Building a Solar Drier

If you happen to have an orchard – even a small one – you will know how at this time of the year there can be a glut of food just from one tree!

Traditional preserving by making jams or bottling is one way to preserve such food, but requires power/gas and usually plenty of sugar.

Years ago, Gerald and I were looking for a way to preserve our bananas – and discovered an awesome plan for a solar drier, which we then built. The fruit is dried through indirect solar heat that is collected in the solar collector below, and then passes up the chimney, which has racks of fruit to be dried. The drying is partly through indirect heat and partly through the drying effect of moving air. It retains nutrients much better than direct solar drying. 

It was amazing, the bananas were dried in about 2 days on the rack and kept indefinitely. Some of you may remember us selling them at the market in Tryphena way back in the day….Our solar drier eventually fell into disuse as the bananas made their way into our produce  boxes.

However, we shared the plans with various local folk, and Sue Reusser  and Bruno from the Wairahi built one and still have it! I have eaten Sue’s solar dried raisins, apples and  pears – simply delectable!! And Sue tells me solar-dried persimmons are outstanding! The photographs are current ones of Sue and Bruno’s solar drier…. Simply awesome!!

The original plans were by a man called Dennis Scanlin and if you search on google “solar drier Scanlin” lots of interesting articles will appear. Here is a link with up-to-date plans  - unfortunately all measurements are imperial: 

https://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/solar-food-dehydrator-plans-zm0z14jjzmar/ 

I thoroughly recommend building one if you have produce you want to dry!

Here is another link worth checking: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-solar-food-dryer-how-to-make-and-use-your-own-lowcost-high-performance-sunpowered-food-dehydrator-pdf-drive/250786471