2011-03-17 CONSPIRACY!

It must be a conspiracy by the nucleur power lobby. I am convinced that they staged the earthquake and thereby the Tsunami and the meltdown at the powerplant. For tomorrow my student James and me arranged a solar cooker building day at ESC school, and the nucleur lobby realised that this was a direct attack on their business and the only way to stop us was to organise the forementioned actions and thereby creating a mini-iceage in Nu Po. The skies have been totaly greay for three days, temperatures dropped to the lowest levels ever recorded in Nu Po by me, that is the last 4 years, even in colder Umpiam Mai I don’t think I have felt this cold on day time, and offcourse there hasn’t been a solar cooked meal for days. Luckily we could offer food last Saturday to a delegation from Mae Sot. For tomorrow it will be hard. although I see patches of blue, and feel a little warmer air around me. We won’t give up, the nuclear and oil lobby can scream and shout, they can, and will, cause natural disasters, sabotage what we want to do, but we will prevail, if not tomorrow, then next week. If the reactors blow up, it was the last desparate act by the lobby, to scare us away, but they won’t succeed.

ton

2011-02-19 Solar Cooking Day

Solar Cooking Day

After building and testing cookers for several weeks, it was time to show people in the camp what we are doing, so on Saturday 19 February, we set up all our cookers in front of KEDC school, build a long table for cutting vegetables, covered the space above our heads with a sheet and started preparing the curries and rice we wanted to offer passers by.

Jumpman, Wai Wai San, Myint Aung and Moe Moe Kyit

Setting up the parabolic cooker

After shopping a visit to a teashop is a must!

Jumpman brings out the parabolic cooker

Some cookers at work

Bringing out the food, pots and pans

Preparing the curries

Our little flag

Rajoo looks on from inside the compound

Setting up the many cookers

Demonstration site in front of KEDC

Preparing the sun covering

many hands make light work

A few days before we had hanged flyers all over the camp, on Friday we had loaded a whole cart full of vegetables and fruits and volunteers were asked at PDJC and KEDC schools. At 8 o’clock we all assembled at KEDC and the fun began.

Our spot was quite good, as we had lots of sun and many people walked by going from one place to another. Between 8 and 9, the hour of setting things up, the sun was hiding behind a tree so we could work in the shade.

Our little flag

There were around 15 of us at the start and students would come and go during the day, helping to cut onions, slice eggplants or peel potatoes. Ten curries were prepared and they where heated in a variety of cookers. Corn was put into a big pot with some water, and rice was prepared as well.

Preparing the sun covering

When all our work was done, the waiting started and here one flaw in our preparation was revealed: we didn’t have other things planned. Although the flyer mentioned games for children, we didn’t have any. And as children were merely waiting for the food to be ready, we were not pushed into creating a game. The heat, although cherished for the cooking, was not helpful in putting us into action.

Setting up the many cookers

Luckily we had lots of pomelo’s and water melons to cut and distribute. And people did come and ask questions. Eagerly we explained, some more than others. Eh Say Poe was the champion instructor. Patiently he stood in the blaring sun, talking about temperatures, designs, reflection, absorption and other aspects of solar cooking. Occasionally a person would ask a question in English, most was in Karen.

Two pots of coffee were made, with some difficulties, so we still have a long way to go before world domination.

Another flaw in our design was that we waited in a shrinking shadow land. Instead of having a big tent where we could sleep, which would show the time saving advantage of solar cooking, we had a long piece of cloth that was poorly tied to some bamboo poles. Regularly we had to retie the sheet and soon not all of us could sit in the shade. By the time food started to be ready, we were very tired and eager to call it a day.

Bringing out the food, pots and pans

We were also hungry so we waited a little longer and finally could start to eat and share the food with others. Our curries were great, the rice perfect and the corn majestic. The children were patiently fed by Saw Peter.

Breaking down took us about one hour, due to some curries that needed a little extra time.

Our objective was to show people about the wonders of solar cooking, and we achieved that as all who passed by stopped and asked what happened. Many children witnessed a miracle that normally is reserved for circuses. Apart from the cooking of food, a piece of paper was put to the test and a hole was burned through it.

In addition to the objective we had some great food, a lot of fun and ideas about the next time. As the camps are hit by cuts in rations a way to reduce the reliance of coal and firewood is much needed. We need to keep looking for what works best and can be made in our communities.

Jumpman, Wai Wai San, Myint Aung and Moe Moe Kyit

Rajoo looks on from inside the compound

For more pictures click here.

Ton, Nu Po 2011-02-19

2011-02-13 Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature where paper burns. It is also the title of a famous novel. Last week I had to think about this novel. It is not a scientific book about temperatures and fires, nor a book about everything you ever wanted to know about paper, but a social comment about situations when rulers want to control their subordinates by controlling the information they receive, and one way of doing that is burning books. Any politician who wants to burn only one book should be distrusted as you never know where he will stops.

