We make an electric dryer for apples with our own hands. How to make a fruit dryer from the refrigerator: a visual aid. How to dry fruits and vegetables

It can even be exaggerated to say that a person from a primitive state gradually came to civilization, thanks to the preparation of summer products for future use. Monkeys, as you know, do not prepare anything in reserve.

In addition to preserving the harvest, dried fruits are also beneficial for health.

For example, one cook serving members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU wrote in his memoirs that compote from dried fruits was served without fail at all dinners.

Not juices, not fruit drinks, but dried fruit compote.

That is, the proper drying of plant products is not only the preservation of the crop, but also the health benefits.

We found out the need for drying, the main question is how best to do it? As it turns out, for this it is not at all necessary to buy expensive branded dryers.

You yourself can assemble a productive, economical and very convenient dryer from inexpensive materials (up to 1000 rubles), on which greens, berries, mushrooms, pieces of fruit, fish, etc. will be equally easy to dry.

Shop dryers do not suit many either for their quality or price. And it happens that both at the same time.

But the main disadvantage is their small size. What can you dry in a small saucepan with a 250-300W heating element?

In order to process a rich harvest, such a thing must function offline for days on end.

Meanwhile, home-made options are assembled in much larger sizes and at the same time cope with their task no worse than store-bought ones.

In a few hours, sometimes it is possible to dry the volume a little less than a bucket! It all depends on the type of product. Compare that to factory pots and boxes.

At the same time, the cost of home-made ones will be 5 times lower than the price of the cheapest ones sold on the market.

And when compared with expensive and high-quality models, the difference will be more than tenfold.

Let's look at three popular ways to assemble such an electric dryer with your own hands, but you yourself will choose the right option for yourself.

Dryer from cabinet with fan heater

The first option is to use an old, unnecessary kitchen cabinet for this.

And it is better to assemble it yourself from the boards of bath wood. The materials you will need for this:

• temperature sensor with thermometer

• foil insulating layer

The locker can be assembled in any size you need. At the same time, many do not recommend using composite wood - chipboard, fiberboard, OSB.

They have too high an adhesive content and without sufficient insulation when heated, they can release harmful substances.

But most do not pay attention to this, reassuring themselves that, firstly, such a dryer will work at a relatively low temperature (up to 40-45 degrees), and secondly, everything inside will be sheathed with thermal insulation. Because of this, it will be possible to avoid dangerous heating of wood and direct contact of hot air with it.

Fasten the boards on furniture screws and attach the door in front.

The optimal size of the cabinet so that it does not interfere at home and is convenient to carry:

• width 60cm

• depth 40-45cm

• height 70-80cm

To ensure that the door closes tightly and does not release heat, attach two latches on top and bottom.

Drying tray manufacturing

Inside the locker, homemade nets are laid on the rails.

They are also assembled from wooden planks connected by building corners.

Just don't glue the pieces of wood!

When heated, the adhesive will emit toxic fumes. Therefore, only corners or a stapler.

The grid on which the products will be placed is better to choose a metal one from food grade stainless steel. It will not release any chemicals when heated.

Beekeepers filter through this honey. The only problem is finding it.

Many advise not to bother and take reinforcing, the one that goes under the plaster. It allegedly contains only fiberglass and nothing more.

However, do not forget that there is also a connecting element - an epoxy compound. It is also not recommended to use a mosquito net.

It contains plastic and poisonous paint. With such pallets, after just a few years of abundant consumption of “healthy” dried fruits, oncology will definitely await you.

Shoot the mesh onto the bar with a stapler around the entire perimeter.

Such pallets are made in just a few hours. For the above dimensions of the locker, the optimal number of grids inside is 4 pcs.

The dimensions of the grid-pallet should be 5 cm narrower than the depth of the cabinet.

This is necessary so that warm air can circulate freely both from the back and from the front.

It is better to place the pallets themselves in such a way that the first is located close to the door, and the second to the back wall, etc.

