Opening Day: BioFuel Oasis’ New Home

May 1st 2009 represented 2 years of permitting, funding and construction come to term.   We feel like a five-headed mother who has given birth, so tomorrow, on Mother’s day, we are  getting together and celebrating Oasis Mother’s day.   For the first time in years we all have the same day off (on Sundays our automated fueling cardlock system works and we don’t!)

Our first day was cold and rainy and warm and fuzzy.

The fence was taken down early in the morning..giving the site a totally new feel.

Novella’s goat was giving birth so she showed up later.  Our local council person, Daryl Moore stopped by.

Cars and trucks pulled in to fuel and everything worked correctly, phew!

Our store was opened…

and we happily served our customers

Thanks to everyone who came by and brought flowers, cookies, cards and congratulations!!

 

End of an Era

The last day at our Fourth Street shop, as jennifer said: “a dark cave with a lot of heart”.  Then it was over to Ashby for finishing touches until after dark…

We passed our FINAL INSPECTION the day before opening- Phew!

 

Countdown..2 days until Opening

No time to write much.  Just some images of our recent finishing work

 

 

 

 

 

Using every last screw

 

 

 

Floor, You are Radiant

Our floor is a radiant beauty and a radiant heat source.  The idea of radiant heating is to transfer heat into a large thermal mass that will hold it, and radiate it out over time.  Once I thought about it, blowing hot air into a room is just that when it comes to efficiency: blowing hot air.  It’s like a rock in the desert that is still warm after dark or a stove that you’ve cooked on that still feels hot after it’s off.   Interior hydronic radiant heat works by passing heated water through pipes that are in the floor.  Because heat rises, the floor makes the most sense as a place to put those pipes.

The coolest thing is: we are going to heat the water for these pipes in a generator (no gas lines to the property) that runs on…Biodiesel!

Pouring a new floor made sense in order to comply with ADA (wheelchair) accessibility issues at our store. Ahh…sweet new floor.

We took the opportunity to add some personal touches.  These tiles represent the 7 worker-owners of the BioFuel Oasis since it began in 2003.

 

Women to Watch Magazine Article

Photo by Alex Farnum

Some nice coverage of our efforts as part of the May feature article in a local publication: Diablo Magazine.

We call this year’s Women to Watch “Entrepreneurs With Heart” because each started a business that has meaning—to them personally and to other people. Sure, they’d like to make money, but they mostly want to pursue their own ideas to help other people and do some good in the world.

This spring, in the weeks before opening what they call the “most sustainable filling station in the nation,” the owners of Biofuel Oasis in Berkeley were smoothing gravel in trenches they had dug themselves. In one trench, they had laid pipe to carry the biodiesel—made from recycled cooking oil—from a storage tank to their station’s two new fuel pumps.The term “sweat equity” certainly applies to the effort these eco-entrepreneurs have put into refurbishing a historic 1933 gas station on Ashby Avenue. Because their worker-owned collective has a limited budget, they have done much of the trench digging and other construction themselves.

“We learned to do all this crazy man stuff,” says Novella Carpenter, who, like her four sister “biodevas,” has a white-collar day job—she’s a journalist. (Their spelling of devas is a nod to forest spirits.) “We’re all in much better shape. We call it the Oasis gym.”

Literally building the business is one of the empowering aspects of this operation, which they know won’t make them rich. “It’s like growing your own food. It involves a lot of work, so it becomes more precious,” Carpenter says.

Biofuel Oasis started in 2003 in a warehouse off Fourth Street. Founder Jennifer Radtke and another woman, who has since left the business, wanted to provide greater access to biodiesel, an alternative fuel that is cleaner than diesel. The operation now has around 2,700 customers and the five biodevas: Carpenter and Radtke, as well as Margaret Farrow, Ace Anderson, and Melissa Hardy.

In addition to digging trenches, building canopies to shelter the fueling pumps, and having solar panels installed, the women also overhauled their building to accommodate a shop that sells biodiesel supplies, and an area where they can hold classes on alternative fuels and urban farming. The women’s prior DIY experience involved raising their own chickens, rabbits, and bees.