After some moving around I fund the spot where the rays of the sun could ignite paper.

Thinking about this novel I also had to think about the author and I was convinced it was written by Kurt Vonegut. So I went to our library where we have a 30 year old donated encyclopedia. There is an entry for Kurt Vonegut, and mentioning of ‘Slaughterhouse 5’ and a few other books, nothing about Fahrenheit 451. So I started to doubt my own memory, something I have to do quite often. A teacher I asked mentioned another author and that name rung a bell, although that name has disappeared in the black hole that is called my brain.

Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451

The reason I was thinking about Fahrenheit 451 was the test I did to see if I could burn paper solely with the rays of the sun. And I could.

 

Fahrenheit 101

It took me a exhilarating hour to loose one of my natural hatreds. My hatred is never aimed at people. Attitudes, things and bad habits, those I can hate. Even after having been proved wrong. Hypocrisy, motorcycles and using Fahrenheit are the best examples of each of the categories of my hatred. The attitude I hate most by the way, is my own hatred for these things. It is unproductive, wasteful and unhealthy.

Like I said, in one hour I lost my hatred for using Fahrenheit. Having been born in the ‘old world’ as Donald Rumsfeld liked to say, I have been brought up with the metric system and it never ceases to amaze me that there are places in the world where the metric system is still not regarded as a step forward compared with the chaos that Fahrenheit, Inches and Gallons bring. Especially when one of those places is regarded as the most advanced country in the world.

The conversion from Fahrenheit to Centigrade is known to me, the numbers just don’t make an impression on me and I need to think about my first trip to the US of A in 1988. The country was setting new records in summer temperature and hearing the newscaster talk about 100 Fahrenheit in New York, 101 in Boston and finally 104 in Washington, got me the one connection I have with Fahrenheit: 104 equals 40 degrees centigrade, and that is very hot!

In 1988 my country would suffer a meltdown if we got near 30 degrees centigrade, and each summer we would have only a few days above 30 degrees. In the USA, where they are always a few years ahead, global warming seem to have started in 1988. Now the summers in the Netherlands show weeks of 30 degrees and higher and a few years ago, there was a week with 35 and higher. Almost 100 Fahrenheit!

The 104 equals 40 degrees centigrade helps me to remember the formula. 104 minus 32 is 72. Divide 72 by 9 and multiply by 5 and you have 40. So if the paper burns at 451, we need to take off 32, so we get 419, divide this by 9 and multiply by 5 and we get 232.77 degrees centigrade.

As I was trying to burn the paper I looked at the oven thermometer, an American one with big numbers telling the temperature in Fahrenheit and unreadable small ones for centigrade. And I didn’t mind, this time I was not interested in boiling temperatures, or whether the water got hot enough to be safe for drinking, 65 degrees centigrade. no I wanted to burn paper and needed 451 Fahrenheit. And I got there. First a black spot appeared, then a hole that grew without any flames. A second attempt did take care of that and the paper caught fire and soon only ashes were left. And I got to 451!

With the thermometers Susan and Nat brought from New York we can see how hot things get and this day we reached an astonishing 520 Fahrenheit. Difficult to see, but this picture was taken when it was close to that.

Delighted is the feeling I felt. I lost my hatred for Fahrenheit, would not be interested in the converted novel called: ‘Centigrade 232.77’ and ‘Milestone’ also sounds better than ‘Kilometer Stone’. In Dutch ‘kilometerpaaltje’ however is a word of such refined beauty it should have a special page in the dictionary. Fans of cycling know what I mean. And yes, I rather have a pint than a ‘473 Centiliter’. Fans of a good brew know what I am talking about.

Fire and Brimstone

Last week, on the 13^th, the circus came to town. Like last year there was a juggling and clown show at the football ground while in the evening there was a fire show on the stage. Dancing while juggling burning rings, and doing intricate moves around each other made for an exciting show and I enjoyed being there. And then, it happened.

At the end of the show, during what is called ‘the grand finale’ all circus members came on stage and showed their skills once more. One of the members came on stage with a bicycle and this drew my attention. A great shock came over me when he set the helpless bicycle on fire and put the poor thing on his chin to show to the audience what a ruthless, cruel %*@&^*! he was.

A horrific picture of a bicycle on fire, a senseless, inhuman, inbicyclan act. Hopefully the ICC at the Hague has time after dealing with Khadaffi, Than Shwe and other despots.

Tears started to fill my eyes, and although I wanted to avert my eyes from this sadistic, heartless act, I did what I needed to do to let the world know and I forced myself closer to the stage to take some pictures.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Karen Human Rights Group have better things to do, so I hope to find the website of Bicycle Rights Watch or the UN Bicycle Protection Program. Noticing the joyful mood around me I guess I was the only one who heard the moans and cries of this graceful, two-wheeled creature.

