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EDMONTON
JOURNAL RIC DOLPHIN If necessity is the mother of invention, how's this for beating the skyrocketing price of gasoline: running your vehicle on used french-fry oil, free from a local fast-food outlet. That's what one Sherwood Park-area man is doing, and he's so pleased with the result, he says he plans to hook up his house to a generator powered with the same fast-food derived fuel. This is 2001, and the soaring costs of natural gas, heating oil and gasoline are pushing more and more people to try out cheaper alternatives, from the quirky and unconventional to the plain old-fashioned. Southeast of Edmonton, for example, there has been an abrupt shift away from natural gas heating by farmers, acreage owners and Hutterite colonies. The favoured alternative - coal. High-efficiency wood-burning stoves are being bought as never before as a secondary, even primary heat-sources for homes and at least one apartment building. And out near Sherwood Park, the inventive 65-year-old retired mechanic who is running his diesel truck on used french-fry oil. The mechanic, who wants to remain anonymous, is getting ready to hook up a 15-kilowatt diesel generator powered with the same fuel to provide electricity for heat, light and appliances. "I expect to save $400 a month minimum". He got the idea from a friend just back from Germany, where the prices of petroleum products are three times what they are here and the government is encouraging the use of vegetable-oil based biodiesel fuel. In September, he rigged his 1982 Nissan pickup with an extra tank and an oil-warming and filtering system. He says he has travelled more than 32,00 km without any noticeable difference from diesel. The concept is not a new one. In the 1890's, the German engineer Rudolf Diesel ran his first diesel engine on peanut oil, anticipating his invention would be a boon to agriculture. The much lower production costs of petroleum, however, prevented peanut-oil stations from springing up and only in recent years have various environmentally minded tinkerers promoted used fryer oil as a fuel. Two years ago the Veggie Van, a concerted Winnebago motorhome, was driven across the United States to promote the fuel, which creates fewer pollutants (a pleasant whiff of french fries is the only smell) and gets the same mileage as diesel. Refiners of biodiesel fuel - a cleaned and molecularly modified oil that can be used in diesel vehicles without filters or fuel heaters - have appeared in Hawaii and Idaho. But given the limited amount of used french-fry oil available - McDonald's 42 Edmonton area outlets produce about 20,000 litres of it a year - and the relative cheapness of diesel, it is unlikely that many Albertans will be switching soon. Coal, on the other hand, has been making major advances as the price of natural gas has quadrupled in the past year. The highest-profile switch from gas to coal is the one planned by Inland Cement, which says it can save $10 million a year by using coal to heat the drying kilns is its Edmonton plant. But out on the farm, a quiet revolution has been happening. Dodd's Coal Mine, a quarter-section, nine-employee, open-pit operation near Ryley, about 100 km southeast of Edmonton, is the only independently run producer of domestic coal left in the province. It sells coal in four-cm cubes for $27 a ton dry, or $30 a ton oiled (less dust). Dayna Kudrowick, 44, half of one of the two couples who own the mine, says that business has almost doubled in the last year as rural residents switch from gas to coal furnaces. One of those who is in the process of switching over is Terry Ziegler, 46, who with his wife Dot runs the 10,000 square foot Hastings Lake Gardens greenhouse near Tofield, a grower of bedding plants. Ziegler's monthly gas bill for December was over $2,000, more than double what it was a year ago, and gas prices have risen since then. His response: to install a $15,000, 60,00-BTU Homesteader coal furnace that he expects to cost him about $500 - a year - ro run. Ziegler says it will have paid for itself in two years. Unlike the coal furnaces that some older Albertans might remember stoking, cleaning and relighting, the newer versions are practically as worry-free as their expensive gas cousins. Nova Metal Tech of Sherwood Park builds furnaces that come complete with thermostats that control the fan and storage hoppers with electric augers that feed the coal to the fire. They can go three months without being refueled and three weeks without being de-ached and are housed in outbuildings. Darcy Belanger, 28, son and employee of Nova owner Ernie, says that the phone "has been ringing off the hook since August". The company sold 10 stoves last year and already has orders for five since the beginning of January. Most of the furnaces are being used to heat livestock barns. Out near New Sarepta, 40 km south-east of Edmonton, a manufacturer of smaller coal furnaces - similarly equipped, but designed to heat a house of up to 3,000 square feet - begged not to have his name put in the paper because he has more business than he can handle already. "I have three carloads of people pulling into my yard every day demanding furnaces", says the man, who produced 40 of the $5,900 furnaces last year - twice the number of 1999. He is reluctant to expand his two-man operation for fear that gas prices might drop. In towns and cities, coal does not appear to be catching on as a home-heating fuel. There are no bylaws or provincial regulations that prevent an urban home owner from converting to coal, but the 10-ton hoppers attached to the new self-stoking furnaces are not generally convenient for most city dwellings. They might be more feasible for low-rise apartments or commercial buildings. Wood, however, is long-established as a fireplace fuel and lately seems to be taking more of a leading role. Rose Komarisky, co-owner of Fireplace Stove World of Stony Plain Road, reports that her high-output, high-efficiency, thermostatically-controlled Blaze King, Opal and Delta wood stoves have been leaping out of the store of late. "I've never seen anything like this", she says. The typical customer is the owner of a larger home who has seen his gas bill rise to $700 a month from $200. The top-end wood stoves, selling for around $3,000 and able to go up to 40 hours between reloads, are capable of being connected to the existing gas heating system. Komarisky says they are being used in concert with, or sometimes even instead of gas furnaces. In High Prairie, 320 km northwest of Edmonton, landlord Bart Kuefler has installed a $5,000 Homesteader wood boiler to heat one of his low-rise apartment buildings, saving himself about $1,000 a month in gas costs at today's prices. Kuefler gets wood for free and pays only for the labour to haul it in and cut it. He has to replenish the furnace in the morning and the evening, but Kuefler says that only takes about three minutes and is well worth the effort. "Wood is one of the few fuels the government hasn't learned how to tax yet," he says. Wood and, of course, used french-fry oil.
Trevelles Contracting Ltd. RR#2, Site 3, Box 9, Kingman, AB T0B 2M0 |