A warm stream with such a chess layout will sequentially blow tier after tier.

The pallet slides in or is placed on the guide rails. They are either made of wood or aluminum.

Aluminum in this case gives off heat faster after heating. However, the question of its environmental friendliness and toxicity always remains open. Wood is safer though.

Thermal insulation of the drying cabinet

From the inside, the entire cabinet and the door itself are covered with reflective foil material.

Such, for example, is used for sauna lining. It withstands high temperatures and is absolutely harmless when heated to no more than 45C.

Fasten it to staples from a construction stapler, or better to self-tapping screws with a wide hat.

Without this reflector, heat will quickly be transferred to the wooden walls. First, it will delay the whole process. And secondly, if you still used chipboard or fiberboard when assembling the frame, they will heat up, which will ultimately lead to food poisoning.

Also, do not sheathe the walls with mirror tin.

Tin is primarily a metal. It will heat up and transfer all the heat to the wooden case. The thermal efficiency of such a dryer will drop sharply.

And from such heating, the case will gradually deform and wide cracks will form in you.

heating element or heater

How is the temperature pumped, where and how does the heating occur? Everything is very simple - as a heating element and a fan at the same time, a room floor heater with a wind blower is used.

Try not to use open heating elements for this. First, it is a fire hazard. And secondly, you will have a problem installing them on the wooden base of the box while observing the allowable distances.

We'll have to think hard about what to put them on or how to fix them. For example, someone “thought” to put asbestos under the heating element from the tile.

Once again - ASBESTOS! In the fruit drying box! Never do this.

There are no problems with the windmill. Just put it on the bottom of the cabinet, and on the back wall for fresh air, cut a hole to fit the fan with a jigsaw.

A hole is made without fail, otherwise the heater will simply overheat itself and catch fire.

Power wires with a plug are output through the same “hole”.

Connecting wires and temperature sensor

If you do not understand electrical circuits, you can regulate the heating and temperature with the built-in thermostat on the heater itself, by turning the knob to the minimum and maximum positions.

But you can make it much more convenient and functional. Buy a remote temperature sensor and an external thermostat at the nearest electronics store or in China.

Drill two holes approximately in the middle of the back wall and insert the control sensors there.

The wires are soldered instead of the heater's built-in thermostat, and a digital thermometer is brought out.

You set the drying temperature yourself depending on the product - vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, etc.

For plants and berries, such a fan in the first position optimally pumps up a temperature of 40C. At the same time, try to open the cabinet door as little as possible.

For other products, switch the heating to position II.

A remote thermostat with wires is good, but not everyone can figure out the connection diagram. If you also have problems with this, but you still want to control drying in this way, use the outlet thermostat.

You insert it into the nearest outlet, put the sensor inside the cabinet and program the upper and lower temperature thresholds.

In this case, the fan heater plug is simply stuck into the thermostat itself. It turns out, as it were, the design of a socket in a socket.

You don't need to do anything with the electrical circuit. The temperature inside the dryer reached 40C, the blower turned off. Cooled down to 38C - turned on.

If you want to automate all this and set the specified drying time so as not to spoil the products, timer sockets (mechanical or electronic) are at your service.

This is especially important when drying fish, when the technology requires a certain pause after many hours of continuous operation of the unit.

Ventilation and humid air outlet

Warm, moist air must escape from the cabinet somewhere during the heating process. To do this, a hole (d-100mm) is cut out from above and a plastic pipe is inserted there.

If you want to do without plastic and pipes, make not one, but three holes of a smaller diameter (35mm) around the perimeter.

It is only advisable not to leave all these holes open, but to fit some kind of protective grille or mesh from flies and insects there.

But still, as operating experience shows, with one hole in the form of a pipe it is possible to maintain a more stable temperature regime than with three.

All dampness, smell and steam through this hood will go outside. During the drying process, do not forget to swap pallets, because the bottom row, due to the close proximity of the fan heater, dries much faster.

