Working Hardly

Apparently when it comes to blogging I can take it or leave it. For a while, anyhow. It has been too long since my last post and so I am here to remind you all that we're still working and making good progress. It may not be the kind of progress we originally intended, but progress isn't progress without.. ... progress.

Orange marmalade abounds! We're eating our test batches at the rate of about a liter a week because the stuff is just so good! I'll post the recipe once I can coax it out of grandad. We've made more hibiscus flower jelly (in Mexico hibiscus flowers are called 'flor de Jamaica'. And we made an apple / hibiscus fusion that is very, very fine!

Surely we can't have been making jellies and marmalades all this time, so what have we been up to? Well I took a couple of weeks vacation, enjoying a visit by my friend Aysa from Toronto, I was bedridden for a week by my bad back which took an inexplicable turn for the agonizing, I took it easy for another week just working afternoons and we've taken a total tangent, getting away from the Vesta array and starting in on a new vision for the Helios array including finally solving the problem of the cursed upwards reflector!

So we shifted gears from product development back to where my heart dwells, in technological research and development. booya!

Next post will describe the new Helios, it's advantages as well as our quest to reflect. upwards.

Product development

We've been wrestling with this solar drier for a couple of weeks now and thought it was time to switch things up a little bit. Yesterday being new years day, we weren't in the mood for anything too heavy so we decided to make some jelly.

Until now we had refrained for lack of suitable jars, but we found some decent glass jars that will serve us during the product development phase. I've also placed an order in Mexico's industrial heartland for 500 jars and hot seal tops which will serve us once we've got our recipes. It's a good thing I like toast!

First up: Tamarind jelly.

Here Fraser can be seen testing the jelly to see if it is ready to 'set'. We ended up with just over a liter of delicious, powerful jelly. We're going to try to get our jars into some local stores but regardless we're both going to start eating a lot of toast... :)

Solar Drier Prototype

Fraser and I have just completed our Vesta powered food drier Mark I. In the past two weeks we have built an additional Vesta and we have done a considerable amount of tinsmithing, the results of which can be seen here:

The whole contraption pivots around the central post of the Vesta, which is more or less of the same design as the previous model. The drier sits atop a chassis which is joined to the central post by a hinged boom made of heavy angle iron. The two bicycle wheels are angled such that their axles point directly at the post.

Those bicycle wheels. At first we looked in the hardware stores for new wheels, but all the hard rubber wheels of the diameter that we wanted were built for huge loads and were more expensive than need be. Fraser quite rightly said that we could find a child's bike for cheap and have a smoother ride. I added 'small child's bike' to the list of things to keep my eyes open for as we ran our various errands.

Soon thereafter we came across a second hand store, the likes of which you'll see every few blocks in most lower income residential neighbourhoods here in Puerto Penasco. On the sidewalk (or what may pass for a sidewalk) in front of someone's house, there are racks of clothing, toys, kitchenware, exercise machines and a wide variety of bits and bobs. It's essentially a permanent garage sale. Neighbours get rid of their unwanted stuff conveniently and she who sells stuff waits for another neighbour to need the object in question.

In the slew of stuff for sale I spied a bike of the size we were looking for. In the right condition too. Not too old, but old enough to be cheap. We pull up, get out and I ask the woman how much for the bike.
"Oh, no, I couldn't sell it, it belongs to my son." she says.
Toying with the idea that this could be a gringo upsell tactic I reply "Really? That's a shame we've been looking all over for one that size... it's just right."
She considers. "Well, let's ask him. MANUEL!!" she calls out to the house. A little boy comes cruising out of the courtyard on a bigger, nicer bike with the chain rusted and hanging loose. "Want to sell your little bike?"
"No!" he shouts, dismounts his bigger bike, runs to the smaller one and zooms off. His mother and I look at eachother and smile. "How does 100 pesos sound?" An eyebrow raises. Too high. "About right" she replies.

Manuel comes zooming back and his mother tells him this bike is too small for him anyway and that with the money he can fix the chain on his big bike. "And have enough left over for candy" I chip in.
"500 pesos!" he exclaims, his eyes big, licking his lips. We laugh. His mom tells me to hand him the money (100 pesos!) and he immediately runs off to show his friends. Later that day I did this to his bike:

I'm working on a more thorough montage for the construction of this latest Vesta as well as some of the construction of the drier.

