Recent content by Brian in Victoria BC

I finally got in supports for large trays today. I have enough stainless steel wire for 4 trays, plus I can use the 2 little trays I already have, so there should be a vast productivity increase! Just have to build those trays! (I think they are 2 to 3 times the area of the trays I already have!)

Here it is in dehydrator mode. I am still working things out. I have been going chunky to dehydrate (saves a lot of fiddling about. In this case, the beans became really tiny, but still were nice, and the plums needed more time. But things didn't last long so I think they were good!

Thanks, I have been spending the last few months steaming soil. I just kept it simple, and used the 14 liter pot with about 2 liters of water in a chamber in the bottom to make the steam. Last year, my pot was 7 liters, it was in a turkey bag and I left it the whole day on the solar cooker...

I have done a lot of solar steamed soil over the last few months, and I've got a procedure and technique going now. Maybe solar steamed soil (and weeds) can be a bit like a replacement for "slash and burn agriculture". The advantage is that it saves the biomass. I don't like the concept of...

Hi, I have done 3 "boil tests" over the last few months. You heat 10 kg of water to over 90C and measure the speed of heating. First one I didn't have the sun well focused on the pot (pot was too high and I had to rebuild the frame that it was on. Second one, I used a fancy thermometer, but...

I was steaming soil in the solar cooker (kills off weed seeds, etc.) and 20% growth boost for lettuce seedlings. I have heavy clay soil, so I added grass clippings, etc. for a bit more organic matter and to leave space for water at the bottom of the cook pot. But, the focus gets hot, and it...

The model has roughly 1 sq ft reflector area. I think that would be ok for a school project. There are lots of plastic Fresnel lenses of similar size. I think just making a lens of that size using plastic plates from the dollar store might empower the children. Making the entire model...

Hi Sophie The target spot is at the axis of rotation and the target spot stationary. The reason for the offset paraboloid is so that there is easy access to the target spot at all times. The amount of power used for tracking is tiny. Instead of a motor to run the rotation, I use an Airlift...

I ended up with the strips here and a tiny amount of wasted material, in the little pile at front. Then I used strong construction tape called Tuck Tape to stick them together.

So, I started with the strip for mirror 1 and did its outer and inner radius, I drew the outer radius of mirror strip to the inside edge of mirror 2, then its inner edge, and repeated until I had the 8 mirror strips marked. Then I took a strong scissors and cut them out.

I Went for a 15 cm (about 6 inch) diameter target where all the rays would come together as a ball of light. (I used a 1 to 5 scale so a circle of 15 cm was actually 3 cm wide). I drew a circle of 15 cm diameter for the target, then from the right edge of the target I drew 9 vertical lines 15 cm...

My solar cooker is a DIY proof of concept. Ideally it should be made with a metal frame but I can't do that so it is wood with protective aluminum foil. The idea is to concentrate the light in a 6 inch diameter ball near the bottom of the cooking pot. It is called Sun Scoop because even...

I had adjusted the model down to do the declination, instead of up. So in the demonstration, the spot of heat would have been more concentrated and hotter if I had done it correctly.

I made the model to make sure no material was wasted when scaling up. And it was set up very quickly. A few days later, I noticed a glaring mistake in the set up! Hint: it is equatorial mount and it was around April 4th. Can you spot my mistake?

I "designed" this idea over a decade ago but never build a working model. The idea is to make something much simpler and easier to use than typical parabolic dish solar cookers. The biggest issue is that people use the full dish and then it is very easy to get a flash of sunlight in your eyes...