With a large harvest, processing it with a relatively small factory dryer is a very non-trivial and tedious task. And with the help of such a voluminous cabinet, you will do it quickly and with pleasure.

infrared dryer

The second way to make a dehydrator is even simpler. Here, instead of a fan heater, you will need an infrared film.

And in this case, you don’t even need to build a bulky cabinet. It is enough to make long shelves. But first things first.

The heating infrared film is a rolled material and it is sold by the footage. The width can be different - 50,80,100cm.

Since we are planning to make a unit for serious volumes, and not an analogue of a small saucepan, then choose a width closer to 100cm.

What power to choose? For good performance, buy models with a power of 220W per 1m2. With an average shelf size of 20 * 100 cm, one tier will consume about 55 W / h or 1.32 kW per day.

Multiply this power by the number of shelves and you get the power consumption of your dryer.

How to connect infrared heating film

The main headache for many is connecting such a film to wires with a plug. For this you will need a soldering iron.

In fact, there is nothing complicated here. Everything is done literally one, two, three.

In order not to burn the material, manufacturers recommend using a soldering iron with a power of no more than 60W.

Heat up with a soldering iron and remove the insulation from the side of the copper conductive strip.

On the one hand, a phase wire is connected, on the other - zero.

Drip tin on this place.

Press the tinned copper conductor to the prepared surface and solder the contact.

That's all. Be sure to isolate the soldering points with pieces of adhesive tape so that there are no exposed conductive parts anywhere.

If even such a simple connection does not suit you (you don’t have a soldering iron and that’s it), then ask the store for special terminals.

Their price really bites, and the contact is less reliable. Therefore, soldering in this case is considered the best option.

Assembly of shelves for drying

So how does such an infrared dryer assemble and work? Here, unlike the option with a fan heater, no thermostat and thermometer are needed. The film during operation is heated exactly with the temperature that we need (about 45C).

It is she who is optimal in this case for drying plant products. Of course, do not forget that the enzymes contained in them die at temperatures above 38C. Therefore, at first glance it seems that 45 degrees is a lot.

However, here we are talking about the heating temperature of the film itself. If you put a gasket between it and the fruit (baking paper, mesh), and this is exactly what experienced housewives recommend doing, then the heating temperature of the products themselves will no longer exceed the permissible 38C.

Dryer shelves can be made in two ways. First, for the lazy ones, cut out a shelf of the desired size from a board or plywood and apply a reflective foil substrate on top.

On top of all this, roll out the film. So that it does not move, it is enough to press it down with wooden blocks from above.

This is a very primitive, cheapest and not very aesthetic way. There are much better ones.

For the second option, prepare two blanks. These will be the supporting legs of our dryer.

The width of such a blank should be slightly wider than the film itself. The optimal size is 20*70cm.

Strips are cut from 9mm plywood, from which the shelves themselves will be assembled. Lath width 4 cm.

The whole tree is sanded with sandpaper, bumps and burrs are removed.

The frame of the structure is twisted on self-tapping screws. In our case, there will be five shelves.

The most important “trick”, which simplifies and facilitates the entire product as much as possible, is the electrodes.

The film in this dryer does not lie on a wide board, but across the strips of electrodes.

In the variant with a wooden substrate, a lot of heat is lost to useless heating of the board. Even reflective foil sometimes doesn't help much.

In the same case, due to the emptiness below, vegetables and fruits on the shelves will warm up from both sides. Firstly, they lie on a warm base and heat up from it, and secondly, the top bar also gives off its heat a little down.

To speed up the drying process, you can cover the entire structure with a blanket, and make several holes at the top and bottom to let moisture out. After a few hours, when the moisture has evaporated, the holes are closed and drying continues.

Make the distance between the shelves 10-15cm. It could be both narrowed and increased heating. However, do not forget about the moments of laying out the pieces on the shelves.

If the frame is too narrow, this will be inconvenient.

