Solar cookin at the Slabs

[Dennis The Bus Dweller]

Cookin it up

[/url]www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWE9QiTFufE

[Sharkey]

Oh Dang, a video. Too bad for us folks on dial-up service. Maybe you could explain what it shows. I can't imagine wanting to be at the slabs this time of year, though.

Been intending on putting together a solar cooker for a while now, but haven't gotten around to actually doing it. Makes a lot of sense to slow cook some food during the day without causing all that heat in the house. That and who wants to have to cook when the weather is outstanding? Making a sumptous meal without all the work is my idea of luxury.

Now what we need is a sloar dish washer...

[Dennis The Bus Dweller]

If I could figure out how to download it on to a CD id do it and send it to you. This old boy took an old BIG satellite dish and glued 3"x3" pieces of mirror and ended up harnessing some big time heat.

[Sharkey]

Hmmm, 3 meter dish = 7,000 watts, or 21,000 BTU's focused on a spot the size of a dime. Or if it was a 4 meter dish, 12.5kW @ 38,000 BTU. Nope, not what I was thinking of putting together. I envisioned a simple box cooker that a casserole or pot of rice could be left in for the day and enjoyed in the evening.

Parabolic cookers need to be exactly pointed at the sun ~and~ are a major fire hazard if left unattended around combustibles (like buildings, grass, trees, etc). Might be a fun project to use to make things into molten blob sculpture, but a bit overkill for baked potatoes.

[AccordGuy]

Not to mention the user burn hazard... My wife often burns her fingers and melts assorted plastic items on our halogen ceramic hobs. With a perfectly flat black surface that gets just occasionally red hot (when the halogen element is on) it's really easy to forget the surface is hot (especially as she had gas at her apartment). Imagine having an invisible "hot plate" at the focus of the concentrator beam. It's like microwave cooking with the front door removed!

Don't even think about looking in the pot and then lifting the pot off the focus and accidentally staring through the spot to the now unshielded concentrator - instant blindness awaits...

[Jones'n4chrome]

I just want to make a grilled cheese sandwich!

[Mark R. Obtinario]

Back in the day when I was in the Boy Scouts we played around with foil lined cardboard boxes.

On a good day in the summer you could cook just about anything in it. You would need a really good day here in the wet NW to cook anything substantial in the winter.