We got this e-mail about tips on filling up your car with petrol. It does make sense to keep a half tank of fuel anyway, as if we do get some sort of petrol crisis over the winter, at least we have enough to get to a garage.
I did a post on the tax on petrol ages ago, but it does annoy me that even though the cost of oils comes down on the exchange, we seem to see an immediate hike in the cost of petrol at the pump. Our road tax is added to the price of fuel here, which we think is fairer, as people who use their cars a lot get to pay more for road upkeep. We don't pay a seperate road tax. Our fuel is £1.089 per Litre. My £30 of fuel had £1.43 GST and I got 27.55 litres. (GST is our VAT). We have to pay more for our petrol as we are told the shipping costs to the Island add a significant amount.
I am just pasting the e-mail here, so no credit to me. It is a bit of a scam not selling us the petrol with a price adjust if the temperature makes the fuel expand, also I tend to view petrol pumps with a huge amount of suspicion now I know they are sniffing up the petrol fumes out of my tank! I did try filling my tank very slowly yesterday, and there was a noticable difference in the amount of petrol fumes wafting my way while I was filling up. Must be better for your health if nothing else.
Let me try posting the body of that e-mail again.
PETROL TIPS - info!! (MUST READ)
With Petrol expected to reach £2 per litre by end of 2011 these tips that I received from a friend might come in handy. (This is a scary thought, might be time to invest in a bike to go for a trip to the farm shop). There is a good industry, doing up bikes that have been outgrown for the kids. We used to do our own, and re-paint them.
TIPS ON PUMPING PETROL
I don't know what you guys are paying for petrol.... I am paying up to £1.35 to £1.50 per litre. My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money's worth for every Litre:
Here at the Pipeline where I work , we deliver about 4 million litres in a 24-hour period .. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and petrol, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 Litres.
Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the petrol, when it gets warmer petrol expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening....your litre is not exactly a litre. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the petrol, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.
A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.
When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapours that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapour return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapour. Those vapours are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you're getting less worth for your money.
One of the most important tips is to fill up when your Petrol tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more Petrol you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine. petrol storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the Petrol and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every litre is actually the exact amount.
Another reminder, if there is a petrol truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy Petrol, DO NOT fill up; most likely the petrol is being stirred up as the Petrol is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.
To have an impact, we need to reach literally millions
of Petrol buyers. It's really simple to do.
(I didn't bother with the maths part of letting this go viral).
Perhaps if everyone started filling their tanks slower first thing in the morning, it would make sense for the forecourt garages to update their pumps to allow for the petrol expansion at higher temperatures. The technology is there if they buy temperature ajusted petrol. Also If it is true that the petrol vapour gets sucked up and re-condensed, perhaps there ought to be a 'buy back' adjustment fitted as well.
It may only amount to 1p a litre, but if you are filling your car with 50 litres thats 50p. Multiply that by 1000 cars it comes to £500.00
I am going to guestimate this as a loss of £80,000,000.00 of 'slippage' in the UK per annum. So we are being done out of something like 60 million litres of fuel a year skimmed off us at the petrol pump.
I have no idea if these figures are correct, it is just a 'wild one' from me. It would be realy interesting to know if trading standards already know about this if it is a problem!
Here are some petrol saving tips;
http://www.talktalk.co.uk/money/features/car_fuel_economy.html
Heres a nice bit of general techie info; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption