BCU - Fire
Solar Oven Entrance
Why a Solar Oven?
Method 1
Method 2
Using Your Oven
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Solar Oven
ForwardA little while ago, I was contemplating what foods would be good to put aside in case of emergency. I found that with the range of food available in cans I didn't have to be too concerned about having a monotonous diet. Since I was only considering food stores to last for a short time, say a week, I was not overly concerned with calculating nutrition values to get the most carbohydrates, proteins, sugars and whatever else is in food these days in the smallest package possible. My primary objective was to keep my family fed and in good spirits for a short time, and I felt that eating beans 3 meals a day for a week would have a detrimental effect on morale.
I found that the same question kept popping up with each new food I considered, "Would I be willing to eat this cold?" The answer was invariably, "Yes, if I was hungry enough!" That struck me as being a bit fatalistic and I thought I could find a way to cook the food without getting into expensive camping gear or cooking fuels.
It didn't take me long to stumble onto solar ovens. It seemed the perfect answer, met all my criteria and fit my budget. I decided to mull it over for a while to see if I could come up with that one fatal 'but' that can kill an idea in a second. The best I found was, "...but you need direct sun!" And, it's true. If you've lost your power due to a bad winter storm, it is very likely that you will be under heavy cloud for several days rendering a solar oven useless. However, the clouds will go away and the sun will shine eventually. How long will it be before your power comes back on? It could be a day, a week, a month or more.
So, now I see this as an opportunity to have a hot meal after eating cold beans for several days. I can think of very few things which would raise the spirits of a family, after sitting in the dark and cold for a while, more than sunshine and a hot meal.
In order to be able to say for certain that it would work well enough in the middle of the winter I had to make one and try it out. I started making my first oven at 10 a.m. one day in February. By 10:30 a.m., I was trying to heat a bowl of water. It worked just fine. 
Never being satisfied with a single test, I decided to try again the next day. This time I used a bowl of baked beans (might as well get lunch out of the deal) and since I was testing for limits I placed the oven outside on my patio. The high temperature that day was -15�C. My thinking was that the heat in the oven wouldn't be able to build fast enough to beat the chill wind. I was wrong. Within an hour the beans were bubbling away happily. I let them go for a while so that I knew they were cooked, then carefully took them out (needed oven mitts) and ate them. They tasted great, better than from the microwave.Since then I have looked into how to make a proper one and built a good one later that year. For the remainder of that winter I used my little oven as often as I could and the kids have had more than a few meals out of it and lived to tell. Not bad for an oven made from cardboard, newspaper, tin foil and masking tape.
Regardless of it's survival usefulness, I would strongly recommend making one of these to try out. It is easy to build, and use, and it is practical. Give it a shot, I think you'll enjoy it.
Brett
Last Updated: March 19, 2001