Hi Ghung, et al.

Craig's post went up prior to his being notified. I'm sure he'll be signing in as soon as he reads his email. Hope you'll check back.

Reminds me of when we used to put an opened C ration can on the generator manifold, back in the day. Works on slightly popped beanie weanie cans, too.

I'm looking forward to trying the corner cue mirror solar oven. I had a solar cooker long ago, made from a styrofoam cooler lined with aluminum foil, an old piece of window glass and a small cast iron kettle. This really low tech cooker actually worked OK by just setting it on my deck in Seattle. Of course Seattle has a lot of sketchy weather so some days it didn't work at all. And it shredded eventually.

I'm sure you're familiar with this
http://www.weekendgardener.net/organic-weed-killer/solarization-100710.htm

ExMachinist,
Question one, no, haven't yet.
Question two, that picture (2nd from last was a mistaken post) this was an attempt to measure just how hot a single outer jar got, and/or to see if it would distill (probably not). I lost my notes on that one, but I think it got to about 130 degrees. But then a gallon at 130+ diluted with cold will make nice dishwashing water. Will try more measurements as it looks like we've finally got some good sun in the forcast.

Earldaily
I've got a 1 meter parabolic I pull out every so often. It DO get hot. It will discolor big spots on my nice dutch oven, and even put coloration on the pressure cooker. One time I forgot to reposition it and it burned up the plastic handle. It works great, but I think I will move the focus back farther away from the focal point to keep that intense heat from messing with my metal. Total heat gain should be the same but slower.
Been wanting to adjust the focus fine enough to heat up a nice old soldering copper I picked up at antique store.
What kind of temperatures do you want, and what to use it for? It may be that instead of water filled, air filled might give better performance, but I don't know much about physics....
Is your biogass to be from making charcoal, or from other organics like animal wastes?
Check out the mb-soft.com site for some of carl's(?) work on biomass heaters. He built one (2X5) that gives out an extraordinary amount of btu's from one filling of grass clippings. He claims enough to heat his house AND make domestic hot water, and it needs recharging every few days as it almost completely decomposes

I am very interested in finding some way to run our chainsaw and mower on alcohol. Does anyone think
that straight alcohol will
work without ruining the
engines? Should something
be mixed with the alcohol?

I despair when thinking of
cutting our winter supply
of wood by hand.

I am interested in building an insulated, covered parabolic cooker that will be mounted on a post permanently but so arranged that I can easily and quickly aim it toward the sun by hand.

I gather that aluminum foil will work fine for the reflector, and I have everything on hand except for the materials for the cover.

What materials are best suited to making the transparent cover?I doubt if I could cut safety glass but have never tried to do so.

How big will the cooker need to be to bring a gallon size black iron pot full of water to a boil in an hour in full sun on a clear day?

It is way too easy to justify not bothering with a solar cooker when you are busy to save only the amount of juice needed to cook a quart of soup or rice on the electric stove.Of course a time may comw when I don't have the dime, or the juice may be rationed as it is already in some parts of the world.

Being able to do a gallon, or even two or three gallons, opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities on hot summer days when the gardens are at full production and freezing and canning are underway..Not only would I save the electricity, but the kitchen would be cool enough to do the prep work comfortably with the stove off.

The electric dryer is a real juice sucker, but again the convenience argument holds-save a kilowatt hour, or maybe two or three kilowatt hours, still less than fifty cents, or spend ten or fifteen minutes minimum more time per load line drying the laundry?Only one young woman in this immediate nieghborhood will even babysit for six dollars an hour cash ,and that includes free snacks, movies, and bringing along her own toddler, so she is basically already babysitting anyway.

So I intend to build a labor efficient clothes line.

It will consist of a single post which will easily rotate, like a lazy susan,with the lines mounted on an inverted or point down conical framework.The bottom line will be only about three feet or so from the ground,and the next one maybe a foot higher and and somewhat longer, with each line being higher and longer until the last one is about six feet off the ground at the large end of the inverted cone.

A small work table,about two feet by three, made of metal or pressure treated lumber, and also mounted on a single post,will be located close by. .The single post is important, as it enables you to work around the table with a lawn mower quickly.

This arrangement will enable me to hang a load of wet laundry and take down a load of dry laundry without bending over or moving out of my tracks.

No iron work clothes will go directly onto hangers or be folded as they go into the basket.

This is not an original design;I saw it someplace on the web, but my old computer died, and all my bookmarks died with it.

Such a line will allow me to stand in one spot and hang the laundry or take it down;I can even fold our no iron stuff directly into an empty basket.

If anybody here has one of these already, I would like to hear about thier results.

Another use for rough and ready distilling is to make stove fuel. A standard boat stove is just a receptacle for the fuel and a burner in a metal case. Boat stoves will burn any combination of ethanol and methanol. In fact, a mix of ethanol with some methanol is ideal. This is exactly toxic bathtub brew. It can be made from anything that will ferment, for example windfall apples or apples attacked by coddling moths or grain damaged by rain.

Alcohol has half the energy density of petroleum based fuels. That may not matter in a lot of applications. If what you want is some hot tea with your solar cooked soup or fried eggs for breakfast, the boat stove is ideal.