Over the course of this latest building phase we've vacillated between thinking of ourselves as very clever and utter fools. We're quite happy with the result so far but there is still doubt as to whether or not it will work as it did when grandad built it in his head. I'm of the opinion that it won't, and will need forced air to work properly. Grandad is coming around to this perspective in his way.

http://solardevicesforthirdworld.webs.com/

It has been cloudy for the past few days and so we've been working on a back up plan. Our idea of using steel screen as a heat exchanger at the focal point took Fraser's fancy and he thought that the same principle could be applied to the more conventional solar drier which looks something like this ----------------->

So we've built a test collector roughly the same shape as the glass portion of the collector to the right, only 1 foot deep with 14 layers of steel screen to absorb the sunlight.
While I am sure that it will perform better than a flat black sheet metal collector, I think that it is overkill. The central idea being porosity means more surface area which means more contact with air which means more effective transfer of heat. No doubt it will work better, but expense and difficulty of construction have drained my enthusiasm. Nevertheless, out curiosity is piqued and we will construct two other collectors of the same size: one of the flat black sheet metal and another, somewhere on the spectrum between sheet metal and screen.

I think that, while interesting, the experiments will come to nothing much of value because in my experience and research I've found that passive drying does not provide the level of control, heat or airflow that a more 'active' drier does and so cannot produce the same quality of product. We shall see.

Busy little bees

Onward and upward! Fraser and I continue to plug away at our list of tasks... we're very nearly finished our fruit and veggie dehydrating unit and a second Vesta. Once finished they will allow us to really get into some serious gathering of data and experimentation, which we await with great anticipation.

We are going to nixtamalize corn and dry it, we'll dry bananas, onions, pineapple and mangos, we're going to make tamarind jelly, hibiscus jelly and orange marmalade and if we're feeling ambitious we'll roast peanuts with chili and garlic.

Vesta Solar Cooker assembly

We've successfully built and tested the first of several Vestas we're going to make. We got excellent results based on our first tests but are going to gather more data and provide some sexy graphs to really make the point. Construction vids to follow, cooking vids to follow and a cost breakdown too. The machine costs less than $200 and I can build one in three days.

New Home = Sweet Home.

Welcome to Symington Solar Fire Mexican Headquarters! Fraser and I have settled in to our new digs and are keen to get moving.

'Who knew that a couple of peasants could aspire to such comfort?' Fraser asks and only half in jest. Truly, we have been fortunate. After arriving in Puerto Penasco a week ago we again sought accommodations at the Dreamweaver Inn. Oscar, who is the general manager there and the man who we would see be our business partern smiled broadly upon seeing us again and asked 'Couldn't stay away, could you?' We replied that we 'Could have, but we thought better of it, in no small part because of you!' he was both pleased an puzzled. Over the course of the next couple of days we laid out our plan to him and his wife Lupita.

The plan we laid out to him was in essence: 1) Grandad and I secure a house with a suitable yard and a space to fabricate a couple of arrays. 2) We build 3 Vestas, a couple of drying units, an oven and a roaster for nuts and other roastables. 3) We begin experimenting with various fruits and vegetables and eventually settle on a couple of what we think are the best and most marketable. 4) We establish communications with wholesalers and independent health food stores and attempt to establish a flow of goods. 

Oscar said he was able and willing to work with us on a part time basis to learn how we make machines and to lend insights as we develop products. We only have a certain amount of time, however, given that our auto insurance and visas run out mid March. Bringing Oscar into the fold serves the double purpose of having a manager who will be able to continue operations/production in our absence and, in the event that we don't manage to establish a flow of goods, having a local entrepreneur attempt to make a go of using Solar Fire technologies independently.

Oscar is a clever and curious fellow and the suggested action plan involves no risk on his part, so we were not surprised that he was enthusiastically game. That being the case, Fraser and I spent the rest of the week cruising around looking for a suitable place. Eventually, the good people at Twin Dolphin Realty brought us to see the mansion you see here. The sun access in the yard is not ideal, but it is acceptable, there is a garage, it is fully furnished (down to the details... as if people had up and left a month ago) and let me tell you, the price is right!

