Fuel Oil cost of wash update...(super boring)

...It's worse than we thought!

Matt calculated based on our boiler, cost we paid for fuel, using 60 gallons each wash (wash, rinse, rinse...still conservative if you don't do the cold pre-wash you're supposed to). Here's what he wrote in another nerdfest excel file:




Recovery rate for our boiler = 100 gallons per hour


Fuel oil in the tank has an average value of 3.46/gal (yes, this changes depending on when you buy)

The oil burner runs @ 1.25 gallons / hour

Washing machine uses 60 gallons of water (from the manufacturers website)

The oil burner must run for 36 mins to replace the 60 gals of water

1.25 gal/hour at 36 mins = .75 gallons

The cost of oil alone to run 1 load of laundry is $2.59 / load

Electricity and wear and tear need to be considered as well. We can use straight line depreciation for wear & tear. $500 dollar machine, 10 year life, $50 / yr

Not doing 3 loads of laundry/week has to reduce the wear and tear by at least half, if not more. Assuming half of the value ($25/(52*3) we need to add another 16 cents per load.

Electric comes from the energy guide label, appx 30 cents per load

On top of that, even though we have a well, the amount of water we use adds to our list of things we are consuming - 9360 gallons of fresh potable water that is being filtered through the water softener.

 I don't even begin to pretend to have a grip on the costs of running the water softener, but it is running on electricity, and so is the well pump to move all that water

...so $3.05 per load with our system and the fuel we purchased at the beginning of this season.


This might seem like excessive or obsessive cost calculating, but personally I needed to feel better about switching and this helped me feel less regret! Sales pending... :)