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In this video I want to give you an overview of how to build the solar food dryer
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I'm going to go into a lot more detail in subsequent videos, but for now I just want to show you generally how it goes together
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The first thing to pay attention to is what I call the collector frame
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This is that whole assembly you see up here. There's a wooden frame made of inch and a half thick material
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On the top there's some clear roofing. There's a particular brand I like for this job. It's called SunTuff
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It's really good. It's perfect for this application. There are some mounting strips here to support the corrugated shape
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And then underneath, this is very important, there's some sheet steel. 28 gauge is about right
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And what that does is it absorbs the solar energy that comes through the clear roofing material
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and then radiates it back down into the food. So it's converting it from ultraviolet to infrared heat energy
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And that's what warms the food that sits on the second part of the project here
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This is the drying frames. So once again, a wooden frame. I'll show you how these go together
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And on top is a stainless steel mesh. You could use other kinds, but stainless steel is by far the best for a food situation like this
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Now, the frames, these food drying frames, sit on top of the base frame, which is what you see here
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There's a plywood base and there's some sides. You can't necessarily see in this drawing, but these side pieces, I call them the base side strips
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they're wider than the thickness of the drying frames. So there's an air space
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The collector frames sit on top of these base side strips and there's a space underneath the sheet metal to give room for the food
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This material here is sheet metal roofing. It's not there because it needs to be waterproof in any way
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but just because it's impervious to heat and it also has these ribs
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which raise the drying racks up above so that there can be air circulation behind
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Those are the main parts of the solar food dryer and the whole thing sits on a frame, this side frame here
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that tilts it, in this case, 20 degrees from horizontal, which is a pretty good angle for most latitudes in the world
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That's the overview and I'm going to go into construction details later on
