At Oxford we have a quite a fleet of power boats covering safety and committtee boat duties.   There has been a suggestion that we could make savings on our fuel bills (around £5K per annum) by converting our boats to run on LPG (gas).  Anybody out there got any experience of this? (I understand some ski clubs running big V8 ski boats have gone down this road)

All our engines are outboards with a mixture of  4 stroke and 2T types. The 2Ts are mainly oil injection. Appreciate it would not be practical to consider conversion of the petroil 2T engines. 

Areas of concern are:

* Shoreside storage.

* tank filling/transfer and safety/skills needed.

*power loss

*consumption increase vs petrol.

*weight of tanks

*how monitor content to avoid running out!

*explosion hazard(though most of our boats are open dory types)

*anything else?

*commercial availabilty of conversions and likely cost per engine.

Thoughts would be appreciated. Via E Mail ( mailto:BOBASHBY1@aol.com or forum.r - BOBASHBY1@aol.com) or forum.r

Points to consider,

Firstly it won't be cost effective to convert an old low powered out board, secondly make sure the club treasurer is claiming the VAT back on the petrol. Thirdly check the Clubs' insurance policy before even going down the road of storing/using LPG.

We're fortunate enough to have fairly new Suzuki 50 4 strokes on our Club boats, and they're very economical and quiet, using almost half the fuel of the 2 strokes they replaced. This a shore based club so the engines get more use than a pond, a 5k bill sound a bit steep, are people jollying around in them? Perhaps the Club should keep a log incase fuel is straying in to someones car!

This is quite common, I've known a club sack their rescueman for this!

You must spend a shedload of cash on fuel if you reckon you can save £5000 by running lpg!

It probably wouldn't be worth it though. You'd need to install an LPG pump on site and typically a car costs £3000 to convert. I reckon you'd be looking at about £900-£1250 to convert boats. Plus you wouldn't be able to claim back the government powershift grant. LPG will increase in price soon anyhow.

If this is a genuine area of concern, I think it would be worth investigating diesel engines and running on red diesel.

At sunsail we had a 90hp 2 stroke which could get through 25litres in a morning on safety. We had get get by without it since the fuel cost was too much.

I agree with others that those plastic fantastic safety boats are awful. Avoid at all costs!

Thanks Phat Buoy. We are in touch with Dave Wedge but it is useful to get as much info as possible about this subject and investigate all the potential problems. 

Interesting the way these forums go off subject!!  

The standard response these days always seems to be cant do it because of "insurance".

 We have a three plastic fantastics and they are quite decent boats on our large and exposed lake. The little tiller steer ones are great for windsurf recovery because they are low and clear in the front. Seem to be pretty durable though a problem to patchup if you put hol;es in them. Also have a medium sized one that skips along nicely at 22kts with a centre console on 25 hp. Comfortable to sit in unlike old dories which make my ankles seize up!l Carries weight well too with a crewand recovered sailors. A bit wet at times but not half as wet as on off the plane Searider 4.5 RIB.

Plenty of houses seem to have above ground LPG bulk tanks for heating..

As said earlier our sea going boats have 3 suzuki 50 4 strokes and are used Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. I'm sure our annual petrol bill is less than 3 grand, our boats have a mile and half run from the marina to get to the club race area. again check the VAT thing is being done, and keep a log for each boats' fuel use. Reciepts for fuel don't necessarily mean it's going in to the boat!

Good  Luck!

Dont get too hung up on our fuel bill size. We are a large club running about 10 power boats (not neccesarlly all at the same time)364 days year with sail training,power boat training, windsurfing, team racing not to mention dinghy sailing, club racing opens etc sometimes all at the same time! (we have two lakes available) .

Its a good piece of water for an inland club (and better than some coastal venues !) 

The size of the spend does make it look useful to investigate savings though.

