Further information on cheap fuel costs…

I received another piece of information about cheap ways to run diesel cars yesterday (from the smallholder with the bulk-bought meat, actually!).

I’ve mentioned before now that during the warmer months, I run my car on a 50/50 mix of pump diesel and vegetable oil.  However, this doesn’t work during the colder months, which means that I can really only save for half the year, or risk damaging my fuel pump (vegetable oil gets too viscuous to pump when it’s cold).

Apparently, diesels will run very well indeed on a 50/50 mix of pump diesel and heating oil.  This is particularly useful to me as my central heating runs on fuel oil, and I have a big 1200 litre tank of it already on my property.  The costs, for comparison are:

Pumped diesel from the filling station: £1.09 per litre
Fuel oil from my tank: £0.46 per litre.

My slightly dodgy maths tells me that it will cost me just under £28 to fill my tank instead of nearly £40.  All in all, a net saving of…  £11.34 on every tankful.  Mmmm.  I like those sums!  If I fill my tank once every two weeks as I am currently doing, I am looking at a saving of £294.84 per year!  Yay!  Which, when you combine it with the £300 a year saving I made yesterday by finally wrestling my mobile phone supplier into a “Pay As You Go” deal, means that I’m nearly £600 ahead!  Woohoo!