Oil Fired Heating Part 2

Oil Fired Central Heating Part 2.

I have learned that there are oil burners available that will burn vegetable oil including used chipper oil and/or other waste oil. These burners can be retrofitted to many existing oil boilers with very little trouble or fitting cost. One such oil burner is illustrated above.

Some farmers are especially growing rapeseed to extract the oil and burn it for heat, while using the cake to feed cattle - a double whammy from the crop. Rapeseed oil burns especially well in these burners leaving very low residue and fumes that are not unpleasant like kerosene or diesel fumes.

Stay tuned for more information. I am researching the cost, delivery charges etc., and will try to get some picture of reliability etc.

If you own a chipper this could save you tons of money on heating your home. If you are a farmer and can grow rapeseed it could be just a brialliant solution to saving on heating.

Burning bulk vegetable oils could still be a viable proposition for the average home owner as the price of heating oil continues to soar.

I am looking for information on the bulk price and availability of various vegetable oils if anyone can point me in the right direction please e-mail me at: thenewoil@gmail.com

Why not Oil Fired Central Heating?

Oil Fired Central Heating??

With the un-believable, un-satisfactory, un-stable, un-regulated, un-focussed state of the wood -pellet heating market in Ireland, I have decided to NOT go ahead with an installation just yet.

I was thinking of other possible alternatives, WHEN the bulb above my head suddenly illuminated very brightly and even flashed a couple of times. I knew then that I had had an "idea"!!!

Vegetable Oil

The idea struck me that vegetable oil in bulk is a darn site cheaper than heating oil right now. The supply also is most probably more stable. Heating oil is on 70+cent a litre right now and rising - while cooking oil can be purchased in bulk at 55cent a litre. There is the possibility of utilising used oil from chippers and hotels etc.

It would not take rocket science or too much of a re-build to tune an oil burner to burn cooking oil. I would need a pre-heater and possibly some extra filtration, and it would need a different nozzle in the burner unit to vaporise the oil - but I am fairly sure it could be achieved with moderate ease. Maybe there is already such a unit abailable somewhere?

If it were possible to purchase a modified burner unit for existing central heating systems, it would be a very cheap option to convert an existing boiler, grant or no grant. A standard burner unit can be purchased for about 500 - 700 Euro, a modified one should not cost much over 1100 - 1400 Euro?

Would anyone reading this Blog have any ideas, contacts or information along this line??

Free Energy?

Sean McCarthy of Steorn with "the" Gizmo?

An End to All of the World's Energy Problems or just Another Scam?

In case you haven't noticed in the last week, a small Dublin technology firm called Steorn has made what amounts to just about the most fantastic scientific claim ever!!!

Steorn announced, a week ago, in a very expensive advert in the Ecomomist, that it had found a way to make endless free energy using magnetism. This new technology can be made to work in things as small as mobile phones, or to power cars. It doesn't clarify if it would be possible to have it run generating stations?

If this is true and not a hoax it will change the course of human history. It would end the energy crisis, stop global warming, end the middle-east oil strangle hold, change the world ecomomy. It would make this blog redundant!!

Steorn have a web site at: http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx?p=1

There is already a new internet group formed to watch and follow the developments called "SteornWatch" the website is at: http://steornwatch.com/

I think Steorn's claim is most probably like the many other "free energy" discoveries made over the years, all of which came to nothing. But something deep inside me hopes and wants to believe that it is for real.

We will wait and see.


.

Lots of Enquiries - Few Sales!

Is the Lid Blowing Off the Irish Wood Pellet Business?

I have heard from several sources that the Irish public are being cautious about taking up the new Greener Homes Grants, especially in wood pellet heating.

Gee! I wonder why ever is that the case?

I wonder now could it have anything to do with the fact that many Irish companies are looking to charge between 30% and 69% higher than elsewhere?

The 69% profiteering I detailed in a Blog in last July:

The Irish Price from the main Viadrus Dealer!

Energy Master Listowel offer the Viadrus Hercules Eco 24Kw Pellet Boiler combo at €6500 including 21% VAT the price includes commissioning and signing off the SEI Grant form. I could not find their price posted on their internet site, but I requested information and I received a printed leaflet with the price clearly stated.
http://www.energymaster.ie/hercules.htm

The English walk-in-off-the-street Price

Manco Energy Ltd. East Yorkshire UK offer the same Boiler combo at £2,200 plus VAT. That's €3188 at today's rates. Add the 21% Irish VAT and that gives you €3858 rounded up to the nearest Euro. The link is:
http://www.mancoenergy.com/

Or could it have anything to do with greedy installers who are looking for sums of up to €1000 for the half days work it takes to install the boilers?

Maybe could it have something to do with the problems people have been experiencing with high moisture content wood pellets?

Or possibly could it have anything to do with people fear of switching over to a fuel with few suppliers, poor distribution, and un-established price norms?

