The idea was super simple: to make some DIY solar cooking equipment and experiment with them publicly, with participants of a broader “The Generator” programme organized by Laboratory of Critical Urbanism of EHU.
We were blessed with a beautifull cloudless day and had three devices to play with. An old sattelite dish worked as a frying pan for sausages. Master Jonas has rebuilt the receiver handle to accomodate a frying pan, and allso adjusted the focal point a little. The dish itself was covered by a basic aluminum tape. The focusing was still a bit too sharp: the sausage was very quick to burn, and needed to be attended often.
The other device, also built by Jonas, was a box heater. It proved super effective in a sense that it was very low-maintainence and stewed a chunk of lamb (around 700 or 800 grams) in one and half hour pretty well. The taste was quite different than what you get from frying pans.
The last piece was a fresnel-based focusing mirror wall, which we built together with Martynas, Siarhei and Jonas a few days in advance. It was a real eye-catcher, but also least effective of the bunch. We wanted to boil water for coffee, I guess, around 2 liters in a large pot, but somehow it didnt work in around 1.5 hours.
I’ll dedicate a separate post for this device in the technology section.
Photos above by Laurynas Skeisgiela, below - by me.
And finally I had some unexpected joy when I had to improvise myself a hat and the best option seemed to be that foil tape we had. Turned out extremely effective and interesting, so a separate story for that as well.
