Very likely C2 grade heating oil, sometimes called kerosene in England. Some of us use it in pressure stoves and lanterns outdoors, where the extra sulphur content is less of an issue.
I actually bought a Jerry can of the stuff from Hammerton Street a year or two back for a greenhouse heater, but still haven’t got round to using it yet. Can you tell by the look and smell, what grade of “kerosene” it is?
If the sulfur content is high enough you can definitely smell it in the raw fuel. Standard petroleum scent alone without a sharp scent, it's possibly the good stuff. If it has an acrid stink to it, especially one that lingers on your hands, it'll be high sulfur. Sulfur levels can be low enough to not smell in the raw fuel but still stink like crazy when burned in a flat wick lamp or lantern. Aladdins or pressure appliances seem to burn anything relatively scent free. Here in the USA, pump diesel is allowed 15ppm of sulfur while jet-A is allowed 400-800ppm sulfur. Diesel smells like petroleum, jet-A raw fuel will singe your nosehairs.
It's a bit of a challenge, identifying by looks probably not, C1 paraffin is likely to be clearer in colour than C2 heating oil, which sometimes has yellow dyes (or blue or occasionally green). But C1 can yellow with age! The smell of C2 is stronger, but C1 can fairly quickly also adopt a strong smell depending on the type of container it is stored in. If you burn some and note a strong sulphur smell, it's C2, use outdoors. Much higher sulphur content, and higher permitted levels of ash, lead, etc. Edited- in the UK C2 is max 1000PPM sulphur content, although a lot of it is much lower than this, and some suppliers advertise much lower contents. I've had real variety over the years, but it's usually less smelly, yo know when you get really strong stuff as mentioned above!
Interesting tidbit, here in the states K1 kero is allowed up to 400ppm sulfur content. No1 diesel fuel is allowed up to 15ppm sulfur content. Most of the other specs of the fuels overlap, but this means that no1 diesel fuel can be better kerosene than kerosene is.
I missed the closeout of Crown white gas at Wallies, but I caught the deeply discounted Crown K1 Kerosene, they had shelves of the gallon jugs for $5/gallon. I just looked and it is back up to $12/gal. Good thing I stocked up. The Crown kero in jugs is noticeably cleaner than the stuff I get at the pump, and at $5/gallon it was cheaper to boot.
Hi all. Im in Rainham, Kent. Berengrave service station, on the lower Rainham Rd, has a pump delivering parraffin. Colin
They stoped for a while (a year?) as the pump broke down. Its all now fixed & the parraffin seems good. Colin
Is it C1 ir C2? The petrol station near me sells C2 for heating. I wouldn't use it in a stove or lamp.
All I know is, its sold as parraffin. It looks smells & burns as it should. I use it in stoves, Tilleys, a Bialladin bowl heater, & numerous blowlamps. I do use heating oil in my workshop heater & its definitely not the same as that. Colin
Berengrave's website states it is premium paraffin, so will be C1, current price £1.92/l. Plenty of people use it in pressure stoves/pressure lanterns, with no issues other than the increased smell from the higher sulphur content. Fine for outdoor use!
As an experiment, I've been running Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) in my "MADE IN USSR" stove that I use several times a week. It's one of my favorite "user" stoves...as it's never going to look pretty...and it just always works. (still has the original pump leather!) It does require additional preheating but burns well. It does tend to foul the nipple orifice more than kerosene / paraffin and does burn with more of an odor. I was fixin' to ask what y'all are paying for paraffin, but I see that was mentioned earlier: £1.92/l. Google says that equates to about $5.10 USD per gallon. Last time I bought kerosene at the pump here, it was $6/gallon and the pump didn't work properly. This was right before a very very cold snap where we actually had rolling blackouts, so maybe there was some increase in demand that drove up the price? This is "red" kerosene and the quality is very hit or miss. I ended up buying 2.5 gallon jugs of it at the local farm store for, I think, right at $6 USD per gallon...and it was water-clear and very high quality. ULSD is about $3.43 USD per gallon here. If I trust google's math, that's £0.68 per Liter. Others have mentioned using charcoal grill lighter fluid. This may be the best "alternative" option as it seems highly refined and burns excellent. My stoves love it...but it might have slightly lower output than kero/paraffin as I believe it's less energy dense. However, it's about $13 per gallon here, which again trusting Google's math, £2.55 per Liter. thanks much, ben
Local person seems to commute in their helicopter - can hear them fly low overhead in the evening and see it parked next to their barn maybe 1/2 mile away. They've got a big flat area and wind sock. Couple weeks ago they had a large tank on a trailer marked Jet A. Next time I need kero I'll be knocking on their door and asking if they'll sell me a few gallons. Wonder if they'd sell me their drain fuel, might be worth asking even though I don't need kero. Interesting stuff.
I used to burn a small portion of our daily fuel samples on field problems in the .mil. One morning as I was brewing up coffee some wänker from another unit was strolling by and demanded “What is that stove!!?”, as it was more of a declarative statement than any sort of question, I merely said “Yes.. Yes it is.” He did not like that answer very much, but realized he wasn’t getting anywhere with that line of approach (much less a cup of coffee) so he moved on and presumably, annoyed someone else with his amazing powers of deduction.
Dawson Oil in the Sacramento and north of Sac area sells kerosene and ultra low sulfur diesel as does Hunt and Sons. The branch of Dawson in Oroville will let you fill at their pumps without an account if it’s a once in blue moon thing. The Ace Hardware in Oroville also has a kerosene pump in the back. I’d suggest the surrounding communities (Gridley, Biggs, maybe Brownsville) have the same sorts of availability through their small local filling stations.
