Beaucoup d'argent as the French would say.
I remember not fully knowing if this investment would pay off in the end. After all there had been a lot of quick lubes (ie. some of the Jiffy Lubes up here) who had purchased a waste oil furnace for their shops and ended up taking them down because they just gave them so many problems.
Here is a picture of one of them.
Now you have to fully understand why I was so concerned. These businesses are generating at least 100 gallons of used waste oil per day. They have huge shops to heat. Every time the bay doors open up and down a lot of heat is escaping so you know these types of businesses are harder to heat than most. How much money does a franchise owner of Jiffy Lube stand to gain by totally eliminating his monthly heating expenses and yet he got rid of one of his waste oil furnaces within several months at one his busiest locations from what I hear.
This was not the first time I had heard of this. A couple other businesses who were not oil change businesses had purchased a boiler or furnace equipped with waste oil burners instead of your traditional set up and they ended up a) having nothing but problem after problem with them or b) unable to get an adequate supply of oil to run their system year round.
No matter what system you get they are not going to be cheap (although you can save a lot by buying a used waste oil burner) and if it was not going to pay off I would stand to loose at least $10,000.
My oil change business does nothing near the volume of one of the major quick lubes in town and despite that I bring in 30 gallons per day during the summer time and roughly 30 gallons every two weeks during the winter time depending on how hard I am working.
The point I am trying to get across is that I was in a position to potential save thousands of dollars in natural gas bills over a lifetime and all I had to risk was several thousand dollars.
It seemed like a worthwhile risk to take.
Fast forward two and a half years into the future I am cannot say enough about this alternative energy technology. It has grown a lot in the last ten years and these devices are a lot more reliable than they were back in the 90s when people and businesses were first really starting to buy them.
I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I have not only recouped all my initial investment but I am up at least a thousand dollars by now.
I have a friend who owns the distribution rights for Energy Logic products for the entire northwest and Alaska and he says he has been getting tons of calls lately. My business partner John Vogt just helped him do an install for the railroad company up here because they were generating so much used waste oil they did not know what to do with it. One train can generate 100s of gallons of used motor oil on just one oil change. Amazing! They heat their whole shop and office building with their waste oil furnace.
This technology is really exciting to talk about and I want everyone to give it some thought as to whether they can generate enough oil to be able to run one of it. The thought of being able to remove heating expenses be it heating oil, natural gas, or electricity from their monthly bills should be too tempting to pass up.
It will take several years for most people to get a return of their investments but once you do every month you are putting an extra several hundred in your pocket. If you were to get an average of how much you spend heating your house, shop, or office building per month before you got your waste oil furnace or boiler and put that money into a separate account you would be surprised after a year the amount of extra money you would have. You could invest that into something else that generates more revenue.
Here is a copy of natural gas heating bill from October to November.
The average temperature for Anchorage in October is 34.6 degrees and the average temperature in November is 21.2 degrees. To all the skeptics out there I would like to pose this question: doesn't it seem odd that in this type of weather my total bill for heating my huge house and huge garage is less than $10.00.This technology is really a no brainier. Its a type of system that will not only run off used motor oil but used brake fluid, any of the gear lubricants out there, used automatic transmission fluid, and pretty much any and all industrial oils and dirty diesel fuel. You can throw these substances into your waste oil boiler or furnace and out comes clean free heat.
All you have to make certain is that you filter whatever oil you do put into your holding tank before it goes into your machine.
How Does this Technology Actually Work
Once your oil pump sucks the oil from your tank into your actual burner it is then brought into a pre-heater which then heats it to 160 degrees so it can easily be sprayed through the nozzles.
As it goes through the nozzles as a really fine mist it is then ignited by two electrodes generated by a transformer. This is what makes heat. Its really not as complex as it seems.
That heat travels and goes through a combustion chamber and heats a heat exchanger which is usually stainless steel.
For a furnace a blower usually pulls in cold air over the heat exchanger which significantly heats it and is then exhausted by a fan into the duct work of a house, office, or shop.
Waste oil boilers work the same way except the flame heats up water which is then ran throughout a building.
Oil Burner Maintenance
I have found from professionals and my own personal experience that all one needs to do to maintain his investment is a) filter the oil as best you can and b) get an annual tune up by a trained professional or do it yourself(it will take several hours though)
If you do these things then you will have a product that lasts a long time. We even went as far as to buy a waste oil centrifuge to make sure I am getting all the moisture and dirt out.
End result is I have gotten a bunch of e-mails asking if this device is really worth the price.
I will let you answer that question. If you are talking about oil filled radiators, I would more than likely no, but, with these things I'm sure you can see that its very hard NOT to get your money back.
Hopefully this question has been answered and if you are not the phone to the nearest distributor of these awesome gadgets then you are missing out.
