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Solar dehydrator plans in action - anyone love the one they built?

 
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As the subject line says, this is a thread about everyone's solar dehydrator builds and their relative wonderfulness. A neighbor of mine built a plan he found on the internet that is ***similar*** to Missoula/Wheaton style (tall cabinet at the back, long sun slope at the front) and it didn't work that well for him, although the concept looks so nice. I am hoping it was the details of that plan that was the issue (he got his for free off the internet) OR hoping to find out I should maybe go with a different type of plan OR to find a specific plan to try.  

We have supposedly 210 days per year of sun here, which is above the average, but we have high humidity also. I don't know what specifically my neighbor's build had for design failures, he just said it didn't dry the food well. I am tooling around with a modification of the Missoula/Wheaton style that has maybe some kind of forced air, or a more vigorous heat sink to create more heat vortex air circulation, but I don't have the spoons to build multiple models and am not an engineer, so I thought maybe finding a plan someone loved could be a better option for me. Characteristics I am especially looking for are: a design that *doesn't* need to be repositioned often across the year (if that is even physics-possible,) could be modified to use glass instead of plexiglass, and could be built from wood instead of plywood.

If you love, hate, or meh your build, please let us know what you think. Thank you!!
 
pollinator
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Location: South of Winona, Minnesota
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Here's a link to our solar food dryer design http://www.geopathfinder.com/Solar-Food-Drying.html. It's been working great since 1985 in the humid upper Midwest. Does not need supplemental fans, repositioning, can use glass and wood. The section of text that talks about "Why Build it This Way" discusses this design versus the stacked tray, box types. Check it out.
 
rocket scientist
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Location: latitude 47 N.W. montana zone 6A
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Hi Gina;
Here is a link to my dehydrator build.
A hillbilly version very similar in style to Larisa's  super nice ones.
https://permies.com/t/25688/kitchen/home-built-solar-food-dryer
 
steward
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Here is an interesting thread for using dried foods:

https://permies.com/t/174057/kitchen/Discovering-Joy-Powders

For others that might be looking into building a Solar Dehydrator these threads might be interesting:

https://permies.com/t/3562/tech/Solar-Food-Dryers

https://permies.com/t/71002/kitchen/built-Walk-Radiant-Solar-Dehydrator



 
Gina Smith
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Thank you both so much.  This design is so simple and elegant and relatively easy to build, I think I will try it.
 
Roses are red, violets are blue. Some poems rhyme and some don't. And some poems are a tiny ad.
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