Solar Food Dehydrators
Preserve your Garden Harvest with the Sun
Once you start gardening, the issue becomes how to save your delicious harvest so that you can enjoy it all. One method that is very useful is dehydrating or drying your fruits and vegetables. Instead of having food drying come down to one more appliance that uses electricity, why not try making your own solar dehydrator?
Drying food is one of the oldest ways of preserving the harvest, and it's a method that lets you save the food without using a constant flow of electricity (like freezing). Some dried foods can be eaten as-is after dehydrating but many are soaked in water again to improve their texture and flavor before cooking. Dehydrated veggies are great in soups and stews in the winter, allowing for summer flavors and nutrients to be kept in the diet year-round.
Food Drying Without Electricity
We used to have an electric food dehydrator in the house. It was great for saving food from the garden and it made making your own camping meals really easy, but the housemate who owned it moved out, so that was the end of the electric dehydrator.
Since we'd love to still be able to dry foodstuffs, but would like to reduce the amount of electrical appliances we use in the kitchen, I thought making a solar food dehydrator would be a great option. With the right plans, lots of recycled materials can be used and in the summertime, the power is about as cheap and abundant as you could want.
We don't have a lot of room, so building a taller and more narrow one with several shelves will probably be the overall shape we develop. One of our biggest uses is going to be for herbs we grow, followed by vegetables that get harvested in the fall. I sure wouldn't mind making my own sun-dried tomatoes instead of buying them.
THE SOLAR FOOD DRYER by Eben V. Fodor
DIY Solar Food Dehydrators
- SOLAR DEHYDRATOR
Made from two cardboard boxes, some clear plastic wrap, and a little tape. You can build a nearly free solar dehydrator. Set it on a stool or chair and face it's solar collector towards the sun, and you have a functional food preservation machine for - Chris's ENGR305 Solar Food Dehydrator - Appropedia: The sustainability wiki
The idea of creating a hybrid, solar food dehydrator, that also adhered to as many of the principles of modern food dehydration as possible sounded excellent to me. The potential of using this old system in new ways can save both power and materials. - A Review of Solar Food Drying (The Solar Cooking Archive)
Food drying is a very simple, ancient skill. It requires a safe place to spread the food where dry air in large quantities can pass over and beside thin pieces. Sun is often used to provide the hot dry air. Dry, clean air including dry cold air from - Solar Food Drying
Lots of variations for building solar food dryers.
Take a Look at a Solar Dehydrator
What If You Don't Have Enough Sun? - an option for those who can't solar dry food
If you live in an area where you don't get enough sun to really make solar drying viable, or for those winter-time food storage projects, you might like owning an electric food dehydrator. These let you dehydrate just about anything and are great for making your own jerky, fruit leather or dehydrating pre-cooked food to assemble your own low-cost camping meals.
DIY Dehydrator PDFs
Here are links to PDFs on the web that are about how to build your own solar food dehydrator. If you click on these, it will start a download of a document to your computer.
- Hardcore solar dehydrator
This site makes available 8 1/2" x 11" conceptual plans that can be helpful in developing building layouts and selecting equipment for various agricultural applications. - Making New Dryer Screens
How to build dryer screens for your solar dehydrator using window screen frames.
If you're working on your own solar dryer, let us know how it's going! If you've had problems, let us know what they were and how you worked them out!
Have you built your own solar food dryer?
Your lens would be a great addition to the 'Solar Technology and Solar Energy' Group
( http://www.squidoo.com/groups/solar )
Feel free to add it anytime!
I love dehydrating fruits and vegetables. We use a drying rack that is enclosed in fine mesh. It has about 8 layers/racks and hangs by a hook. I take it outside and hang it on my clothes line in the direct sun. It's great for when I dehydrate onions since the smell lingers for a long time.
Great information on dehydrators.
Theresa
I've always wanted to buy a food dehydrator to dry bananas, but didn't want to spend the money. The cardboard dehydrator is fantastic. Great lens!
