I built a solar cooker years ago, just to see if it worked. It did, but not real well. This one, however, looks pretty promising. I may give this one a try.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I am fascinated by the idea of actually freezing water with it at night, a simple cooling method can be a life saver.

You must live in the South too... I was overjoyed when I read the refridgeration part of the article.

In a SHTF situation... we will have fuel to burn... trees, fences, debris from our neighbor's fences/home/trees, neighbor's annoying dog, etc. Maybe in barren areas there would be a lakc of fuel... but I think most of us probably have abundant fuel for a long time.

But cooling... that is unique. A good sized chunk of ice can do wonders. If you have half a dozen of these things set up, you could make a few blocks of ice every night, if you have a cooler to put them in they can be saved for a surprising length of time, several days. You can slowly fill the cooler with home-made ice.... then you can save meat and other foods for a while if you don't have time to smoke them right away.

This is a miraculous device.

I was also thinking... couldn't a put a giant one of these on top of my house as an airconditioner at night, then just find some way to turn it off during the day by using a system of pulleys to draw a large piece of cloth over it?
Hey, if it rains, you can take the cloth off and use it to collect rainwater! Maybe it would pasteurize it at the same time?

... some ideas, the world just isn't ready for...

My wife would love this idea, if it worked, but I guess its really not worth it since you need a cool house during the day and a warmer house at night (at least in S. Texas)...However I have some friends who built their bug out retreat using materials salvaged from old houses. The benefit to this is in some of your older homes they were designed to require minimal cooling. I noticed that the Windows opened from the top and bottom, this is to create a constant flow of fresh air, in the middle of August with NO AC his house is never hotter than 85 degrees , of course he does use a giant attic fan too, but this could also be modified to work without electric power.


MK

I have also considered buying big rolls of that aluminum-bubble-wrap-type stuff they use in car windshields.

Think how well that would reflect heat back... keep the house nice and cool.

If we didn't have electricity for extended periods... I would set up a tent in my backyard. It would be much cooler than in a house.

It is amazing how cool you can get by just laying on the ground. It might be hard as a rock, but it really cools you down. I would save the inside for rainy nights and winter.

Very interseting.
We live on a south facing hillside and have tried cookers before with so-so results. This is worth a try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElXHAFq13jI

This guy does some good work with solar heating of water and steam power creation.

Check out what he does with the 1/2 pipe with a pipe in the center for heating water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXXOwfZA2Rk

I just noticed the author of the solar cooker is the same professor who has done a lot of lab testing on material taken from WTC1,2,7 that indicated the use of explosives.

virginiaJim's links to Green Power Science is very helpful. I had a lot of their videos bookmarked already, especially the ones with the fresnel lens cooking techniques, desalinization, and power generation. They are packed with great information, and his wife looks VERY similar to my ex girlfriend... It's entertaining at the very least!