Solar Cooking Fail

This picture is my attempt at cooking acorn squash in my solar cooker.  I bought nice dark colored squash thinking that this would be best for absorbing the sunlight.  I also thought that at 2:00 in the afternoon there would still be enough sunlight to cook this squash.  I was wrong on either one or both of these ideas.  I'm not sure which, but if I had to guess, the fact that I waited until two to put the squash out was the biggest problem.  Squash like this takes a long time to cook and the sun isn't really that hot much after 4:00ish.  I should have started this between 9:00 and 10:00.  I would think that six hours of cooking is what it needed.  I'm not entirely sure how much effect the lack of pan had on my poor results as well.  I noticed that the black pans both put off and retain quite bit of heat throughout the cooking process.  I'm sure the dark colored squash would get warmer than light colored squash, but probably not warm enough.  I also need to invest in an oven thermometer so that I can see how hot this cooker is really getting.  Cooking beans and squash it doesn't matter a ton if I over or under cooke them just a little bit.  If I start getting into more complicated dishes then I will need to be more precise.  Oh well, I learned a lot through this failure.

Solar clothes dryer

The less electricity you use, the less you have to pay for.  The less you have to pay for, the less you have to work at your 9-5 job, even though I'm sure you love it.  The less you have to work at your 9-5 job, the more time you have to work on your homestead.  The more ways you find to save money on things you don't really need, the closer you are to giving up that job entirely.  So what I'm saying is that you should give up your clothes dryer for a solar powered version.
A dryer uses about 4 kW per hour to run.  A kWh on my electric bill costs about 14 cents.  If you do 5 loads of clothes per week, it is costing you $11.20 per month to run your dryer.  That is $134.40 per year to dry your clothes.  That may not seen like it is really very much, but it is free to just hang up your clothes.  It also leads to much less wear and tear on your clothes which means they will last much longer and you won't have to buy new ones as often.
Is it really worth the effort? It may not be to someone living in the city, but if your ultimate goal is to build a house and live off grid, then yes it is.  Off grid means that you are relying on wind or solar power to run your house.  You are no longer looking at dollar value placed on running the dryer, but how much electricity you will need and how much you have available.  If your house runs on solar, and it has been a cloudy week, what do you really want to use that electricity for?  Drying clothes or maybe running your fridge?

Solar cooker building

My solar cooker was easy enough to build, that is, if I did it right.  All there is to my new cooker is two cardboard boxes plus scrap cardboard, tin foil, duct tape, glass or plastic, and newspaper.
You take the first (smaller) box and cover it inside and out with aluminum foil.  Do this first because you have to wait for the glue to dry.

Cooking chamber with tin foil

This smaller box is going to be your cooking chamber, so be sure that your pot or pan will fit in nicely.  There should not be too much space between the top of the box and the top of the pan as this will waste heat.  The pan should be black to help absorb sunlight.  A short fat pan is better than a tall skinny pan, greater surface area directed at the sun helps absorb more sunlight also.

Cardboard stacks and some newspaper

While you are waiting for the glue to dry, make some small stacks of cardboard about 3"x3"x2" to put between the two boxes so you can fill the space with crumpled newspaper for insulation. The first box now goes inside the larger box, sitting on the cardboard stacks, with the crumpled newspaper filling in all the gaps between the two.  This insulation should be closed in by more cardboard.  I duct taped it all around to get a pretty good seal.

The first side taped and the newspaper all around

The glass or plastic is going to be the lid to your cooker. It sits on top of the whole box you just finished and it covers the pan and cooking area.   It has to be cleat to keep the heat in while letting the sun shine through.  I used an old storm window I found.  The last step is to cover one more piece of cardboard with aluminum foil to function as a reflective backboard.  It gets propped up at an angle to reflect the sun into your cooking area.  Done!

Finished product minus the glass

Pretty ugly, isn't it?

Cooking with sunshine

Have you ever wanted to bake when it was 100 degrees outside?  Maybe you needed a cake for a summer birthday or some other crazy reason.  Either way it is way too hot to be baking, unless you have central air.  I don't.  I am also always looking for ways to save money on electricity or just some strange new project to try.  So I bought this book.   This book teaches you how to build some simple solar cookers and how to use them.  It is full of recipes at varying levels of difficulty.  The recipes all seem fairly easy, I guess that difficulty level means how many hours of good sunlight they need to work well.  Either way, this is going to be my project for the next few days.  We'll see how it goes.