Luna the Big Dog™ and I had a big errands-in-town day yesterday. First, we had to fill Timmy the Titan…
…with our trash and recyclables. I had allowed a lot of debris to accumulate from repairs to the front steps and the shed (more on that, anon) and removal of the old solar equipment. There was also the household trash, cans, and bottles, and corrugated cardboard that accumulates owing to the fact that the easiest — and often only — way to get things on the island is by mail order. We drove that to the transfer station in the village, where the county collects trash for landfilling and bottles, cans, metal, and corrugated cardboard for recycling.
Having thus lightened our load, we proceeded down the mountainside to the local grocery store where we bought some staples (including, alas, a very expensive box of pasta that, once unsealed, was found to be full of insect pests). A little ways down from that was the post office, where I collected mail and a few parcels.
We then drove to the park, where Luna got a nice, long walk where there is a panoramic view of the ocean under a bright sun with a cool ocean breeze. A group of three teenage girls went nuts over Luna and, much to her delight, insisted on petting her repeatedly.
We then proceeded to our little local hardware store. I try to support them whenever I can, as I think it’s tough making it out here and I definitely want them to stay viable. The next nearest hardware store is over an hour round-trip. I needed C batteries, which they had. They also had sacks of chicken scratch stacked in the front, which is something I needed but didn’t expect to find there. So we now have fifty pounds of scratch, but still no eggs. Get laying, girls, before someone says huli huli.
Then I asked if they had 1” x 12” lumber. “Oh, you want common board?” Uh, I guess, I’d never heard the term. Now I know, though. Basically, think of the kind of boards you’d stack on cinder blocks to make shelves for your dorm room. Wonder of wonders, they had three of them the just fit in the gap The Hand and I had made removing some rotted, falling planks from the shed. That saved me the dreaded hour-long trip into town.
The last chore we did was to stop at the local gas station. I’m sure they must miss us (or at least our revenue). For the first months we lived here, it seemed as though we were at the station several times a week either getting diesel fuel for Timmy or gasoline for our generator, mower, and chain saws.
These days, we mostly drive Joulee the Free Salvage Tesla who charges from the sun. We rarely need to run the generator as our solar energy supply is sufficient for our needs. We have Vinda, Lu, and Naan to keep the pasture mowed. We have an electric chain saw. But I do like having gasoline in reserve for testing the generator or for when we want to top off the car charge after doing a lot of driving on cloudy days or for running the mower on the parts of the property where the sheep cannot reach.
I bought ethanol-free gasoline, which is considerably pricier than regular. I got to thinking about that. The first time I tried running the generator with the new solar plant, it didn’t go so well. The inverter would repeatedly disconnect the generator, presumably because the power wasn’t clean enough. I basically ended up doing three things at once, at the suggestion of various knowledgeable friends:
- run some conditioner through the generator (Sea Foam)
- switch to ethanol-free gas
- increase the inverter’s ramp-up time to 120 seconds (that’s how slowly the inverter will start using the generator power, rather than just dropping a full load on it all at once)
The result was success, but success that left me not knowing whether I should credit Sea Foam, inverter configuration, or ethanol-free fuel. I suppose, given the minimal amount of fuel we burn these days, I could just not worry about it and keep buying ethanol-free. I was curious, though, so I looked it up.
There does seem to be a consensus that ethanol-free fuel is better for small engines. Unfortunately, the reasons given often seem to be as full of mythology as my own situation. For example, “ethanol-free fuel has higher octane, so will burn more efficiently and generate more power.” Hmph. The idea that octane in any way rates a fuel’s efficiency and power is purely the invention of gasoline vendors hyping their “high-test” fuels (and, once upon a time, as an excuse to add tetraethyl lead to gasoline which made life worse for all of us). There is the contention that ethanol-free fuel is more stable in storage, which I’m willing to believe in that ethanol is hydrophilic and will absorb water, reducing the quality of the fuel. Pure gasoline (if there is such a thing) doesn’t have that problem. There was, however, a dearth of actual data to support the notion.
I don’t believe ethanol-based fuel is, overall, better for the environment than gasoline, and I suspect it distorts the markets for food.
In the end, given the minimal increment in cost for the small amounts of fuel we use and the consequences of a malfunction of the emergency backup generator, I believe I will continue to use the ethanol-free fuel.
—2p