It felt as if the petrochemical industry had come to Nu Po to offer some light in the lives of people, while remembering that those actions and inventions that offers a much needed alternative to the non-renewable ways of our oil addiction will end in the same way as the bicycle on stage.

A close up of the bicycle that was sacrificed in an act of entertainement.

In the 90s, Shell had Ken Wiri San, a poet and an activist against the regime and oil companies, hanged by the Nigerian regime. Since we are able to read cables between Embassies we now know that Shell has for years been controlling the Nigerian government. Instead of burning books, Shell chose to have the writer silenced by hanging, probably to safe the fuel so they could sell it. And now bicycles are slaughtered as they offer another way of opposing the oil industry. I have no idea at what temperature bicycles burn, and I have no intention of finding out. For me bicycles are like poetry, so they burn at 451 Fahrenheit as well. Do not trust politicians who want to burn bicycles.

Fahrenheit 520

The temperature at the parabolic cooker didn’t stop at 451 Fahrenheit. Still not knowing what it can do in perfect conditions, I reached 520 degrees and started to wonder how to control this heat and make it useful. Making coffee was the brilliant answer and since then the results have been mixed. Sai Aung Naing has cooked rice on it, in short time, boiled water and made coffee. There were also moments when the coffee stayed on it for an hour without releasing aroma or the black brew. More testing is needed and this researcher has ordered, and received, new coffee supplies. Pure for scientific reasons.

This shows a new position for the coffee maker. We still have mixed results. And nice coffee.

And on Saturday February 19 we planned a solar cooking demonstration with a report on this blog in the near future.

ton, Nu Po February 18, 2011

2011-01-23 An update on what we have done, yes I repeat myself a lot!

Testing solar cookers takes time and when result give mixed messages it is easy to loose confidence and interest. Several circumstances can play a role in the outcome of the result and in my occasions it is not clear why something worked or why not. Over time each disappointment gets its proper place, right next to each joyful achievement.

I started this a year ago with enthusiasm, some reading material, encouragement from people around me and some materials from BGET. Undercooked rice and the approaching rainy season made me put it all on hold. A year later I got my box cooker out again and I started a more scientific approach. More information was obtained and plans for another cooker. At the right moment Mike cam into Nu Po and he gave me some useful comments which we then used to improve the cooker. This resulted in the first 100 degrees centigrade inside the box. A later attempt, better timed, even got me to 128 degrees, and the sky was the limit.

It soon dawned to me that the 128 degrees was deceptive as the thermometer was in the box in the glaring sun, so I started hiding the thermometer in shaded corners to get the right air temperature. When a pot of rice or water is in a box, there are different temperatures to measure. Outside in the shade, our normal daily temperature, there is the air in the box, the temperature of the pot and most important the temperature of the rice or water. In the end we want food to cook so that is the most important one, directly related to the others.

In these last several weeks I have learned a few things. Some of you will sigh and realise I  am a ‘know nothing’ but I found out that a pot keeps the warmth longer than the air, that a solar cooker is a slow cooker and speed is not an important factor, and that things can cook below the 100 degrees centigrade. ( I type ‘degrees centigrade’ as I am too lazy to find the glyph with the centigrade symbol, so now I use way more time)

One of the things I discovered is that to make water safe for consumption, it needs a mere 65 degrees for some time and not 100 degrees. We all learn about the 100 degrees as that is easy to see. Without a thermometer you can tell it is boiling, most bacteria and other nasty water pollutants, will be killed with those 65 degrees. This makes the sun a usable tool to create safe drinking water. Unfortunately, it won’t get the lime out of the water, and we got plenty of lime.

Right now there are 4 cookers being used every day. My original cooker, a sturdy two boc cooker, fairly insulated with two glass panes covering the top. Not air tight, which would improve this cooker vastly, and topped with a cut open cooking oil tin. This box has been cooking rice for several weeks now, most of the days it is perfect after several hours in the sun, occasionally we have to steam it a little longer on the bucket stove.

Some students made a nice little cooker that is a bit high and in order to have the food cooked we put the pot on top of two upside down tiffin boxes so the pot almost touches the glass. One glass pane covers this small box. Every day a curry is cooked this way. Some great curries, some a little disappointed. Not the tenderness disappoints, the spices and herbs added were a bit bland. We cooked eggplant curries, potato curries, and yesterday a sublime eggplant-tomato turmeric curry.

The curries are all cooked without adding water or cooking oil. For people who need to tone down on the intake of cooking oil, the sun is the way to go! The rice is done with the same amount of water as on a normal stove, without worrying if the rice will burn. It won’t!

