I have been reading and looking at other forms of using solar energy apart from the type that produces electricity. Although not a new idea solar ovens and cookers ( yes theres a difference ) are real easy to make with simple tools and readily available materials. So i made one and made it in the middle of december and this is not the time to use them if you live in the UK like myself due to the low sun. I thought that if i could get one to work in winter then it should work even better in summer when the sun is at its highest.
I started with 2 boxes and you can see the TEFAL box has the flaps removed in this pic.The TEFAL box is slightly larger than the brown box.
Now you can see that the brown box fits snugly inside the TEFAL box, also i have now removed the brown box flaps.
Of the designs ive seen so far it appears that the boxes depth does not have to be deep so i cut the TEFAL box almost in half and sized the brown box to match the TEFAL box.
I kept the top half of the TEFAL box i cut off to make a top that slides over the bottom. To make it big enough i cut it in one corner and added another piece of card to expand it.
Thats the top built and i made 4 small cuts in the corners of the top and folded them over to make a frame.
I didnt have a big enough piece of card board to make the reflector that fits to the top so i fabricated one out of three pieces of card.
The whole oven and the reflector was lined with tin foil and a doulbe layer of cling film to make the window was used. I used insulation tape to seal the oven, here you can see it in midday sun in december inside the house. I adjusted the reflector for max light in the oven and placed a small black backing tray inside. Even with a low winter sun and the room temp was 17c after 15 mins the tray was very warm. This will be put away until summer when i think it will work very well.