Solar Cooker Version 1 - Should Still Work Just Fine

I figured out (by checking out some solar cooking recipes online), that maybe - at least this time of year in the desert - I'm just way over thinking this.

The extremely simple solar cooker I started with reached a temp of 225 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of hours in the midday summer desert sun. What I've learned by checking the times and temps for the recipes is that there are a good number of things that can be cooked in just a couple of hours at 200 degrees.

While the 1st version of the solar cooker that I slapped together might turn out to be worthless as a cooking tool come the cooler months (due to the lack of insulation) it should pretty easily bake up some bread.

Hi, remember me? - Solar Cooker Version 1.0

The best part? Our 5 year old is pretty psyched about trying this out with me this weekend, after having seen Curious George bake a lasagna in a solar oven. Gotta love PBS! ... Meanwhile the lady of the house still thinks I'm a nutbag, so it's nice to have someone on my side.

Baby Steps .. My Solar Oven's Minor First Upgrade

Just to keep you up to date, the solar oven mentioned below had a little more testing today.

Outside temp; 100 degrees F.

So last night I did a pretty lazy job of covering the interior walls with foil, applied simply and not so elegantly with a little of my 5 year old's Elmer's glue. I had originally intended to make some reflectors, but a half-hearted search didn't unearth my tape measure, so the interior would have to do.

I put the solar oven back in the yard for some testing this morning. After a few hours with lackluster results, in lieu of black paint ( I simply didn't have any) I folded up an old black tee shirt to line the bottom surface of the cooker.

The results ... well it's about 2:30 pm and the solar oven has reached neighborhood of about 225 degrees. That's a 25 degree improvement that I attribute much more to the black bottom than the foiled sides.

Other things to note: .

My box cutting job wasn't even close to perfect, so, I'm sure that along with the loss from the glass, there's probably quite a bit of loss where the glass rests along the cut top of the box. I'll need to fashion some sort of gasket to seal that up a little better.

So the black t-shirt worked out, but I'ld really like to try a fitted, flat black piece of scrap metel in there for not only attracting the heat, but holding it in as well.

I'll also have to look a little more into the options for insulating the box. With summer temps here in the desert, that's probably last on the list.

Once I find one of my dang tape measures I'll see how much heat we can generate by adding some reflectors to the solar cooker.

I'm really trying to see how close I can get to the 360 - 400 degrees F boasted by the $300 commercial versions I have seen online - but, in reality, I'd be pretty darn happy with 300 degrees, only because that is a temperature I am famiar with from the gas oven in my home.

and that's that...