. I won’t be able to keep straining and storing oil like I do now when winter comes, so I need to be ready. Last winter I filled a 55 gallon drum, and I think I’m going to do that same strategy this year. I may buy an additional drum to be safe. As a backup, I have 12 five gallon buckets that can be filled, holding about three months worth of oil. The New England Emporium only produces about 5 gallons a week in waste oil, and I need to be on top of servicing them or they’ll get someone else to do it. I’ve been that someone else too often in my day job.
Whenever I question the amount of work I put into veggie, I do a little math in my head to make me feel better. It takes me about three hours to strain 150 gallons of oil. It will still need to be run though a centrifuge, and will take approximately another six hours. Add another hour for picking up the oil from the restaurant (might be overshooting that a bit, but it makes for easier math). That means I’m rendering approximately 15 gallons of waste cooking oil into usable fuel each hour. Each gallon of waste cooking oil offsets one gallon of petroleum diesel, which is currently $4.20somethingish at the pump. Working one hour on veggie saves me $60ish dollars in fuel. I don’t make $60 an hour, so I think it’s a pretty good deal.
This math didn’t work so well on the bus trip. Not only did we not have a reliable filtering time, but we didn’t have a steady supply of oil. That made a huge difference. Finding oil was a big process, and took entire days. I think we figured out once that if we had each worked somewhere at minimum wage for the time we spent looking for oil, we could have just paid for diesel.
Anyway, after today, I’m just about ready for winter.