Distillation in industry is done in a column with perforated plates or trays. A reboiler is at the bottom and a condenser at the top. The condensing liquid drips down from tray to tray, countercurrent to the up rising vapor. The boiling point decareses going up from tray to tray. This way energy is conserved making the heat do multiple duty and giving a highly enriched product.

A rather complex topic somewhat oversimplified; however you can probably find everything you need to know about building an ethanol distillation tower on the internet without having to consult a chemical engineering text.

mkkby,
I agree, distilled fuel is great for when the sun isn't shining. It's like stored sunlight, just as is oil and gas, but burns clean and doesn't add to CO2 burden like FF's.
I was reading something about making batches of yeast the other day, and will have to try to find that for you.
With my winemaking, while I haven't tried it, I suspect if I took a few ounces of brewing wine and added it to new wine, I'm guessing the yeast from the former would do just great. Tho' maybe just a bit of a slower start. Thanks for the great idea, will try that with my next batch of raisin sherry!

I'm guessing alcohol might work with a bbq grill, but don't know. You might have to make some mods. I recently changed out a kerosene stove to run on vegetable oil, and while it worked was not really thrilled with its heat output. Just won't get as hot, and the wicks are a lot more fussy, but it does work. Tho' it does run much much much longer on oil than kerosene.
I think I would like to try this on alcohol, as certainly it would get nearly as hot as the kerosene would. I bought this unit to help baking bread when the sun isn't shining, and also got at the same time a nice little 12X12 tin oven which will hold 3 to 4 loaves of bread.

Kevin,
Thanks for mentioning that very important topic. Certainly focussing parabolics give of some screaming hot energetic wavelengths, and that should surely be a huge caution to all folks.
I did forget to talk about that, and while I conducted the jar heating tests, it did certainly screw up my eyes for a bit. I ended up closing one eye.
You'll learn to approach this mirror cooker from the side, where you don't get all that glare from either the front or even reaching over the back.
And you should make a conscious effort to do this, because often I forget unless I pay attention to remembering that.
I'd suggest getting some good eye protection, or squinting a whole bunch to protect precious eyes.
Thanks.
Yes, temps are in farenheits.

"....we save a lot of the propane that used to run thru an instant water heater.

That thing kept loosing its mind, leading to screams from the shower. Now, no screams."

It sounds like our Bosche 225. Their circuit boards are defective and the flow detectors are cranky. Make sure the little strainer screen on the inlet stays clean. I finally gave up on ours and put our old Bosch 125s back on line to boost the solar/woodstove when needed.

Yeah, I got tired of my wife screaming; "HONEY! Go push the reset button again!"

Wimbi,
I did the same thing on the motorhome, coiled a good chunk of that (not as much as you), and covered it with plex.
Man, did it put out some hot stuff. Kinda slowly, but it surely was steamy hot at first.
Of course that's a dangerous thing to use in a shower, but for a bath, it's the ticket. Or mix it into cooler water before using.

Our solar water system gets some ferocious temperatures, so we use a lot of care when showering, especially when first turning on the water. The mixer valve sometimes likes to wander, so as you turn up the hot, it will slowly sometimes cool slightly, and after turning up again, it'll give a dose of ooops, back off. But it's well worth it. I like the 'feel' of solar heated water better than other types. I think it feels less harsh somehow.
Kinder and gentler or something like that.
Ow ow ow ow.

Love your writing, I can just hear your poor wife screaming as the water changes suddenly. Been there.

Reflec Tech Mirror film

I still have about 2/3's of a roll ....... 46.5" X 39 ft roll .

I had to buy the min. of 150 sq. ft. If you're doing small experiments, I'd be happy to sell off this in smaller sizes .

Bob, that's some serious looking stuff. Gonna check it out further when I log off here. Maybe you shoulda done this post....
Nice.

Frodes,
You are soooo cool. You're the first person of all the folks I've hawked this to who has made one. Wow.
May I say you did a superlative job with the foil. It's clean looking.
Now here in the N. Hemisphere, I would say that your cooker as shown (by shadow) would be trailing the sun (IOW, needs to be moved clockwise). But you're in the South, so is your cooker actually leading the sun?
If so, that's the way to do it.
Please, keep me/us informed of your experiments, and maybe we can share this stuff, if our hosts here will keep this open for comments.
Otherwise, let's email
I love it.
Also, as Kevin so sagely suggested, DO protect your eyes.
Thanks!!!
PS, how much is 500ml?
(I'm an slow American...duh)
Eggs cooked in it will take you probably over an hour depending on your liking. Be aware that the sun will slightly discolor both the shell and the inner egg. You may find that if you wrap them in foil it'll reduce that?
But still tastes great
Now make a couple more cookers and you can have a full course solar meal. LOL.

Bob, also interested in melting aluminum. The mother earth news years ago showed a design for a focusing collector made from conduit and square foot mirrors. I think it was about 10 by 10, tho' I don't remember much about the performance.
Also melting zinc or pot metal might work, I think it has a lower melt point, but higher strength when cast, though I don't know. Yet.
I've built several solar air heaters, and they work fine, but now I am of the mind that it is much more efficient to build greenhouses attached to South of houses. That way you get heat, a nice area to be in, a sun room, more oxygen, and food. Heat boxes may be good for apartments and rentals, etc. My beer can heater is very lightweight, and should be portable when I finally get it done.
Thanks.