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plataoplomo

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Happy to be here.

The wife and I are retired in the Philippines. We built and live in an Earthbag dome. We are completely off grid with solar. We are actively pursuing a sustainable lifestyle.

Thank you for creating this place for us to learn in.

Salamat Po
 
How fascinating! I had to look up "Earthbag Dome House". Of the photos I saw, some look like hobbit houses and some are very futuristic looking. Very cool! Welcome aboard plataoplomo! :wave:
 
Thank you Both.

Our house is sort of famous. We have been on RP national television more times than I can count.

The wife and I have lived through 5 major cyclones, 2 8+ earthquakes, a tsunami, and an assault with a machete. I was physically involved in the tsunami and assault.

All in the last 10 years. We decided it was time to retire.

I did not build this way to be unique. I did it because it is the strongest humans know how to build. With the simplest materials and unskilled labor.


You may find this of interest.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDkjN9mmncw[/ame]
 
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Welcome aboard the never ending soap journey - lots of twists and turns, but always enjoyable
 
solar cooking?

We do, but as with most things it is more complicated than you think.

1.) You need to assess your solar resource. Do you get enough energy where your at to be useful?

For us we have magnificent solar resource. So it makes sense for us to do so.

Depending on your energy resource it may not make sense. You may be better off becoming an expert on below ground or pit cooking.

We have rocket stoves. But they have their issues too.

2.) Solar cooking takes constant monitoring. You gotta align to the sun all of the time.

3.) If your still into it then here is how we did it.

We took an old junk satellite dish and armature. Coated the inside of the dish with the shiny side of aluminium foil. And coated that again with clear polyurethane varnish.

Attached a plate to the armature where the satellite receiver normally sits. So that the focus point of the parabola dish is on the bottom of the plate. Then painted that plate flat back with engine high temp paint.

4.) Put this all on a simple X/Y axis using wing nuts that we can adjust to align to the sun.

5.) Depending on how you adjust the dish this can be very fast cooking. But it usually works best for slow cooking of stews and soups.

6.) There are people out there producing simple solar tracking setups that while they may seem expensive at first are really not when you look at the hassle involved with keeping it aligned.

All of the box style solar cookers that you find on the internet did not work very well for us. And I tried a bunch of them. They made great warmers but never really got up to a good temperature.

Hope that helps.
 

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