Electrodes are used with a diameter of 4mm. They are inserted into the drilled holes of the plywood side planks in increments of 12-15cm.

Wire connection

After assembling the structure, solder the wires to the film, as discussed above, and bring them out through the holes in the side leg.

In the same place, on the side, in order to hide all the wires away from the eyes, screw the cable channel.

And below you mount a switch for on-off the dryer. With power up to 2kW, models with a rated current of 10A are suitable.

You will have several conductors. Twice as many as shelves. Our version has five. Five on one side of the leg (phase), five on the other (zero).

To connect them together and bring them out with one cable, use the junction box.

Using two Wago clamps for six terminals, connect everything to one point (on one side of zero, to the other phase) and connect one two-core 220V power cable here.

Roughly speaking, all the wires from the film on the right side are twisted into one wire. And all the wires from the left to the other. The result is two wires or two twists. Here you need to connect a two-core power cable with a plug to them.

Be sure to plug the plug into an outlet that is protected by an RCD or diffavtomat!

This film is made from thermoplastic polymer PET (polyethylene terephthalate). And it can be food and non-food. In warm floors it is used, as you understand the second option.

Therefore, as mentioned above, be sure to cover the surface with baking paper. It also helps to dry foods with a high juice content (berries).

First, you will not have anything to contact directly. Secondly, you will forever forget what sticking and cleaning the film from sweet spots is.

The simplest dryer from boxes

Well, the third option, for the most, what is called the lazy. There is no need to work with wood and make special pallets with mesh or heating film. Everything is cheap and cheerful.

To begin with, in the second box, which will be located below, cut a hole for the fan heater with scissors or a knife.

Put it on top of another box. Due to this, a free air supply from below will be ensured.

Install a heater inside.

Without capturing the very bottom. The entire winding should take at least seven layers.

Now you need to separate all the tiers separately by cutting the film with a knife.

Do not touch the bottom tray with the fan. To switch the fan operation mode, do not forget to cut two holes for the wheels.

Initially, set the mode control to I, and the temperature knob to the maximum. Basically, that's all.

The dryer is ready to go. Load pallets with chopped fruits, vegetables, mushrooms and build your Tower of Babel.

To protect against debris and insects, cover the upper tier with another box or gauze.

Plug in the fan and watch the process.

The advantages of this method are obvious - simplicity and low cost. Disadvantages - no temperature control.

With such a dryer, you will have to constantly monitor all the work and often change the baskets in places.

As for plastic, choose boxes that are used to collect fruit. In hot countries at temperatures below 40C, they are often stored in them.

Your warm-up should occur in the same mode.

A do-it-yourself dryer for vegetables and fruits from standard purchased parts will be no worse than an industrial one.

Homemade drying chamber

Before you start making a dryer for vegetables and fruits, read the main requirements for drying. You can dry any fruits, vegetables and fruits that contain moisture:

• berries;
• mushrooms;
• apples;
• fish.

The principle of drying is simple and has long been known. Under the action of temperature, moisture is removed from apples, vegetables, berries and fruits. Therefore, a constant temperature of 50 to 60°C must be maintained in the dryer body while removing moisture. For juicy fruits, a one-hour drying mode at a temperature of 60 ° C and subsequent hours from 50 to 55 ° C is provided. How to make an electric dryer will consider in this article.

What are the designs of dryers

There can be many reasons for making do-it-yourself dryers of different volumes and capacities for vegetables and fruits: they are not satisfied with the performance, high price, high energy intensity, and others.

There are three options for making do-it-yourself dryers for vegetables, fish or fruits:

• electric;
• on wood;
• solar.

Other options for the execution of homemade products, such as sublimation, UHF, infrared, using vacuum, will not be considered due to the complexity of manufacturing.

Of the three options presented above, only electric can work in automatic mode.

On wood and solar require the presence of a person and adjustment can only be carried out by sliding gate valves to regulate the inflow and removal of air.

