So I was watching jimindenvers channel for the first time the other day. Quick shout out this guy has a brilliant mind.
In one video he was demonstrating 2 of his solar ovens. I have heard of them before but never seen one in person and had never seen one on a video.
When I was younger and the internet didnt really have videos much to speak of I got into the hippie mindset and looked through a lot of blogs about minimalist living and so forth. And found a few articles on them. But the consensus was they were incredibly difficult to use. Expensive unreliable and inefficient.
But Jim cooked up some food in a few hours for free from rays of sunshine. So I went thru his link to amazon. Pump the breaks. Outta my price range unless it also serves me and cleans up after itself.
I got to browsing the interwebs and found some DIY solar ovens. The simplest one was 2 cardboard boxes from home depot insulated with newspaper and a sheet of glass as a lid. It achieved 200° if you believe the poster.
Then i found another guy. He built one out of particle board, aluminum, formaldehyde free insulation, velcro, and a spare sheet of window glass. 450° temps in California summer. With thermometer proof and multiple videos using it over the course of several months.
So I wanna build one. The kid with the cardboard oven had it on a lazy Susan swivel so he could follow the sun without disturbing the contents too much. A good idea.
This is my idea. A wooden box inside a wooden box filled with spray foam expanding insulation (unless that's toxic) the lid at an angle and the inside sprayed down with high temp black grill paint. A hinged plexiglass lid with rubber gasket and latch. 4 plexiglass panels one the sides treated with mirror effect spray paint as reflectors. Sitting on a lazy Susan swivel.
I havent found anyone giving specs in their DIY videos. Just approximations. The angle of the lids look to be around 40-45° the reflectors no idea on the angle. I suppose I'd have to play with it a little. And see which angle works best. But I'm stuck. The door window would need to be fairly large and obviously id like the biggest reflectors but an 8X10 piece of plexiglass is fairly cheap. I'd think the reflectors would need to be oriented longways for max sunlight but then that would only have 8" along each side of the oven and there would be gaps.
Also how deep should it be inside to cook chamber? I'm thinking the smaller the better. Less air to heat up, but also less thermal mass in the way of black paint to help soak up the light energy.
Am I over thinking this or underthinking it?
Have you built one yourself?
In one video he was demonstrating 2 of his solar ovens. I have heard of them before but never seen one in person and had never seen one on a video.
When I was younger and the internet didnt really have videos much to speak of I got into the hippie mindset and looked through a lot of blogs about minimalist living and so forth. And found a few articles on them. But the consensus was they were incredibly difficult to use. Expensive unreliable and inefficient.
But Jim cooked up some food in a few hours for free from rays of sunshine. So I went thru his link to amazon. Pump the breaks. Outta my price range unless it also serves me and cleans up after itself.
I got to browsing the interwebs and found some DIY solar ovens. The simplest one was 2 cardboard boxes from home depot insulated with newspaper and a sheet of glass as a lid. It achieved 200° if you believe the poster.
Then i found another guy. He built one out of particle board, aluminum, formaldehyde free insulation, velcro, and a spare sheet of window glass. 450° temps in California summer. With thermometer proof and multiple videos using it over the course of several months.
So I wanna build one. The kid with the cardboard oven had it on a lazy Susan swivel so he could follow the sun without disturbing the contents too much. A good idea.
This is my idea. A wooden box inside a wooden box filled with spray foam expanding insulation (unless that's toxic) the lid at an angle and the inside sprayed down with high temp black grill paint. A hinged plexiglass lid with rubber gasket and latch. 4 plexiglass panels one the sides treated with mirror effect spray paint as reflectors. Sitting on a lazy Susan swivel.
I havent found anyone giving specs in their DIY videos. Just approximations. The angle of the lids look to be around 40-45° the reflectors no idea on the angle. I suppose I'd have to play with it a little. And see which angle works best. But I'm stuck. The door window would need to be fairly large and obviously id like the biggest reflectors but an 8X10 piece of plexiglass is fairly cheap. I'd think the reflectors would need to be oriented longways for max sunlight but then that would only have 8" along each side of the oven and there would be gaps.
Also how deep should it be inside to cook chamber? I'm thinking the smaller the better. Less air to heat up, but also less thermal mass in the way of black paint to help soak up the light energy.
Am I over thinking this or underthinking it?
Have you built one yourself?