A rather large cooker is used to heat a big pot of water. The pot is half filled and we are testing the temperature we can achieve. This showed me the slowness of cooking. On a typical day, and mind you the nights here are cold so when I check the temperature outside at 8 o’clock, it is around 8 degrees, the water will start between 10 and 20 degrees. The sun gets up early off course, and we have to wait until around 10 before the sun starts its run across the sky. A tree blocks the sun between 9 and 10, after that until 4 no problems.

The temperature in the original box will reach 60 or 80 rather quickly, this is in the shade and the pot will follow behind it. The air in the big box with the big pot of water is hardly insulated and has a piece of plastic as window. The water in this pot heats up slowly and at the end of the afternoon we have reached 55 degrees and one day even 60. Not hot enough to be called safe, so we need to put it on the bucket stove for a little while. It would also be great for warming shower water.

Although we have made great curries and cooked rice constantly, these cookers have left me a little disappointed as it seems we can not do much more with this. So for that reason I was delighted to get the parabolic cooker. Watching videos on Youtube gave me the impression that with this piece of engineering, all our worries would be over. Coffee? Put it on the parabolic cooker and 10 minutes later a nice brew is ready.

A few days ago I did mention my first parabolic coffee, probably on face book and I have yet to get my second one. That first one took 40 minutes and a second attempt ended with me putting it on the gas stove. Since then I haven’t been able to make solar coffee.

Sunday

I wrote this earlier this week and didn’t save it well enough which means the second half is lost and I type this on Sunday. Today we started with some preparations for solar cooker building lessons. The sun was really hot today and we tested only the heating of water and compared our different designs. At some point the water in the Parabolic cooker made beautiful boiling sounds although it only showed 92 degrees centigrade.

The other cookers did well today too. The water reached 70 and even 80 degrees in those home made contraptions.

Later this week more on the lessons

ton, Nu Po 2011-01-23

2011-01-20 The first weeks of 2011

Testing solar cookers takes time and when result give mixed messages it is easy to loose confidence and interest. Several circumstances can play a role in the outcome of the result and in my occasions it is not clear why something worked or why not. Over time each disappointment gets its proper place, right next to each joyful achievement.

I started this a year ago with enthusiasm, some reading material, encouragement from people around me and some materials from BGET. Undercooked rice and the approaching rainy season made me put it all on hold. A year later I got my box cooker out again and I started a more scientific approach. More information was obtained and plans for another cooker. At the right moment Mike came into Nu Po and he gave me some useful comments which we then used to improve the cooker. This resulted in the first 100 degrees centigrade inside the box. A later attempt, better timed, even got me to 128 degrees, and the sky was the limit.

It soon dawned to me that the 128 degrees was deceptive as the thermometer was in the box in the glaring sun, so I started hiding the thermometer in shaded corners to get the right air temperature. When a pot of rice or water is in a box, there are different temperatures to measure. Outside in the shade, our normal daily temperature, there is the air in the box, the temperature of the pot and most important the temperature of the rice or water. In the end we want food to cook so that is the most important one, directly related to the others.

In these last several weeks I have learned a few things. Some of you will sigh and realise I  am a ‘know nothing guy’ but I found out that a pot keeps the warmth longer than the air, that a solar cooker is a slow cooker and speed is not an important factor, and that things can cook below the 100 degrees centigrade. ( I type ‘degrees centigrade’ as I am too lazy to find the glyph with the centigrade symbol, so now I use way more time)

One of the things I discovered is that to make water safe for consumption, it needs a mere 65 degrees for some time and not 100 degrees. We all learn about the 100 degrees as that is easy to see. Without a thermometer you can tell it is boiling, most bacteria and other nasty water pollutants, will be killed with those 65 degrees. This makes the sun a usable tool to create safe drinking water. Unfortunately, it won’t get the lime out of the water, and we got plenty of lime.

As the place gets more crowded with cookers, it becomes a fight for the sun.

Right now there are 4 cookers being used every day. My original cooker, a sturdy two box cooker, fairly insulated with two glass panes covering the top, not on top of each other as double panes but next to each other as neither pane is big enough. Not air tight, which would improve this cooker vastly, and topped with a cut open cooking oil tin. This box has been cooking rice for several weeks now, most of the days it is perfect after several hours in the sun, occasionally we have to steam it a little longer on the bucket stove.

Some students made a nice little cooker that is a bit high and in order to have the food cooked we put the pot on top of two upside down tiffin boxes so the pot almost touches the glass. One glass pane covers this small box. Every day a curry is cooked this way. Some great curries, some a little disappointed. Not the tenderness disappoints, the spices and herbs added were a bit bland. We cooked eggplant curries, potato curries, and yesterday a sublime eggplant-tomato turmeric curry.

The curries are all cooked without adding water or cooking oil. For people who need to tone down on the intake of cooking oil, the sun is the way to go! The rice is done with the same amount of water as on a normal stove, without worrying if the rice will burn. It won’t!

