This is less of an adventure, and more of a construction report, but it aids my adventuring, so I decided it was blog-worthy. A friend and I built a solar dehydrator out of beer cans. I was toying with the idea of building a dehydrator, maybe with a lamp, maybe with a desiccated toaster, maybe with solar heat. A few google searches later determined that solar heat was very do-able, and in fact very cheap.
We picked up a shelf structure, curbside, and commenced planning how to turn it into a solar dehydrator. A few google searches, videos, and picture mash-ups later, we hatched a plan to connect several beer cans into metal tubes to heat up air and channel it into a drying chamber. Scrap-gathering turned up almost all the materials we needed, then a quick trip to a building materials recycling center completed the set.
We picked up a shelf structure, curbside, and commenced planning how to turn it into a solar dehydrator. A few google searches, videos, and picture mash-ups later, we hatched a plan to connect several beer cans into metal tubes to heat up air and channel it into a drying chamber. Scrap-gathering turned up almost all the materials we needed, then a quick trip to a building materials recycling center completed the set.
The first batch was tomatoes and carrots, then we threw in some apples. Next up will be onions and garlic. Bring on the sunshine!