Let's consider the manufacture of a dryer with a capacity of 50 to 100 kg of wet weight of the product at home, based on the fact that the home craftsman plans to sell some of the dried products.

Energy intensity

A factory dryer with automatic processing of dried apricots consumes about 1.6 kWh of electricity per 5 kg of raw product and dries for 36 hours.

Based on the average data, the jack of all trades should take into account that a home-made dryer for processing 50 kilograms of a raw apricot type product will consume 16 kW of electricity, and 32 kW for 100 kg. By simple mathematical operations, you can find out the future costs of cooking 1 kilogram of fruit.

For domestic consumers, the maximum power consumption of 3 kW / h is provided. Accordingly, 16 kW can be taken from the line in 3 hours, and 32 kW in 6 hours of continuous operation. But for 3 or 6 hours to dry products with a high water content will not work.

Conclusions: in domestic conditions, it is not problematic to build a dryer with a capacity of more than 50 kg of dry product if there is no limitation in electricity consumption. Accordingly, if someone decides to build a dryer for 100 kg, then he will have to increase the drying time by 1.5 times. And then 100 kilograms of raw product will have to be dried for 3-4 days with an increase in electricity consumption up to 32 kW.

Do-it-yourself electric dryer for fruits and vegetables

To do this, you need to make an electric dryer case, buy a fan, a heating element, a temperature sensor (thermostat), a time relay, two chimney draft regulators.

Tips: Before you start building a dryer with a power input greater than 3 kW, ask your local power company about the maximum power they can provide you.

Fan

For our purposes, household smoke exhausters for boilers are best suited.

Smoke exhausters for domestic boilers

Their distinguishing feature is that they can pass air with temperatures up to 150 ° C through themselves without damage to the electric motor. An ordinary axial fan is not suitable for these purposes. It is not able to work at 50°C for a long time. The diameter of smoke exhausters starts from 150 mm. It is necessary to place an electric heating element with an open spiral in the pipe coming from the smoke exhauster.

Tips: you can buy a fan for snail-type boilers with a capacity of at least 50 times the volume of the drying chamber.

Electric heater for dryer

For maximum heat removal, the heating element must be with an open spiral. The power is calculated based on the allowable rated power for the house and is equal to 3 kW minus the power of the fan of the smoke exhauster and household appliances. If this rate is exceeded, then the automation will work and turn off the light in the house.

Open coil electric heater

When choosing an electric heater, consider its dimensions. It must fit in a pipe that is connected to a smoke exhauster or a fan that supplies air to the drying chamber.

Smooth thermostat

Thermoregulators with smooth temperature control from 0 to 300°C are a standard part of all household electric furnaces. It must be connected in series in an electrical circuit with heating elements and a fan. When the required temperature is reached, it will automatically turn off the heating and the fan.

Household thermostat

You can use a thermocouple from ovens.

Where to buy a thermostat? There are several purchase options:

• online store;
• the nearest workshop for the repair of household appliances.

It is quite possible to purchase a thermostat at a flea market.

Time relay

In order to fully automate a home-made dryer, you need to buy an electronic two-channel time relay with programming for a week.

There are many options for execution and programming of the time relay and everyone can choose the right one for themselves.

By connecting a fan and a heating element to the time relay, you can set up its operation empirically. To do this, you need to set the time for turning on the heating element and the fan.

Chimney draft regulator

Draft regulators are installed in stainless steel chimneys. This automatic device is a precisely fitted valve on an axle. In order for it to be always closed or open, a small load is installed on one of the sides.

Install these two valves in the inlet and outlet ports of the dryer. When the fan is off, they will close the inlet and outlet of warm air under the weight of the load.

draft regulator

The use of these valves will automate the intake and supply of air without the use of actuators and expensive controllers.

For especially advanced jacks of all trades, we recommend buying a programmable controller. This equipment is more complicated, but it allows you to automate all drying processes, connecting humidity, temperature sensors, motors, slide gates and other actuators. They are widely used for lumber drying kilns.

