Edit 4/19/2022: As shown, this simple solar food dryer is under-powered and under-ventilated. It clearly will dry tomatoes, just not fast enough in my climate to suit my needs. I’m going to put together a modified-and-improved version of this for the 2022 garden year, and I’ll link to that when I have that finished.
Edit 4/28/2022: See Post G22-015. If you go with this, replace the “chimney” with a two-watt (or so) computer fan. And in the end, while this nice clean plastic tote is convenient, the throughput is too small. When all the dust has settled, my decision is to cobble up a much larger, fan-vented version of this once the tomatoes start ripening later this year. The concept is fine. I just need to execute it at a much larger scale.
This started out to be a little treatise on solar dehydrators, ovens, and kilns. And I may yet write that.
But my goal, right now, is to make a small solar food dehydrator that will work with four 13.5″ diameter trays from my Nesco electric food dryer. That’s “a batch of tomatoes” for me. The upside of using those trays is that I can always finish off the drying using the electric food dehydrator. It is, in effect, hybrid solar-electric food drying. Continue reading Post #G21-049: Simplest solar food dehydrator, works with Nesco dehydrator trays.