Diy cabinet food dehydrator

I'm looking into building myself a cabinet / small dishwasher size dehydrator for bulk drying vegetables and fruit. Also for experimenting with making sunchoke, squash, other random tuber flour. I live in the pacific northwest on the coast so solar drying won't work.

The hard part is figuring out the best way to heat it. I'm wondering if I can use a mini ceramic heater? Amazon has their Amazon basic mini ceramic heater that is cheap, comes with a fan and a temperature controller already. I'll add at least one other fan.

Have you thought about using your oven?  That is what I have used in the past.

Since I cant answer your question I found these threads that you or others might find intereting:

https://permies.com/t/4676/Wood-fired-food-dehydrator

https://permies.com/t/212945/permaculture-upcycling/Food-warmer-dehydrator

I hope some folks will chime in to answer your question.

Hi Ellanor,
I just used a dehumidifier. It dries slower, but for most things, this is not a problem. It produces heat while taking moisture out of the air. Not really a "heater", but it works well. I wrote about it in this thread.

https://permies.com/t/267758/create-small-drying-room

That dehumidifier seems like a great idea.
If the extracted water went into an insulated reservoir you could use it to maintain the heat inside the dehydrator by passing it through a radiator like this one:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Y+jgQU9fL._AC_SL1500_.jpg