Batting .371 for America

So far, we've displaced a total of 110 gallons of petroleum diesel in the Jeep. Feels good. We've also displaced close to 80 gallons of dino fuel in our hot water/heating furnace with various biodiesel and waste-oil blends experiments. The veg experiments in the furnace are far from concluded (there are many people working on this) but about 10-15% straight vegetable oil can be blended with regular home heating fuel (which is usually a dirty form of diesel) without much noticeable issues. There are people working to do cheap adaptations of their furnaces to run 100% veg oil, but it is experimental. 100% biodiesel can run in a furnace with usually only a nozzle and pressure change (assuming you have a modern furnace with an indoor tank)...but often a pump must be replaced with one that has seals resistant to the solvent effects of the BioD.

So how are we doing over-all? Well, we still have the Ford Focus running regular gasoline, and the furnace use is usually about 75 gallons a month averaged over the year. So of the about 175 gallons of total oil fuel products we are using per month, 65 are biofuels of some sort. That's 37%. I consider this a realistic goal for an average oil-intensive New England family such as our. We will be doing better when I switch cars, but it still feels good.

Consider this: over 30% of our oil use in this country is imported from the middle-east...and our money ends up in the hands of people that don't tend to treat us very well as customers or people. I'll go into this and my personal feelings on that region another time. Our family has theoretically cut them out of the picture.

And that is something that makes me feel really, really good. Happy July 4th!