In our almost decade of marriage Julie and I have tried every method of drying food as a means of preservation. From the 80's style wooden dowel clothes drying folding rack with meat draped over it drying in the sun to a hand me down commercial food dehydrator, and although all of these methods work within their limits and capabilities a draw back can be found for most. So what do you do? Well after listing grievances about all the manners we applied we found this plan online that covered the biggest gripes.
For us the issue with the commercial dehydrator was not enough room to effectively dry any real quantity without it becoming a week long process, Sure you can buy them larger but with 6 mouths to feed it is hard to justify the commercial price of the larger commercial units. And the issue with the clothes drying rack is although you can dry large quantities of meats and if you implement acouple of those grill grates from wally world you can do fruits and veggies too, but you still have to constantly tend them as open air dryers are insect magnets. So the solution was to find a means of producing the same quantity as the open air dryer with the protection of the enclosed unit and still be relatively portable for storage and relocation. We look at the feasibility of many different designs and the cost effectiveness and finally we found this "exploded view" online and after some personal alterations we believe this will work for us and any other family on a budget
For our project we used the discounted fence pickets from home depot and got them @ 1.00 a piece and 1 board will will yield 2 panels for the sides, the blower motor we got for 5.00 from a used vacuum from goodwill and the racks we got from used aplliance places from unsalvageable fridges. Barring that you can't find the same deals I estimate the total cost for this unit should run about 35-45 dollars.
(http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq12/dabackwoodsman/fooddryer.jpg)
can you increase the size of your picture so that I can see it.
Had a lot better results in my drying by using grates out of stoves rather than grates out of old fridges. Other than that yours and mine could be twins..
steven i have sent a pm to the resident photo guru requesting information on how to enlarge the photo on the site , however if you left click and save it you can open it in your own picture editor and enlarge it as you need it, my apologies for being real slow when it comes to computers!
About 30 years ago I purchased plans for a solar dehydrator that is made from a 55 gallon steel drum. Never got around to making it but it would work very well and because it is round it "catches" the sun from almost any angle. I never built it mainly because my abilities to build anything is extremely limited and the plans looked kind of complicated to me.
I had forgotten about these plans until we were cleaning up our basement after a "near miss" flood event.
I saved pic to desk top tried to enlarge pic but could not make out some of the directions on the left side.
bump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK4DVLHf7Y (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK4DVLHf7Y)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfI0NKl-Kq0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfI0NKl-Kq0)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgui7PynCWc&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgui7PynCWc&feature=related)
hi:
Nice to see our newer menbers digging into the old posts....lots of great stuff here and revisitation is fun for all.....
Thanks for the addition...
Doug
There is an old farmstead nearby that actually has a separate out building food dehydrator. I had heard that some farmers had them, but this is the only one I know of still standing. It has a fire box in the bottom with a very thick massive chimney up the center. Around the chimney it has doors on the sides and slides to place racks of food. The rest of the thing is brick and about 8 ft ft x 8ft and perhaps 10 ft tall. There are vent holes to allow the air in and out. I'll try to get a picture next time I go by there. My best guess as to date would be about 1870.
Also, when I bought my old farm, there were very old strings of dried out onions up hanging from the attic rafters, the dried tops had been braided together. There were also a few old strings of petrified apple wedges and a bucket of home made soap. So at one time the previous owners must have dried their apples slices in the attic on strings.