SEI please wake up!!

Dor - Opop - Atmos are not Answering Queries

DOR - OPOP - ATMOS
won't answer questions

The boiler markers: Dor, Atmos, and Opop are all very busy companies. Way too busy to deal with potential customers. Or maybe they are just very shy or have something they wish not to make known. Then again they may have seen how Viadrus shot themselves in the foot, and are afraid of doing the same.

Either way they are not responding to requests for information on Prices, Guarantees and Efficiency and Safety Standards.

TOO BUSY OR DON'T CARE

If they are that busy or unwilling to answer some basic queries, how would they be when it would come to problems with guarantee. My feelings are not to deal with people who are unwilling to communicate.

Generally speaking: Bad communications = Bad Business

National Consumer Agency Replies

Still No National Agency able to Deal with the Gougers and the Cowboys

A nice but basically unsatisfactory reply from the NCA

Dear ...

Thank you for contacting the National Consumer Agency and please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in responding to you.

At present the NCA is still in its pre-legislation phase and has yet to be established on a statutory footing. As a result much of our effort is currently focused on preparing the necessary framework for the establishment of the new agency. Therefore as of yet we do not have the necessary resources to give the area of renewable energy the focused attention it requires.

I have looked at your blog and can see that you feel very strongly about the issue. Energy is indeed a matter that is very important to Irish consumers. Once the legislation to establish the agency on a legal footing has been enacted, we shall be looking to our work programme with a view to deciding areas of focus for 2007.

Once again thank you for taking the time to contact us and if you have any further consumer related queries please contact us on our locall no 1890 432 432.

We wish you every success in your endeavours.


Kind regards

SEI is NOT Answering Questions!!!

Hiding in Their Shell?
Questions NOT Answered!!

On 28th July last I wrote to SEI with a list of specific questions listed below. Two weeks have passed and there has been no reply or direct response to the questions. I have to assume that SEI are either; (a) Not interested, (b) Don't have the answers, or (c) Simply dismiss people like me as a cranks to be ignored.

1. Why is there no mechanism in place to stop excessive profiteering and gougers?

2. Why are there no penalties, like removal from the lists, of gougers or incompetents?

3. Whats the point of SEI if it does not protect the punter?

4. Why doesn't SEI make sure to publish a list of manufacturers recommended selling prices, so the cowboys cannot "invent" their own prices.

5. Why does SEI not publish a straight talking comparative list of heating systems, with unbiased information on value, quality, efficiency, and reliability?

6. Why doesn't SEI publish a recommended scale of fees for installers instead of letting the puner open to all sorts of abuses.

7. Why doesn't SEI set up a mechanism to take legal acton on behalf of seriously abused customers.

What Do You Think?

Should a multi-million Euro renewable energy agency, set up by the government for our benefit, respond to direct queries like the above?

Keeping the Head below the Battlements!

As I have previously stated in this Blog, I am open to correction, and I am happy to receive information at all times.

TWO POINTS OF CORRECTION

I have two points of correction to note in this Blog. Both sources of information are expert in their respective fields, and both are anxious to keep their heads below the battlements for the moment, just as I myself have avoided the direct line of fire from the "not so pleased readers"

WIND POWER

I am very reliably informed that it is technically possible to make Ireland 100% - YES ONE HUNDRED PERCENT - wind power capable.

We have one of the world's best wind patterns, we have the places in which to build wind farms, we have a sufficient diversity of wind patterns, and we could build more of the needed buffer power storage facilities like the Turlough Hill pumped storage hydro-electric system.

Investment and foresight is all that is lacking!

HONEST BROKERS

I am very reliably informed here also that there are many more honest brokers in the retail renewable energy business.

My source promises to give me some direct pointers and evidence to this fact, and I will publish the information as soon as it get it, because I believe the good should be acknowledged as well as the not-so-good.

Stay tuned!

Future Generations up the Creek Without a Paddle

Good News But!!!

Island Oil and Gas PLC has just announced that it has made a significant gas find off the Old Head of Kinsale in the Celtic Sea.

The discovery has the potential volumes of gas of at least 90-120 billion cubic feet, whatever that means in real terms, but it sound promising.

Here is a thought for today

This new gas find, along with the recent utterly daft suggestion that Ireland should build a nuclear reactor, might serve to deflect thinking on Renewable Energy away for the core issues.

What are the Core Issues?

1. The world reserves of Oil and Gas and Coal will all soon be completely exhausted regardless of new discoveries. This will leave our children and their children in a world where coal, oil and gas are things they go to see in a museum. You might say that our greed and shortsightedness NOW will leave our children "up the creek without a paddle".

2. If we do not heavily invest in Renewable Sources now, we will be in a much more vulnerable situation in a few years time.

3. There are very few jobs created by the short-term industries of oil and gas supply, whereas biomass energy is indefinitely sustainable and creates many thousands of long-term jobs for generation after generation.