propane use

PROPANE USE
Whenever I mention Peak Oil, I know you are all heaving large sighs of exasperation, rolling your eyes and in general trying to ignore me. After all, just because we are using three times what is discovered, just because oil field discoveries peaked forty years ago, just because liquid petroleum has been flat since 2005 and we are using less energy intensive fuels to make up the difference, why, none of that means the very abundant and very cheap oil supply we built an economy on is collapsing before our eyes. Oil will last forever, because without that security blanket you have to worry about giving up all the trappings of modern middle class suburbia. No more welfare for retirement, no more credit, no more pampered lifestyle. No more SUV, for the love of all that is holy and just! Keep deluding yourself. And while you set up camp near De Nile river, I'm keeping my petroleum use in perspective. I know it is nothing more than a luxury.
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I bike to work, with one car trip to town a week to grocery shop. I don't need to drive. Even without a bike trailer, I can still haul water and laundry and food. It will just take more than one trip. If things are so bad I don't work, I can hoof it to the river. But as long as the money economy lasts, I'm going into town anyway. With a backpack and a PeeWee Hermon basket on my handle bars, I can haul what I need. I use two gallons of water a day, the two of us use a total of three gallons a day. I can haul that water on my bike. The only thing that would give me trouble would be a five gallon propane tank. If the car use ends through unemployment, I'll buy a trailer for hauling in propane. If the car use ends because the gasoline is gone, then I won't have to worry about buying propane. The point being, a car is a luxury. I set things up that way because I know that one day none of us will be driving.
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Propane is also a luxury. It is more of a necessity that a car, since it is the heat in the winter. But in a more primitive existence I can heat with solar and scrub brush. It will be miserable, but I won't freeze to death. I can also cook the same way. With some solar and some wood. The trick is to use as little as possible. When you only need twenty gallons of water a week, things are a lot easier. You don't necessarily need a well and a tank and a pump and a septic. When you have good solar gain, you don't need as much heat from propane. By turning off the heat at night and by going cold a lot ( last year a fifty degree trailer while showering was the norm- hopefully it will be sixty or seventy this year with the new insulation ) I can stretch out a bottle of propane for a week. Ten hours a day, seven days a week. My propane heater ( Mr. Heater brand ) turned on low gets about seventy hours use out of a five gallon tank. Currently that is about $13. So heat, used very sparingly and augmented by solar, costs me $50 a month. The solar costs nothing, just the right side of the trailer facing south. I use sheets of foil covered bubble wrap to cover the windows after the sun goes down. That will keep a lot of the heat in. Last winter I didn't have that ( or the other insulation ) and you could almost see the thermometer dropping after five in the evening.
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For cooking, I use a two burner propane camp stove. The oven that came with the trailer has a problem with the pilot light staying on, so I just don't use the original equipment. And a good thing, that also saves me money from burning propane to use the fridge. That is also a luxury. I don't even know how much that appliance would use in fuel. Anyway, that stove has been going strong for three years, with daily use. Using that stove, my cooking and hot water use is one pound of propane a week. Last year I was cooking my flat bread for work with propane. That doubled the usage. Then, in one of my customary semi-annual flashes of brilliance, I starting taking the flour to work and nuking it. Duh. In the morning, one pot of coffee is brewed in the peculator. At night, I heat up a half gallon of water for bathing/shaving. Dinner is cooked in a pot or cast iron skillet, and I heat a few cups of water for cleaning the dishes. With all that, a can of propane will almost always last a week. I'm still amazed.
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I am still using the disposable propane canisters, about $2.75 each from Wal-Mart. That is about seventy five cents worth of propane in a two dollar can. I recycle the steel, but I need to go ahead and make a hole in my wall and feed a propane line from outside ( the heater tank is too far away to use that ) and use a refillable tank. Then my monthly cost on the stove will go from $12 to $3. I had that coupler that you use to refill one of the disposable tanks from a big tank, but it didn't work for me. You must freeze the small can and keep the large tank warm. Without freezing, the transfer doesn't work at all. I tried. My next twenty bucks free goes to a hose, I already have extra five gallon tanks. One less thing to buy from Wal-Mart then. Bastards.
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