Thursday, March 20, 2008

Our first grease

Today we got the call that our veggie oil conversion would be done so we spent part of the day hunting for grease at restaurants up and down the strip by our hotel with no luck. We found bad oil, no oil, oil that was locked up, and nasty nasty oil. Feeling a little dismayed we went to pickup the RV and learned how the new system worked. We then decided to stop at a restaurant for dinner and check out their oil. Score! They had some promising looking hot oil so we went in and ordered dinner and told the manager what we were doing and asked if we could have their waste oil. She was hesitant at first but once we told her we'd pull up and pump it out ourselves in about 20 minutes she said ok. We then began the task of pumping our first oil. (Hopefully one day we'll be able to look back and laugh because it was such a hectic event.) We have a filtration system that comes in a black box on wheels that makes it easy to transport. In the box there is an electric filtration system, a hose that runs from the dumpster to the filter and a second hose takes filtered oil to the RV or containers. We popped open the box and set everything up and flipped the switch, the result was gorgeous clean oil! The oil we're looking for can be light or dark in color as long as it's clear. We were able to fill the RV 3/4 of the way and 2 containers. Josh turned his back for a second and the hose slipped out of the filler. We soaked up the mess and wrapped up our equipment and headed back to the hotel for our final night in Springfield. Now that we've had our first experience we will be more prepared. Yes it's a little messy and takes some time to find, but by using waste vegetable oil as fuel we are being environmentally friendly, saving hundreds of dollars a week AND drastically reducing our dependence on domestic and foreign oil.


1 comments:

LiveWorkDream said...

Oooh, I can't even tell you how envious I am. You are not just saving hundreds of dollars a week, but sometimes you'll save that in a day when you're trying to get across western states.

Just a tip for you; collecting grease is easier at night or first thing in the a.m., before business hours, if you get what I'm saying. Remember, you're doing them a favor by getting rid of it and making more room in their bin.