Drew and Mithi asked for home-made stuff as wedding presents. Nic wanted to make bath cubes for them, with dried lavender and petals. But the lavender and petals on our window sill weren’t drying fast enough and their wedding day was approaching.
“I know how to make a solar dryer”, I said. For I did. Back in Kenya, I drew up this diagram for my friend Megan:
Megan had been putting together Instructions for making and using a solar food dehydrator. Kenya has lots of sun and an abundance of mangoes and papayas in season. Megan pitched up at my house one day with a bag of delicious dried papaya chunks and asked me to draw this illustration for her instructions.
Nic and I fetched cardboard boxes from various places round the house and took a “free sample” of black wallpaper from the local DIY store — no, we don’t like it on our walls and have recycled it in the heat-catcher. A colleague lent me a digital thermometer and, on a sunny evening when the air was 28C, inside the box, just under the top shelf the air temperature was 45C. The lavendar and petals dried beautifully in one sunny day.
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