Octagon Solar Cooker
To Place an order for the OCTAGON PARABOLIC
SOLAR COOKER for $188.95 go to bottom of this page or go back to
our Homepage: www.SolarOvens.net
Parabolic
Cooking Reflectors Are the Fastest & Hottest!
.. 
Below
is an Independent
and Informative Review of the
OCTAGON PARABOLIC
SOLAR COOKER - 2009:
The Octagon
Parabolic Solar Cooker is the newest Solar Cooker
on the market, and I had the good fortunate to put it to the test
before its release date in Early 2009.
It
cooks faster because all the concentrated reflected
sunlight completely covers an 11" cooking pot with over 350 degrees F
of midday dry temperature heat. Once set, needs little or no
sun
adjustment, Fried
or scrambled eggs will cook in about 12 minutes, while 2-3 pound roasts
will be well done and browned in about 60-75 minutes of full midday
sunlight. It
will even fry bacon and sausage! It's an 8-surface deep-tapered
parabolic concentrator that is fully adjustable to all angles of the
sun for more consistent all day heating anywhere on earth.
The Octagon Cooker made an immediate impression on this
Solar Cook. Because of the Octagon Cooker's innovative design,
despite it's appearance, it's not a Panel Cooker at all but actually an
eight-sided, single piece parabolic constructed of its
amazingly reflective AA (coated anodized aluminum) Panel, an
exceptionally reflective (95.5%) polished aluminum mirror surface
weather resistant metal sheeting of
European import made to the manufacturer's research specs to
maximize direct ray reflection and minimize scattered optical ray
diffusion - it sports a front and back transparent overcoating of
anti-oxidizing weatherproof/UV protectant that gives a minimum of 5-7
yrs of outdoor life with an expectancy of up to 20 years of exposure to
the elements. It's also unaffected by corrosive salt water
seaside
use.
The Octagon's geometry and reflector composition directs
Sunlight at the Cookpot and does not errantly scatter light away from
it's heatsinked base plate. The heatsink itself is an 11" X 8
1/2"
piece of 3/4" lightweight fiber and concrete mix standard house siding
sprayed flat black with hi-temp BBQ paint - it's adhered to and
temp-isolated away from the Octagon's base plate with Silicon-2 caulk
(because it's non-outgassing) which works well. The Octagon's
wrap-around structure only requires repositioning infrequently - up to
2 hours of unattended cooking is possible as sunlight is passed around
inside it's circular reflector, however I couldn't keep myself from
attending this beautiful Cooker much more often than that as it most
resembles a piece of dazzling sculpture. Cooker sun orientation is
accomplished by arranging for a hands-width of shadow along it's base's
left edge, then pivoting the reflector on two baseplate wingnut bolts
forward or back until the cookpot is maximally illuminated. The
reflector can be tilted far forward for early morning or late afternoon
and low-azimuth winter/high or low latitude cooking and back to it's
middle or back slanting swing range for the middle "shank of the day".
"Fine tuning" of forward-and-back cookpot placement within the Octagon
Cooker can be accomplished by extending a finger over the top of the
reflector's back and looking for a finger shadow down below in front of
the cookpot. Just making sure the cookpot isn't partly shaded and fully
in focused light is sufficient though.
For
Cookware, glass-lidded standard stovetop pots and frying pans are used
- the usual black thin walled aluminum or sheet steel cookware proviso
for Solar Cooking is of course still recommended for quicker
cooking.
The Octagon Cooker will accommodate standard kitchen cookware 11" wide
and nearly a foot in height (not counting a tight fitted domed glass
lid), though food cooks hotter and faster in shallower pots, like sauce
pans and skillets which present less thermal mass to heat.
There's
cutouts in the front and back of the Octagon Cooker that lets you pass
a handle of a frying pan out beyond the Cooker. A glass-lid
Cookpot is
itself the "Oven" - the Octagon's design makes usual cooking a "No Oven
Bag" Solar Cooking system.
That's because the Octagon features large reflective
surface area (6 sq. ft.), it's very reflective material, heatsink and
circular geometry. The Designer of the Octagon explained that
sunlight
is
a roughly half-and-half mix of long wave visible light and invisible
infrared heat wavelengths (the balance is UV which amounts to only
about 3% of sunlight's spectrum and the bulk of sunlight potential
damage to reflectors - the Octagon is UV protected), so his Octagon
Cooker is designed to take advantage of most of sunlight's spectral
range, which is why the Cooker uses glass-topped cookware, taking
advantage of light focused from above through the pot's lid as well as
directed to all sides of the cookware. An extra oven cooking bag
or the optional
clear polycarbonate domed pot cover will reduce solar irradiation
by
8-10%, but may be helpful in maintaining heat in steady wind conditions
and on cold days. I found reheating a dark mug of coffee was easily
done by just covering the top with a piece of clear kitchen wrap and
setting it into direct light in the Octagon. I could begin
cooking a
rice and vegetable casserole before 8 AM this morning. We had several
nice boneless Chicken fillets
in a Chipotle chile sauce for lunch in about an hour, earlier baking
potatoes before noon, placed dry in a glass-topped pot.