This box is very thin and hardly insulated. the cover is a thin plastic sheet with large openings on all sides. Yet it heats the air to 70 or 80 degrees, and the water in the pot up to 60 degrees. It's a slow cooker, and a good prototype.

A rather large cooker is used to heat a big pot of water. The pot is half filled and we are testing the temperature we can achieve. This showed me the slowness of cooking. On a typical day, and mind you the nights here are cold so when I check the temperature outside at 8 o’clock, it is around 8 degrees, the water will start between 10 and 20 degrees. The sun gets up early off course, and we have to wait until around 10 before the sun starts its run across the sky. A tree blocks the sun between 9 and 10, after that until 4 no problems.

The temperature in the original box will reach 60 or 80 rather quickly, this is in the shade and the pot will follow behind it. The air in the big box with the big pot of water is hardly insulated and has a piece of plastic as window. The water in this pot heats up slowly and at the end of the afternoon we have reached 55 degrees and one day even 60. Not hot enough to be called safe, so we need to put it on the bucket stove for a little while. It would also be great for warming shower water.

Although we have made great curries and cooked rice constantly, these cookers have left me a little disappointed as it seems we can not do much more with this. So for that reason I was delighted to get the parabolic cooker. Watching videos on Youtube gave me the impression that with this piece of engineering, all our worries would be over. Coffee? Put it on the parabolic cooker and 10 minutes later a nice brew is ready.

Donated by Partners this is an interesting design and hopefully a prototype for other cookers. So far we need more testing.

A few days ago I did mention my first parabolic coffee, probably on face book and I have yet to get my second one. That first one took 40 minutes and a second attempt ended with me putting it on the gas stove.

My Italian coffee maker placed at the centre of heat. Almost 40 minutes later a nice smell alerted me of the upcoming joy of drinking the brew!

While writing this I am listening to the ‘Little Willies’ and they make me feel happy with all their songs about getting drunk, being left and other sad stories. Nothing makes me happier than a very sad song and the ‘Little Willies” put those sad songs in beautiful melodies and the voices of the singers, one is that famous daughter of Ravi Shankar, are heavenly matched. The last song is called ‘Lou reed’ and tells about how Lou Reed goes out at night to go ‘cow tipping’, a time passing activity more fitting the mid west than New York, now resulting in a hilarious song.

Anyway, the ‘Little Willies’ put me in the right mood, so when I write that right now the results of the testing are a little disappointed it has more to do with my expectations and the fact that we have just started, than with the fact that solar cooking won’t work.

A view from the coffee pot at the centre of the cooker.

For the longer future we want to see if we can make cookers from local materials that are sturdy and easy to use. For the near future our aims are different and maybe unattainable. Cooking some water in a short time, baking bread and other niceties.

This is my Italian coffee maker. Look at the specially designed wooden handle. Normally these come equipped with bakelite handles, here in Nu Po the best 'Barista' in the camp Ra Joo decided to add his personal touch with this hardwood design.

Soon some oven thermometers will arrive and we can improve our testing methods. We are also working on a testing manual, so our information is easier to collect and used.

For this weekend I hope to start building a wooden cooker with a glass pane and better insulation. About 5 minutes away, Mike has some great ideas I hope he will be able to start on soon. Already busy with all kinds of electrics, his input sometimes gives me the push to start the next phase.

Temperature is down here in the office, tomorrow I will post this, hopefully some pictures are added.

Several people have assisted and supported us in these last few weeks. We thank you all, you know who you are, and we will ask you for more support in the future.

ton Nu Po, 2011-01-20

2010-12-14

Today was a sunny day and while I had to go to school at 8 o,clock Sai Aung Naing set up two cookers, the original box cooker and my newly build prototype. On returning at 12 o’clock Sai showed me proudly the temperature in the new cooker. Without any insulation, a thin plastic covering did the thermometer show 120 degrees centigrade! For several hours is was above 100 so the water we cooked in there  was safe for drinking.

At the end of the day, the rice that was coked with the other cooker came out perfect. We had a few days with overcast problems getting the rice good and needed some extra steam cooking on charcoal, however on this day it was perfect again. Tomorrow we should try a curry again.

In the coming period we need to get a few things and if you know where we can get it, please send us a message. We need thermometers to put inside the cookers, and also to measure the water and maybe curries. Glass, we need glass. Right now I have several panes donated by BGET however they are quite small and we are looking into bigger cookers, maybe for boarding houses use. So if you know how to get strong glass panes, preferably free of charge, let us know.

Hopefully I will tell you tomorrow about a delicious curry

 

ton

2010-12-13 A new design

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The last three days saw a lot of rain and clouds so not a good time for solar cooking, however an excellent time for research and tryouts. Online I found hundreds of designs and that shows there is more than one way of doing this and so we can’t go wrong.

Yesterday I quickly build this:

In an hour I prepared this rude box to find out if an open front is an improvement.

