Want To Look Like You Are Out Of This World?

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Create some solar cookers

By setting up some solar ovens in your yard, will the aliens feel right at home?

Seriously, although having solar ovens in your yard may look weird, the number of solar collectors is increasing as people in different areas of the world design them to fit their climate and their needs. There are 3 basic types of slow cookers: box cookers, panel cookers and parabolic cookers. In addition there is a fourth type used to pasteurize water. The cone is effective in that after the evaporated water collects on the walls of the cone it is inverted and collected in a bottle. Voila! You have fresh drinking and cooking water. What also works well is the Soda Bottle Pasteurizer , which is made from its name as in that after the evaporated water collects on the walls of the cone it is inverted well as a soda pop can, all put on a panel type cooker. The water needs to be heated to 158 degrees for 15 minutes or more.

Solar ovens are said to be slow to medium cookers when compared to our modern day gas and electric stoves and ovens. The fastest types are the Parabolic cookers, but since they focus the sunâs rays down to a point, they can be extremely dangerous. Here, you can set fire to a piece of paper in 3 minutes. Definitely not something you would want to store in a hot shed on a sunny day.

Two very fast and efficient solar cookers are the Heavens Flame cooker, Cookit Foldable Family Panel and the Parvati 12 sided cooker. (Of course, fast in terms of that the CooKit takes 70 minutes to hard boil or cook an egg.) The Heavens Flame cooker is a box cooker that has an adaptation on the front reminiscent of a funnel type of panel cooker. The box part is either square or rectangular and is called the collector. The interior of the box is painted black with non-toxic paint and glass canning or recycled jars and/or small dark pots are placed inside the collector. The top part is all funnel reflectors. Although this Heavens Flame cooker is a little more complicated to make, it has the advantageous of a lot of testing done on it and improvements incorporated into the design to make it very efficient in its cooking.

The Parvati 12 sided cooker , although a panel cooker has some of the designing of a parabolic cooker. Hence it should be very fast but I would be careful to use handmitts when entering the cook zone as it should be very hot and it does not have a long funnel to protect the person like the Solar Funnel panel cooker has.

Enter stage right are the panel cookers that take panels of aluminum foil, usually put onto cardboard and either fold them or put them together at different angles. The principle here is to allow the unhindered rays of the sun to bounce onto the panels until it reaches a black object that would collect its energy. Pure sun is needed here and that high in the sky between 10am and 2 pm. After this time retentive cooking can be used. This involves wrapping the cooking pot or jar in layers of either small blankets or towels and putting in a straw round and deep basket to allow the food to keep cooking outside of the solar oven.

Each solar cooker has been developed to meet a unique situation. In KwaZulu-Natal, they have summers that are cloudy and winters that are sunny. (Sounds like a lot of areas I know.) The Pentagon Star panel cooker is one of the simplest to make and very efficient. The lower angles of the sun in the morning and afternoon are adjusted for as well. Wind is not a problem for the Pentagon Star cooker and putting side flaps up or down allows for different changes in the season. In addition it uses some box leftover pieces as pot insulation, which very few panel cookers take advantage of.

Another special solar cooker is the Backpack Cone Cooker It is made of plastic instead of cardboard, is in the shape of a long cone that focuses where the sun is at and is propped up against a rock or put into the ground. When time to head out of camp, you simply roll it up. Soups only take 20 minutes. Not bad at all for a solar cooker.

A safety caution is needed here. The parabolic designs concentrate sunlight to a point, while the funnel cookers have the hot axis of sunlight concentration deep within the cone. In any case, looking at any reflective surface for any period of time necessitates the usage of sunglasses. So when you do use and/or make solar ovens, please wear dark polarized sunglasses and you shouldnât have any problems-only enjoyment from what the sun has cooked for you.

In this day of high gas and electric prices, cooking using the free energy of the sun is looking more and more attractive all the time. Also, who can beat the inexpensive construction of most solar cookers invented today.

[yordan 10]

Very interesting topi. I would really know how hot a "usual family" solar oven effectively is, and how much time would be necessary in order to, let's say, cook a chicken or a couple of potatoes.