Minnie
I was very much worried as the cost of dehydrated vegetables etc was so costly I was not able to carry many development in food industry. I thank you for the design and I am sure it will help me
Great lens and idea--I'll have to try it..
I built the 4' x 4' Solar Food Dryer for Humid Climates described by Larisa Welk (but less tall). One question that has arisen: My batch of drying apples have attracted small ants. What do people recommend to keep the ants away?
I have been looking for a good plan for building a solar dehydrator. We have a really large garden and this would be the best way to preserve the food that we cannot eat right away.
Excellent stuff. I have a glut of tomatoes every year, so this would be a great way to store them.
I have always used an Excalibur but this lense has given me some great new ideas. Thanks for building such a quality page.
I have a drying rack for persimmons, but I have never even thought about drying tomatoes. I'll have millions of them in a couple of months, and usually I just peel and freeze them, but this year I will try drying some of them too! Great Lens!
Ive always thought this was a good idea to try, now I think I just might. Thanks for the inspirational lens
I am trying to start a raw food diet. This lens was very interesting, great information on solar food dehydrators!
@anonymous: Treehouse - where did you find the plans for this? I am looking to build one and live in Costa Rica! THANKS!!!
Well done--hip hip hooray for the environment!
Very useful lens :)
No, but your lens is giving me ideas :)
Excellent Information on how to build dehydrators. I have been dehydrating for years but never thought of making my own.
I haven't built a solar dehydrator yet, but I used to have a home-built one that used a light bulb and a fan to circulate dry air around the fruit and veggies I loaded into it.
Thanks for creating a helpful lens!
This is a pretty good idea. I usually just hang mine in the window.
Thanks! And angel blessed!
Great work! This is a really interesting way to dry out food, and, I suppose, one of the most natural, easiest ways to do it - no need to buy a dehydrator!
I haven't built a solar dehydrator, but I have built an easy to use solar oven called the Cookit. Thanks for the info1
We dry out tomatoes every summer - I love this DIY solar dehydrator. The heat box is pretty much the same as a DIY solar airbox to heat a room. Blessed by a granola head bus-tripping angel visiting the neighborhood.
Really love this idea! will be doing it, as we have an abundant amount of sun:)
Impressive lens, thumbs up
No I have not, but it's a great project. And everyone should own a dehydrator.
Thanks, wonderful lens.
I will be building a few large scale dryers this summer, will post pics as I go. Great lens!
Anyone have any ideas of what might be the best design for a solar dryer in central america, where we have lots of hot sun, but where the peak of fruit season could be during our most humid months?
great idea!
What a great idea! Thanks for all the wonderful resources.
I need to build a solar food dryer. With my home running on a photovoltaic system, an electrical food dryer is not at all what I need or want. Better to let the sun do the work. Thanks for the resources. Appreciated.
@anonymous: I've hunted around but not found any specifics that meet your situation. Most likely you will have to build something and experiment. I'd think that having some sort of fan-driven air circulation is going to be necessary with all that moisture.
Super "green" idea!
Back to sprinkle some angel dust on this lens at harvest time.
Awesome idea. green, creative and ideal for raw foodies :)
Just what I needed for info. I may sound crazy, but I'm preparing for the worst, especially if this economy don't turn around. Raising my chickens, growing a big garden and built a large lake, well stocked with fish. Bring it on, my family will survive!
No but I've seen some very innovative ones.
I'm going to build one of these for next summer!
I will do this one! Thanks!
Yes, many times while camping in the New Mexico desert during the summer and I have even dried meat and fish in the Nevada mountains east of Carson City. (Pine Nut Mountains) Solar dehydrator's work remarkably well. Thanks for sharing
I would love to build a solar food dehydrator. Thanks for the idea and links to instructions!
Thanks for the links to how to build a solar food dehydrator. It's wonderful to be able to do something "off the grid."
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