They envision becoming a hub for locals who want to explore green lifestyle alternatives. “Our whole thing is to be a small business so we know our customers,” Carpenter says. “We want this building to be a community fabric that holds people together.”  —Martha Ross

 

Solar Panels: only for the rich?

We were so disappointed when we found out that 30% “back” of the cost of our solar PV install was in the form of a tax “credit”.  Our 4 Kw system cost $25,000 so were were looking foward to about $8K.

Turns out, according to the Commercial Solar ITC (Investment Tax Credit) we needed a tax appetite for at least $8K to take advantage of this credit.

All my chatter about what scroungers we are is not bullshit.  We have cobbled together the funds, banked hours, took two loans along with owing our general contractor money still.  So, how in the world were we going to be profitable with this capital intensive project?!  Breaking even for the year barely, we owe no taxes! We can’t take advantage of $8,000 in credit on taxes! And certainly, there was no $8,000 check coming. The sinking ship feeling was overwhelming ….enter here: Barack Obama.

Written into Obama’s stimulus bill is a provision that enables ITC-eligible projects to instead receive a cash grant of equivalent value. CASH GRANT?! If I didn’t think Obama was dreamy already (significantly cutting military spending yesterday)–he is going to save the day at the BioFuel Oasis! Thanks to my friends at Vote Solar, Claudia Eyzaguirre and Annie Carmichael, I have been assured that before the end of the year we will see some money.  Once again: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 says that commercial Solar PV systems put into service or that begin construction in 2009 or 2010 will be able to elect the equivalent cash grant rather than the ITC itself.

Sunlight and Power, a local Berkeley company who uses our Biodiesel to drive their trucks  did the installation.

Our solar installers above and below.  One of the coolest things going on in the solar industry right now is the Green Collar Jobs movement.  The idea is that the green economy is a growing sector with an amazing opportunity to re-tool blue-collar workers with skills in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and green building.

Our meter turned backwards when it was commissioned in March!The box on the wall that looks like a microwave is our inverter– it changes the electricity from DC to AC and it displays how much energy we are producing at a time.  This Sunday, I looked over and we were crankin’ out 3.5KW –more than we were using, so our meter was turning backwards–we were giving energy back to the grid.

Our Solar Panels are mounted on the canopies over the pump islands because the roof of the building is ceramic tile and well, a wierd shape.

On the canopy with margaret, the calk  gun, the gutters, and solar pv panel.

Roger, the project manager and long time BioFuel Oasis customer, inspects the installation atop the canopies.

 

Number 1

Our “Number 1″ (out of 2,791) customer, a retiree who has filled with us for 5 years, was also the first to fill his tank at a pre-opening event at our new station.  Not planned at all, we laughed when he pulled up!

These pre-opening events are to train people on our new after-hours credit card payment system.

I know, I know! It looks like an ATM machine from 1985! Oh Well. BioFuel Oasis walks the line: Futuristic in some areas and Retro in others.

Another pre-opening event this Sunday April 5th.  We will also be planting california natives, moving compost around and eating doughnuts. Come on by!

 

Oasis Family Portrait

 

Ready, Set…Rain?!

Mother Nature trumps all. She does.  February was a wonderful month for California’s reservoirs and BioFuel Oasis’ mud pits. See Novella standing on the shores of Lake inferior above–Lake superior is behind the building.

It is natural and we are dealing with the reality that progress slows when it rains for weeks.  We get done what we can.

our card reader got wired up during the rains

Solar Panel installation began under  a stormy sky

A little drizzle does not stop Ace from her favorite new tool–yeah, that’s a jackhammer!

Some days nothing much happens..the site is quiet and kinda sad in the rains

The tank wrapped in a tarp

 

Construction Photos of the day

We are tired

The Pumps got turned on!

Pump set-up specialist reads the manual while the Solar panel installers take their lunch