Diesel costs

[Dunworkin]

Hi,

 

Can anyone give me a rough guide as to diesel costs.....assuming as live aboards, we cruised about 3 hours per day, every other day....less in winter. I know it is "how long is a piece of string"....but a rough idea?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Dunworkin]

my initial thoughts are:

 

say 1.3 litres / hour used, so thats say 4 litres per day...........x 15 days = 60 litres per month......x 1.30 per litre = £80 appx?

 

Is that wide of the mark?

[ditchcrawler]

5 minutes ago, Dunworkin said:

Hi,

 

Can anyone give me a rough guide as to diesel costs.....assuming as live aboards, we cruised about 3 hours per day, every other day....less in winter. I know it is "how long is a piece of string"....but a rough idea?

 

Thanks in advance.

And how long are you going to run your engine for to charge your batteries in the winter, that will use diesel as well. also depends where you are this week I have seen diesel between £1-08 and 73p/lt domestic rate.

[haza]

i have never paid that much for fuel ..most i have ever paid is 90p least i paid is 23p but that was in the year 2002 lol 

[Machpoint005]

29 minutes ago, haza said:

i have never paid that much for fuel ..most i have ever paid is 90p least i paid is 23p but that was in the year 2002 lol 

The crude oil price is still heading north, so brace yourself!

[Dave_P]

I'm going to make the assumption that you plan to be continuous cruisers with no access to mains electricity.  If you plan to cruise 3 hours a day every other day then that (along with some solar panels) will provide the bulk of your battery charging needs from roughly march to october.  I know you weren't asking about battery charging, but you'll soon find out how critical that is.  A typical diesel price on the cut round here is 85p per litre and I'd allow for 1.5 litres per hour, assuming you're on a narrowboat between 50-70' long.  So 45 x 1.5 = 67.5 litres used a month, which would cost about £57.  

 

You say you would have the engine running less in winter but how will you provide domestic power?  Realistically you'll be running your engine more, even if cruising less.  This is because your power demand will increase in winter, and your solar panels will hardly do anything.

 

Feel free to correct my assumption and I'll rethink my advice!

 

You should also learn about red diesel and 60:40 split declarations.

58 minutes ago, haza said:

i have never paid that much for fuel ..most i have ever paid is 90p least i paid is 23p but that was in the year 2002 lol 

You've done well then.  What split do you declare? 

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

The crude oil price is still heading north, so brace yourself!

But my heating oil at home has dropped to the same price it was in January 49p +5% VAT

[Dunworkin]

Cheers all. Plan would be to be largely Marina based in winter, and so have a shoreline to cover electricity although fully accept the advice about winter fuel usage.

[Machpoint005]

23 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

But my heating oil at home has dropped to the same price it was in January 49p +5% VAT

There's not a lot of demand for heating oil in June, but the stuff still gets produced at the refineries-- perhaps that might have something to do with it?

[nb blackbeauty]

It's getting dearer the further south you go, left Birmingham over month ago paid 70 p Frampton on the sharpness 74p out side Bath fuel boat 78p now in Reading fuel boat 88p. Although no split payed.

[Momac]

Diesel at Newark Marina today worked out at 90p per litre at the 60/40 duty split.

I added some fuel treatment with the dose added costing about £5.60 for 200ml  (in the 358 litres of fuel). It is impossible to know if the fuel treatment improves fuel economy and  I can only hope it does help keep the injectors  clean and deter fuel issues .