The temperature check below shows the chicken after 45
minutes of solar cooking. In another 20 minutes the chicken's
internal
temperature
reached 165 degrees F, ready for eating. Many clear glass lids normally
have removable plastic handles that allow for temperature checks though
the hole in the lid so the cover does not need to be removed.
An
option is an unbreakable clear Solar Still container will be also soon
be offered for the Octagon - making it a first for any commercially
available Solar Cooker. The distilling unit can batch distill
ultra-low particulate pure H20 (4-5 times less particulates than
bottled water) from salty and brackish water or from any fresh water
source, having an output of 2-3 cups/day. Interesting and useful
pure
fragrant essences of any herb or spice can be easily produced when
placed in H20 or ethanol alcohol for distillation in the Octagon
Cooker's Still. Any Wine can be distilled into quite drinkable
Brandy
as well which incidentally can be included as a flavor ingredient in
some Solar cuisine. Interesting possibilities for Solar Still
experimentation naturally come to mind. Incidentally, the Still can
also be used to bake bread. That's versatility.
Bacon will fry for hours
without burning (a thing of beauty, to my mind), and baking browned
bread, Chicken and potatoes is easy in any weather suitable for Solar
Cooking, mainly whenever you can cast a shadow. Dry heat
temperature's
(without food) within the cookware can reach 350+ degrees F.
Normal
sunny day cooking times range from 12 minutes for a few eggs to two
hours for a large meal. Light overcast day Solar cooking takes longer -
but in fact I noted this Cooker to produce visible condenstion on the
underside of a clear glass cooking lid just before the sun had even arisen
in my northern locale -- presumbably gathering and focusing heat from
ambient IR sources, which impressed me with the efficiency of the Panel
reflector material, itself originating from the
Space Age's reflective material used to protect NASA Astronauts on the
Moon. Wind resistance is excellent with testing this
with a powered leaf blower which can deliver a velocity of 180 mph -
distancing this from the Cooker, his wind anemometer registered a
frontal 40 mph wind velocity without moving the Octagon
Parabolic Cooker. It weighs 6 lbs and the prototype's assembled
dimensions are approx 26" X 26" with a front to back depth of 16".
My
delight in viewing this pre-release Solar Cooker was complete when the
Designer of the Octagon offered to sell me one of his
(coveted by many) prototype Octagon Cookers, which I'm happily putting
to daily use. Expected pricing for the Octagon Cooker will
be USD
$199, plus shipping and it's later release Solar Still's yet
undetermined price may be about $60-80. Other
accessories will be
upcoming periodically in the development cycle, including a
1-gallon
crock pot option that gives the solar cook an easy way to
keep on
cooking using low wattage wall power when clouds unexpectedly cover the
sun. When sun energy goes away, the black cooking crock is lifted
out
of a clear polycarbonate insulating container when on the Octagon
cooker, then placed into the 120 volt AC-powered standard crock pot
heater in your kitchen. The AC low wattage (100-190 watts) slow cooker
unit remains inside, and the black cooking crock becomes a hybrid
solar/AC cooking container.
Indepedent rewiew not in any way
affiliated with the Octgagon cooker
by Christian Smith from Yahoo Solar
Cooking
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It cooks faster because the of
the very
tall
one-peice wraparound reflector concentrator captures and retains the
heat in the
middle 12
inches of the Parabolic
cooker. Because of its
scientific design that took years of research and the highly reflective
solar anodized aluminum mirror surface that is 95.5%
reflective,
specially formed for fast, easy cooking with the sun, the
Octagon Parabolic
Solar Cooker is one
of the most
efficient solar cookers on the market. Many times it cooks in
less time than box oven-style solar cookers, and once it is set, it
needs very little adjustment or repositioning for the angle of the sun.
It is so very
versatile
and weighs only 6 pounds.
It is recommend to use a black pot with a
clear glass lid with these parabolic style cookers, up to 12 inches
wide. Most 1-3 quart meals can be cooked
on a sunny day in 45 to 90
minutes using your own pot. Scrambled or fried eggs take around 12
minutes. It
will even fry bacon and sausage!
Larger meals
can be cooked with longer cooking times.
The Octagon Cookers are
all handmade to order in the USA and take about 2 weeks to
make,
but they are
well
worth the wait!!!
1-year manufacturer's warranty
against defective parts.
Call
us for extra shipping
charges
to Hawaii, Alaska or Internationally
Optional Solar Pot Cover
for Octagon Solar Cooker
Call
us for extra shipping
charges
to Hawaii, Alaska or Internationally
The
optional
Octagon Pot Cover (12 diameter x 6 1/2" tall) is
ideal
for
preserving and increasing cooking
temps on
cold, windy and light cloudy days. It has a ring of solar reflective
material around the
clear pot cover that can help increase heating temps up to 25 degrees
higher. The shiny surface increase the reflective sunlight and directs
it towards the pot. You can now
fast boil water or cook nearly all day long, even on
windy or cold summer or winter days. It is great for baking bread
uncovered inside the pot cover, also works
great with a glass casserole dish inside.
(The Pot Cover can also be used with the
Solar Cone Oven and the Simple Solar Panel Cookers
sold on on www.SolarOvens.net
to
increase
the
temperatures).
More solar ovens available
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Homepage: www.SolarOvens.net
Using only the power of the sun to cook your dinner!