In an hour I prepared this rude box to find out if an open front is an improvement.

With just a thin plastic cover we reached 70 degrees celcius for a short time and mostly it was 50. The water was a little more than lukewarm so we have a lot of work, and ideas.

ton Nu Po

2010-12-11

hello,

on this day there is not much to say about solar cooking. Last night it rained and this morning at started very cloudy and later we had more rain. So no testing today. Instead some research online and some fresh ideas.

Next to me in the internet cafe sat Ko Naing and he showed me some interesting stuff, not about green energy but how to save costs, energy and waste in the future, so it fits into the WALD spirit and philosophy. As I think, or hope as maybe nobody reads this, some of you are also working in education and need to make decisions about buying stuff, this is an interesting link. Let us know what you think.

ton

A New Day and a New Cooker

2010-12-08 Jack’s birthday

His age I forgot, not that today’s is Jack’s birthday. Happy birthday Jack. Today we continue our work on the solar cooker. Sai prepared the first, enhanced prototype with three tins of rice, we’re getting bold, the water 2.5 cm above the rice and at a quarter to ten the sun started shining on our design. This time we didn’t use the thermometer for this one as we also build another cooker.

With Mike’s idea we made a square big enough to hold a big pot, still need to measure the size, and as reflection we used two cut open oil tins that we then put around the pot as if it was a circle. The square was made using concrete blocks that we happen to have on our compound. We try to make solar cookers with as little expense as possible and using discarded materials and reuse other things.

Two layers of concrete bricks, a circle of cooking oil tins, and a plastic sheet. Enough for 70 degrees celsius. Not bad.

The square was quickly put together, two layers of concrete blocks which is a little higher than the oil tins. The lids and bottoms of the oils tins were used for the floor to optimise reflection. The cooking pot we used is black from months of cooking, the lid we painted black, using a safe paint, and the whole was put on a brick so the top of the pot almost reached the plastic we used for cover.

With a thin layer of plastic, no extra reflectors, holes everywhere around the pot so the heat was hardly trapped, we had to wait for one hour to reach 50 ℃, and another hour to get to 60. Around noon we reached the highest temperature, 70 ℃. With a little overcast later on the temperature dropped to 50 around 2 o’clock.

The concrete blocks that form the basis for this cooker, maybe to be used for large kitchens.

When we opened the pot at the end of the day, the pot felt hot, yet not as unbearable as the other one a day earlier. the water was definitely heated up, although we were not sure if it had reached the 65 ℃ we need for water pasteurisation.

All in all it was a very successful day. We managed to cook a big amount of rice, and learned more about the amount of water we need, and we had a first try out with our own design for a larger cooker. With the things learned today we rebuild the cooker in preparation for tomorrow. This time it is still far from perfect, we hope to see improvement in temperature and hopefully get water that we can trust.

First we made sure that the underground was more flat, so the bricks are all even at the top. Then we lined the interior of the bricks with a layer of cardboard so less heat will escape. Then we heightened the floor inside the cooker so the top of the oil cans is even with the top of the cardboard and the bricks. In this way we make optimal use of the reflection of the oil cans.

Instead of the plastic sheet we will use a square piece of plexiglas that I had bought last year and never used. It was still in its packaging. We also made an extra oils can reflection sheet that we will put op top of the plexiglas so we will increase the amount of sunlight that will enter the box. And now my book calls me and I will have to wait one day before I know the outcome of our new design. Coming weekend other members of our team will come again and we can share more ideas and build more prototypes.

ton, Nu Po, December 8, 2010

A new start with solar cooking in Nu Po

Sustainability is word we all have come across in the last decade. It is linked to community development and our relationship with our environment. In the minority world, also known as the developed world, sustainability is mostly used to create a new world where we all can consume as much as we did before without feeling guilty. So preferably electricity comes from ‘green’ or renewable sources. Our cars have to be electric, or until they are as fast as petrol cars, a hybrid. Off course only if they are as cheap or expensive as the other cars.

In my country, the Netherlands, the government supported renewable energy by paying for the difference in price between wind or solar energy and what we get from oil fueled generation plants. This happened after we sold our electricity utilities for low prices to investors who hate subsidies if they don’t end up in their pockets. So many people opt for ‘green’ energy, which off course comes out of the same socket, but if feels good and it doesn’t cost extra, if you forget that the government use your tax to pay for the difference. To me this all looks like a Ponzi scheme and I might never choose the green option. Or would I?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for green, renewable energy. I just don’t fall for the labels. If somebody wants to sell something, she or he wants to make a profit and more profit is made by more selling, so if your product is greener and cleaner than your old one, you still wants to sell more. In the end it is our system of doing business that is causing the greatest harm, increased by the growing number of people who can join the dance and our  ignorance in most situations.