When building a drying compartment, use the following materials for the frame:

• wooden slats;
• chipboard;
• wood fiber boards;
• oriented strand boards;

To insulate the drying chamber, use:

• polystyrene boards;
• mineral wool;

Please note that the insulation is installed from the outside, not from the inside!

Homemade drying chamber

To fix the insulation, use:

• glue Titanium, mounting foam for polystyrene foam boards:
• plastic fungi for mineral wool.

Close the insulation with a fiberboard board or seal it with self-adhesive aluminum foil. In extreme cases, it can be plastered with plaster on a synthetic mesh. It is sold in hardware stores for insulating houses.

If there is no necessary woodworking equipment to stiffen the frame, use metal corners for window frames.

metal corners

It is better to connect a wooden frame with screws than with nails.

Please note: to calculate the cross-section of wires, there is such a rule: for 1 kW you need 0.7 mm 2 of the cross-sectional area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe wire. Thus, for a drying chamber with a rated power of 3 kW, the cross section of the wires must be at least 2.5 mm 2.

Dried fruits

For safe operation, the metal parts of the dryer must be grounded.

When calculating the volume of the dryer, design a load per pallet of no more than 5 kg of wet product. If pallets are placed at intervals of 10 cm, then the height of the chamber for 20 pallets will be 2 meters. In this case, there may be a problem with loading at high altitude.

To combat mold and other diseases that occur in a humid and warm atmosphere, use a UV lamp.

In order to prevent microorganisms from affecting your fruits and vegetables, thereby spoiling them, experts advise cooking food by adding a lot of sugar, freezing in the refrigerator or drying. In this article we will talk about such a method of preserving apples as drying. It is the simplest and most cost-effective way to store your fruits or vegetables.

Harvest can be dried in the microwave, in direct sunlight, in the oven. If you dry herbs or mushrooms, then avoid direct sun exposure. Before starting the drying process, fruits should be thoroughly washed under running water, peeled and cut into slices or halves. The dried crop is significantly reduced in size, however, retains all the beneficial properties. Keep it in the dark.

Dryer for apples at home

Such a device can be made by every summer resident with his own hands. The main advantage of the solar dryer is the complete absence of energy consumption, the products are dried under the sun.

To create such a dryer, you will need: scissors, a hammer, a saw, a stapler and nails.

• At the very beginning, you need to create a base from the boards. Size: 0.5 x 0.5 m.
• From the back side and sides should be sheathed with plywood or fiberboard.
• A metal sheet is attached to the far wall from the inside.
• In order to increase the temperature inside the structure, it is recommended to paint it black from the inside.
• Attached hanging folding mesh of wire or any other material.
• Holes must be drilled at the top and bottom of the dryer so that the structure is well ventilated.
• The resulting holes are covered with gauze so that no insect pests penetrate inside.
• The open part of the dryer is covered with glass or stitched with cellophane film.
• It is important that your dryer does not stand on the ground, you need to install it on some kind of stand or fix small legs using self-tapping screws.

Using this method as an example, you can also assemble an electric dryer. It is enough to install a fan heater from below, with a hot stream of air upwards. In this case, the lid must be open. Drying time can take up to 10 hours.

Varieties of electric dryers

By type of heating

• Convection dryers. This is the most popular type. The main element of the dryer is a special heating device on which a fan is installed. The principle of operation is based on the action of hot air on your products. Thanks to this, moisture is completely evaporated.

• Infrared electric dryers. This version of the device is small in size. It consumes less electricity. It works like the sun's rays, heating the fruits. Thus, all vitamins and bright color of products are preserved.

According to the placement of trays

• Horizontal. Here the trays look like a baking sheet in an oven. Any one of them comes up. Accordingly, a lot of products can be dried in one approach. The heater is mounted on the back side of the device, due to which the heat is distributed evenly on each sheet of the tray.

