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drsurf said..

Peahi said..

beebee said..

Plummet said..

Yeah, I had similar battles. Put in context of one year savings. $7k man, That's a family holiday, a new car, several kites or 2.5 years knocked off the mortgage.

Those stupid expensive squeeze yoghurt packets a bad for the environment aswell. Buy 1kg of yoghurt and put it in a washable container.
The fair trade, vegan Himalayan monks will have to fend for themselves for a while.

RE: Yoghurt.
Better still, make your own. There's cheap kits out there. It's just a container.
So easy. All you need is a sachet to add to milk.
Add some warm water, leave overnight. A fresh, big tub of fresh yoghurt in the morning.
Lasts for a week or more in the fridge.
Minimal packaging, no additives or sugar if you choose sachet carefully, and waaaay cheaper over a short time.

We go through 2 x 1kg Jalna greek yoghurts a week, we re-use containers for food scraps, water for chickens but collect so many containers I eventually have to throw them out.

We used to make our own yoghurt, satchels not that much cheaper might try it again. Make our own kefir. Also make own kombucha about 100 times cheaper than bought.

Mmmm, cheap kombucha, we make our own too for a fraction of shop price.
Also, grow our own fruit & veggies & dry, freeze or pickle excess, (big saving when vegetarian), eggs from our chooks, cooking gas from our biogas digester, run some of our diesel vehicles on free used cooking oil from the local caf?, buy good used cars and trucks, do most of our own repairs & maintenance, do a bit of bartering, solar panels on the roof & solar hot water, let the kangaroos eat the lawn so it doesn't need mowing as much, only try and beat the jones's by having great kite & foil gear

Have fun & eat well, Dave

What what?

There's some next level **** going on here.

Give me more detail in your biogas digester and cooking oil/diesel conversion.

Yes, I'm also keen to hear of biodiesel making.

Much set up cost? Many chemicals left over afterwards to dispose of? Any difficulties with oil supply eg cafe expects you to take all their oil and you get roped into hoarding a garage full of old cooking oil or anything?

Cheers!

Didn't you know @Plummet?

www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-diesel-engine-will-run-on-cooking-oil

Try making a kite yourself and you'll discover what a bargain kites are! :-)

Seem to remember myth busters just filling a tank with cooking oil and driving, no messing about with processing...

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Robbo2099 said..
Try making a kite yourself and you'll discover what a bargain kites are! :-)

Especially 20 mtr ones hey rob

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Plummet said..

drsurf said..


Mmmm, cheap kombucha, we make our own too for a fraction of shop price.
Also, grow our own fruit & veggies & dry, freeze or pickle excess, (big saving when vegetarian), eggs from our chooks, cooking gas from our biogas digester, run some of our diesel vehicles on free used cooking oil from the local caf?, buy good used cars and trucks, do most of our own repairs & maintenance, do a bit of bartering, solar panels on the roof & solar hot water, let the kangaroos eat the lawn so it doesn't need mowing as much, only try and beat the jones's by having great kite & foil gear

Have fun & eat well, Dave

What what?

There's some next level **** going on here.

Give me more detail in your biogas digester and cooking oil/diesel conversion.

Here's the biogas digester below. Just start it off with 800 litres of water, some cow poo or other ruminant poo and then add your kitchen scraps and voila, natural gas for cooking! Get them from here www.homebiogas.com/
Waste liquid produced is great fertiliser.

The vegetable oil to diesel thing is pretty simple if you have the right diesel engine in your vehicle. Don't bother with new common rail diesel engines, veggie oil will destroy them as they are very sensitive to fuel quality. You need an older diesel engine, a mechanical, indirect injection model. These burn the veg oil far more efficiently and avoid damage to the motor or injection system. I have a 1994 Peugeot 405 XUD turbo diesel car which really runs well on a veg/diesel mix. I also have a 2002 Toyota Hilux diesel, a Hino 15 tonne truck and also some earthmoving machinery which also run some veggie oil.

The process I use is very simple. Let the veg oil you've got from the local fish & chip shop settle the crud out for a while and then decant the clean oil, generally the top 3/4 of say a 20l drum, into a 200 litre drum then decant off the top quarter of that 200 litre drum after it's sat a while through a simple 5 or 10 micron sock type filter and there's your finished product. I run 50% veg oil and 50% diesel. By having this mix I can get away with just a simple settling and filtering technique as the diesel mixed with the veg oil reduces viscosity and avoids the need for processing using complex additives for esterification etc.

Works for me for the last 6 years with no problems so far. The Peugeot has done 80,000km on the veg oil blend and the car/engine has done 450,000km in total. Got it second hand and it goes really well on those long highway trips.
Wouldn't recommend running veg oil in a diesel that does short trips, or run any diesel vehicle on short trips for that matter. Diesel engines are at their most efficient and cleanest when working solidly at full operating temperature.

Plenty of info on veg oil in diesels on the internet, but with the new modern computer controlled, add blue, common rail, supersensitive, expensive to fix, diesel engines around now it's not so popular. Helps to have a bit of a mechanical background to do this stuff. Contact me if you want further info.

Have fun, Dave

Ok, next level deisel efficiency won't work for my Ute. Nor will bloated methane poosack. I'd have to upgrade the wife before being able to put a poosack in the back garden.

But I love your innovation! It's awesome

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Robbo2099 said..
Try making a kite yourself and you'll discover what a bargain kites are! :-)

Once if I could sew it'd be simple as haha

can't be much else to do in WA....

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sir ROWDY said..
You can never leave.

Does being thrown out count as leaveing?