Real estate here has tanked in the last couple of years. Bob from Twin Dolphin says that the boom that Puerto Penasco experienced from 2004 - 2007 was somewhat artificial and speculative in nature and with the meltdown in the US that since then things have gone from bad to worse. This is evidenced by our getting a place like this for half of what it is worth. We're on a monthly rental, but depending on how things go we might just hang on to the place.

Once we had a place lined up we continued to scout for materials and everything is lined up so that monday we buy metal and glass! By next weekend we should have a preliminary Vesta up and running and another 2 or 3 will not be far behind.

Workshop:

Guaymas / San Carlos

    

This is Guaymas!

Pretty ain't it? Can you blame me for having spent two weeks here without have blogged much? 

The fact of the matter is that there hasn't been much to blog about. We did some productive reconnaissance though. We went a hundred or so clicks south to Ciudad Obregon which I had determined, after checking out  Google Earth satellite imagery, was the closest hotbed of agricultural activity. A day's reconnaissance there and we discovered the biggest fruit and vegetable wholesaler in town. If we ever develop the capacity to dry or otherwise process fruits and veggies, we'll be well set.

'Well what's taking so long?' you might well ask. And so you should. Over the course of exploring the city and  checking out Obregon I expressed to my grandad, Fraser, that I thought it was unlikely that we would be able to leave a profitable, functioning business here by the time our vehicle insurance etc. runs out in mid-March. This caused a certain amount of light consternation and so to settle the matter Fraser suggested that we sit down and story board it. We did. He asked me to lay out my supposed time frame.

It went something like this: 1 month to get settled (house and workshop) and build 2 Vestas one for simple boiling and frying and one especially built for a food dryer. This gives us the ability to experiment and develop products. I used his example of hominy. 

For those unfamiliar, hominy, or here in Mexico, nixtamal results from processing corn in a certain way. You boil the corn for a couple of hours in an alkaline solution which causes the outside layer called the bran to peel away. A little more boiling and the kernel of corn flowers and has been nixtamalized. You then wash the corn and rinse off the alkaline solution and are left with a vastly more nutritious and flavourful kernel. If you're going to use it fresh, that's fine, but if you're planning on shipping it to the states you either have to can it or dry it. We're opting for drying because we've got energy to spare and canning detracts taste and nutrients.

So I took his example of hominy and I said that since the net gives us widely varying estimates on how long to boil hominy, we'd have to run separate batches through at increasing durations, i.e. 1hr30m, 1hr45min, 2hr, 2:15 and so on. Then there's how long to dry them. How dry do they need to get? What about alkalinity levels? How long to soak before hand? After? All these variables will have to be investigated if we are to develop a quality product. I said minimum 2 weeks. To simplify I then said 2 weeks for each new product developed. Not only that, but then we have to settle on a recipe, cook up 5 batches in a row and then set them in their sealed packages in various conditions of heat / light to see how long they take to spoil. I don't want to put a stab-in-the-dark best before date on our products. That could lose us customers down the line.

Then there's import/export complications, a business license, whatever other red tape might trip us up etc. Once we have products, building more solar arrays to boost production capacities and we haven't even approached the wholesalers yet! I concluded that we would be well on our way if before we leave we have 3 or 4 finished products which we could take with us up to the states and Canada and with which we could attempt to interest health food stores and wholesalers. 

I notice I used 'I' a lot there but it was, for the most part, a collaborative process. 

In any event, conversation turned to how the business would function in our absence, Fraser determined that we had to have a managing partner we could trust and that our main man Oscar from the Dreamweaver is the man for the job and that we should, since we already paid for 2 weeks accommodation here, take our time and enjoy ourselves. For the record I argued that Puerto Penasco has roughly 10% less sun, is further from agricultural production and that as much as I like Oscar, we'd likely find someone comparable in Guaymas. 

So we've spent the past two weeks reading abundantly, playing lots of cribbage ( i just today broke out of a 5 game losing streak bringing the record to 15-11 for good old grandad, though that's not what I call him when he's getting 2 fives in every crib...) and spending plenty of time at the beach. :)