A Clothes Peg

In the good old days, criminals wore black and white striped clothes, had a number on their chest and also wore eye masks. Or was that only in the Donald Duck? Those criminals would spend their days making clothes pegs. Remember the good old wooden ones? In jails inmates could earn some money by assembling the pegs. Two identical pieces of wood were attached to each other with a metal spring and voila, a clothes peg was born.

Growing up in a family with 5 sisters, means growing up with large washing baskets. My mother must have spend years on end just with the laundry of my sisters. Off course I went dressed trough life as well, however my collection of clothes was nothing compared with theirs. And they changed clothes more than once a day. The years I spend in the same house as my sisters I can not remember one day that there were no clothes hanging to dry on the clothing line.

In the summer my mother used the rather large balcony we had, and for the days she couldn’t use outside, she hung the clothes on the third floor, above the stairs. Whenever I hear the story of losing your ‘Phon’ or power as a man if you walk under the clothes of a woman, I think of the clothing line above my head, full of skirts, blouses, women’s underwear, bra’s and even cotton, reusable sanitary napkins. It’s a miracle I had the strength to cycle all the way from my country to Asia.

My mother used a simple washing machine for most of the years, later she got a more advanced type and just before I left the Netherlands she even got a tumble dryer. That seems to be the norm in the Netherlands. Just a washing machine is not enough, and I fear that the inmates don’t need to assemble clothes pegs anymore as that market must have plummeted.

To me green or renewable energy doesn’t mean to tick a box on a subscription paper of the energy dealer, for me it means having a hemp clothing line, wooden clothes pegs and the wind or sun, and if the weather is too moist, just patience. It is cheap, simple and has the greatest efficiency. And on top of it, it keeps you independent.

How far is it?

In cities there are moments when I don’t know how to get where I want to go. So I ask a stranger who looks like a local where the place is that I want to go. If my next question is: “How long does it take to get there?”, I always got an estimate that is the time it takes a car to get there. My next question might be: “I see, how long does it take walking?”, which is often answered with a remark that it is too far to walk, which is off course not debatable, it is just not true. Unless there is an ocean in between, you can get anywhere on foot.

A walk of an hour in a city is not long in my point of view, and I have taken longer ones just for a small errand. The alternative for me is a bicycle and after that public transport. A car is only used for special reasons or if I am not alone. It is always surprising how wrong people are in guessing or inferring how long it takes to walk to a place. The estimates are always much longer than the reality. It shows that if you don’t walk yourself, you have no idea what you talk about.

After the bombings in London, it is said that people who went to their office by underground for years, and now were forced to take a different mode of transport and went walking of biking, found that they actually lived very near their working place.

A couple of years ago, the fuel prices in Europe, and the rest of the world went up dramatically, and I don’t mean the raise in prices later when a barrel was 140$, it was before that. In France truck drivers stopped working and blocked roads. French truck drivers do that three times a year for any reason, just before the teachers and after hospital workers, this time however the British truck drivers and other annoyed people joined the strikes.

In one magazine I read the comment of a brave and enlightened man. He was Dutch and like many others angry with shell and other oil companies. He said: “I know how to hit shell, tomorrow I will take my bicycle to work!”. The rest of his statement made it clear that the man really intended to do that for one day, and I thought if you just stick to that idea, you really gonna hit shell, and save yourself a lot of money and get healthy as a bonus.

Investing in an electric car is good, if you really need one. Call it green or renewable energy, although only if the electricity was produced in a renewable way. The only real green engine is yourself. The fuel is green and renewable and probably much tastier than diesel or petrol.

Solar Electricity

Last year we asked information to get solar electricity at our school in Nu Po. With the good people of Burma Green Energy Team (BGET) a proposal was written using a lot of information about our electricity use, the days we can expect enough sun in Nu Po and what we wanted the solar power system to do.

At our school we have a modest electricity use and so far a diesel generator has served us well. We can run all our computers and laptops on it, open all our lights and charge several batteries. We know our generator and how much fuel is costs. The solar power system needed funding to start it and as there was an uncertainty about the time it would be efficient we decided to hold it off, feeling that the investment was not worth the saving of fuel.

That hasn’t stopped our school for looking into ways to become greener. The last three years we have started with our compound that is now greener with more plants, more grass and less burning. The only burning we do now is our cooking stove using charcoal or the dead wood that our compound produces.

This year we are using our compound also for growing vegetables, although we need to learn a lot before we got it right, and last month we opened our composting place. Soon we will have our first compost harvest.

Solar Cooker

Last year a solar box cooker was build at the school and a very hopeful teacher used it to cook rice, which according to the book, was possible. Exactly two rice meals were eaten by the teacher. the first one was declared ‘good’ the second one received a very likely more honest remark: “I won’t eat this rice anymore!”. The solar cooker was build exactly following building instructions, but a few adaptations had to be made due to limited resources.

