EBM making good points, some news of note, and in the “what’s a fair profit?” department…
For awhile I’ve been considering replacing our propane stove with an alcohol stove. The advantage being that it would make the boat safer, get rid of the two fugly 20LB propane tanks, and cut our carbon footprint way down.
I noticed recently that the silly prices on Origo 3000 stoves have come down to something akin to affordable, instead of the manic cost rise reaction to Origo no longer being available. Apparently sanity has settled in.
So, yesterday I almost bought an Origo 3000 for a very reasonable $100 bucks.
Well, until I did a little bit of math. Which goes something like this…
An Origo burner holds about a liter of denatured alcohol. Factor in that at full flame, the liter of fuel will give you around four hours of cooking.
With me so far?
Offhand, I currently run our propane stove an average of 1/2 hour a day. A 20LB propane tank lasts us around 86 days. This works out to 25 hours or so. I’m currently paying around $25 for twenty pounds of propane which works out to 29 cents a day.
With alcohol, I wouldn’t always cook at full flame, so let’s say I can get by with a rate of 6 hours per liter. In which case, I’d be getting 12 days of use per liter. Denatured alcohol seems to currently cost $10.50 a liter. Which works out to 85 cents a day. Doing the math, the cost of a 20lb bottle of propane and the equivalent amount of alcohol, gets you something like this:
Propane $25
Alcohol $73
Even with propane going up, it still seems to be the most affordable fuel for us boat-folk who cook a lot.