Agree that 4 strokes are more economical than 2Ts but they do seem to suffer badly from scale build up and overheating in our hard fresh water environment. This is more expensive to rectify on a 4T than a 2T because of the greater complexity of the 4t.  Seems that soon there wont be much of a choice as I gather most 2ts will be phased out soon as they wont meet emission regs. An engine rebuild pays for quite a lot of petrol!

We have tried periodically flushing the engines through by running in a bucket of kettle descaler( at a dilute solution!) which seems to help with plenty of fizz occuring!.

Red diesel is, almost by definition, tax-free and there is no proposal to abolish that. There is however a proposal to stop use recreational use of marine red diesel. The arguments are still going on and it is unclear which way it will go. 

That's right; farmers and fishermen. And by an amazing coincidence, lots of MPs own agricultural land.

Hang on min..... £5000 on fuel. Have you checked nobody is nicking it, fiddleing your bill etc. That is crazy. When you say a fleet do you need a 'fleet/armada' of motors on the lake to enable sail powered boats to race.

I don't believe its true, but if it is, the easiest way to save money is not run your power craft so much. Look a simple ways to reduce the mileage......: such a counting the mileage, and then making people accountable for it. Ensuring people who always need rescue help, can self rescue so they don't need it. Getting the rescue crew to moor and then use binoculars to spot trouble. Your on a lake so use an existing buoy as ODM, or none at all with plenty of port bias. Then count the finishers from the shore. Prevention is cure, but you need to make your club aware, most people don't put that much in their 200hp daily used cars.

Hi combat wombat, sorry to contradict you on so many points, but that's what forums are for I guess.

LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) is not expensive to keep, does not require underground storage, it is kept under pressure though. Any of the bulk gas suppliers (Flogas, Countrywide, Calor and many more) will be pleased to supply a bulk tank of maybe 1000 litres capacity for a nominal annual rental dependant on gas usage. Portable tanks do exist, although it would be daft to buy the LPG from a road fuel supplier and pay 47p/lt duty on it, when as a lake user you don’t need to pay duty at all, and only 5% VAT. The bulk tanks come complete with an idiot proof filling nozzle, level gauge, and dispensing pump. Gas used by this method can be bought for around 30p/lt plus 5% VAT.

Domestic heating is regularly achieved using either diesel (heating oil) or LPG (propane) but the boilers and plumbing are quite different for each option.

Your figures for power and fuel consumption are way off too. Power is not affected so long as the conversion fuel metering hardware does not compromise air flow into the engine, many do. LPG is of a higher octane value than petrol. LPG has a marginally lower calorific value than petrol, but try measuring that on a boat!  Consumption using LPG is increased by as much as 25%, but this only means that you would reduce your range by that amount, and the benefit in cost of 30p/lt against petrol at 95p/lt is a bit obvious, (ok petrol is about 80p/lt if you get the VAT back) Hmmm.

All that aside… LPG is the fuel of choice for many ski lakes in their V8 chevy powered tow boats, and I recon if they suffered significant power losses they might not use it!

Thanks for your thoughts Zarniwhoop.  Do you have any knowledge as to wether an oil injection 2 stroke will operate satisfactorily on gas?  Does the gas transport the lubricant to the important little places in he same way as  petrol?

(I am sure that the older petroil mix engines cannot be made to operate  on gas as there will be no way to introduce or mix the lubricant satisfactorily or practicably.)

Any idea on what installation /rental costs likely to be for a tank?

Bob, just to take Country wide as an example, I don't think that they charge for installation, but you would have to prepare your site to their requirements; concrete pad, at least 3m from another building, 32amp single phase electric supply, and so on. From there it is £37.50 a quarter for a 2000lt tank on an annual contract, plus the cost of the gas.

Oil injection 2st on gas depends on how good the oil injection system is in the first place. If it mixes oil with petrol just by dribbling it into the incoming fuel, then no. If it is sprayed into the crankcase by a little pressure pump on the engine, then probably yes. Pre-mix 2st you're right... forget it, but you will probably phase those out soon anyway!