The box was made last year and had a glass panel that partly blocked the sunlight coming in. With two glass panes, creating a larger opening and a new designed reflection panel made of an empty cooking oil tin, it inceased its efficiency.

After the rice debacles, the teacher just went one step higher and tried bread. This shows a little bit the understanding of temperatures, cooking and other scientific theories by said teacher, and not surprisingly, the rice tasted delicious in hindsight. The bread was off course heavily under baked and the doughy substance that the teacher managed to eat, should have been used as cementing material instead.

When the rains appeared the solar cooker was stored, together with materials for more solar cooker that had generously been donated by BGET.

The sun has returned to Nu Po and suddenly an attempt is made to revive the solar cooker project. With the assistance of some, the teacher got the cooker out of its corner and on Sunday December 5, the King’s birthday, a thinking session precluded the building of solar cooker, mach 2. The team that worked on this project was Catherine, Michael, Ko Naing Naing, Sai Aung Naing and Ton.

One of the sunniest places on our school compound is in front of the composting place. A tree blocks the sun for the first hours of the day, and after 9.30 the sun starts its daily routine of sending its rays to us. If clouds stay away,the cooker gets sun until 4 o'clock. Enough for rice, how about bread?

Last year the highest measured temperature in the box, this means the air in the box, not the pot or food in the pot, was 70 degrees celsius. For those of you who still cannot grasp the intricacies of the metric system, this means 158 Fahrenheit. The challenge of this Sunday was whether we could reach a temperature of 100 ℃. (212 ℉)

Several modifications were suggested and while we sipped coffee we arranged some of those ideas, the best one a halve circular reflection screen made from a cooking oil tin. Our excitement rose as much as the temperature in the box did and we still had some ideas in hand. Those ideas needed at least one more day so we were hoping that what we could do on this Sunday was enough to get to the 100 ℃. We went to 70, then 80 finally 90 and slowly towards 95. The last 5 degrees could have been the result of us releasing extra heat due to our excitement, we did reach 100 and unfortunately we didn’t had the champagne to celebrate this moment.

128 degrees celsius

A day later, December 6, Sai Aung Naing and Ton started the day with the set up for the project. On this day we did everything the same as the day before with some modifications. The lid of the pot was repainted black, stones were put under the pot instead of the bamboo the day before and the top of the box was changed so more light would enter the box.

At 9.30 the box was place in the sun, with a clear blue sky. The temperature in the box was 30 ℃ and we waited eagerly. At 9.45 the temperature was already 50 ℃, and with difficulties did I leave my place to go and teach at PDJC. Sai Aung Naing stayed and monitored the events. When I returned after 12, the results were wonderful. Without any trouble the temperature rose to 100 ℃ and then on to 110 and 120 ℃. (248 ℉)

 

At 1 o’clock the temperature reached what turned out to be the highest level of the day, an astounding 128 ℃! (262.4 ℉!). Suddenly baking bread seems within reach. In the afternoon some clouds appeared challenging the project, however until 2 o’clock the temperature stayed 128 ℃. At that point more clouds appeared and slowly the temperature went down to 80℃. After 4 o’clock it went further down to 65, still higher than most of the time last year.

At the start of the day we had filled the pot with one cup of rice and added water to about 2.5 cm. (1 inch) At 16.45 we opened the pot and found well cooked rice that hadn’t stuck to the pot and tasted wonderful. This was not just the opinion of a biased researcher but the opinion of two biased researchers.

A challenging third day

On Tuesday December 7, Sai Aung Naing and Ton, that’s me, began the day with watering the plants and the vegetables. That is normal, although I have to add that Sai usually starts before me and waters more than me. After that we sat up the solar cooker and put the pot in with a tin of rice and 4 cm of water. PDJC beckoned me again and I left Sai to take care of the cooker.

On my return at 11 o’clock I found the box at 80℃, and the sky was partly clouded. The whole day the temperature didn’t get higher than that and at around 3 it slowly went cooler.  So never on this day did the temperature get above 80 degrees and therefore not even near the recorded 128 from the previous day. When we opened the pot at 4 o’clock we both didn’t expect too much. To our surprise and delight, the rice was cooked, looked beautiful and tasted delicious.

This proved that it is possible to cook rice on a partly clouded day with only the use of the sun. This means that if we continue to develop our solar cooker we might end up with a device that can be used in Nu Po and other camps as well. This could mean a solution for many people who do not have enough charcoal. It could also be a solution for people who don’t have enough time. It seems that solar cooking takes a lot of time, our rice was 6 hours in the cooker. In reality we spend ten minutes setting it up, and only had to be there to open the pot. There is no fear of burning or overcooking the rice. What we need to think about, and that is part of the coming days, is how to keep the cooker in a direct line with the sun.

ton, Nu Po, December 7, 2010