• Vertical. In this case, the pallets are mounted on top of each other. Hot air can be supplied both from the top of the dryer and from the bottom. In this case, for 1 time you can dry not a very large amount of fruit. The dryer itself can serve uninterruptedly for a very long time.

By power

Unfortunately, power does not affect the speed of drying products. The greater the power of the device, the more fruits and vegetables you can dry at a time. The smallest indicator for an electric dryer is 250 W, the largest is 1 thousand W. Dryers of 500 watts are very popular on the market.

By the presence of a thermostat

Herbs and greens are dried at a temperature of 35-40 degrees, and mushrooms, fruits and vegetables at 60 degrees Celsius.

Duration

Many owners are interested in how long apples should be in an electric dryer. Experts recommend that owners of electric dryers dry fruits and vegetables at night: from 10 am to 7 am. But it is not at all necessary to strictly adhere to such frameworks. In practice, 6 or 7 hours may suffice. Drying time can be significantly increased if you periodically change the location of the pallets or add new fruits. It is recommended to focus on 8 hours of drying, however, you need to look at readiness.

The time of complete readiness is influenced by many factors: the size of the cut slices, the capacity of the pallet, the amount of food in the dryer, and much more.

Temperature

Very often summer residents are interested in the temperature that should be in the device. If the dryer provides for the possibility of adjusting the temperature, then its indicator should be set in the region of 70 degrees Celsius.

Of course, apples can be dried at a temperature of 100 degrees. It is the maximum on most household electric dryers. However, after processing apples using this temperature regime, they can lose all vitamins and nutrients. After all, 100-110 degrees is the boiling point of water.

Mode

The mode is pretty easy to deal with. On all electric dryers, the controls are intuitive. Often, when choosing a mode, figures of apples, vegetables, mushrooms are drawn on the slider.

readiness

Inexperienced gardeners spend a lot of time determining the readiness of apples. However, after you have at least some experience, it will not be difficult to determine the readiness of fruits.

Note! It is better not to dry the apples a little, constantly check the readiness. Fruit must retain at least some moisture. Overdrying products is unacceptable.

In order to determine the readiness, you should slightly bend the apple. Properly dried fruit will bend. If you manage to break a piece in half, then you haven't dried enough. Externally, the apples should darken a little, and the peel should become a little crusty.

"Dachnik-4" is the best infrared dryer without a fan for any fruits, vegetables, herbs and mushrooms. The main advantage of this device is its huge dimensions. There are five metal sheets inside the dryer. Four of them are retractable, one is non-removable. Due to its size, this design can hold up to 7 kg of apples.

This multifunctional dryer can not only dry your crops, retaining absolutely all the useful elements, but also cook some dishes, dry pasta and much more. This version of the device will not disappoint any owner. According to reviews, the price varies from 8 thousand to 9 thousand rubles, and is fully consistent with the quality.

Main advantages:

• Large capacity.
• High power device.
• Multifunctionality.
• High quality build.

"Katrina Samobranka 50x50"

This is a rather unusual dryer. It is a small rug of bright colors. It is quite practical, it can be rolled into a roll with a radius of 5 cm. Waves come from this infrared dryer that will quickly dry your apples at a temperature of 35-40 * C.

The article will describe how you can make a simple fruit dryer that will work using the heat of the sun. Thanks to such a simple device, it will be possible to stock up on dried fruits for the whole winter, and as a result, vitamins. You can dry absolutely everything in it, from apples to plums, apricots, mushrooms, or even herbs and fish. Such a thing will be simply indispensable in the country or in the village.

An iron barrel of 200 liters will be used as the basis for such a dryer. It won't be hard to find her. It is not necessary that the barrel be intact, because the bottom is still not needed in it.

Materials and tools:
- 200 l barrel;
- stands and sheet metal to create a roof;
- to create pallets, you will need a metal mesh or wire with a diameter of more than 3 mm;
- several loops;
- bolts with nuts or screws;
- hacksaw or grinder;
- metal scissors.

Step one. Cut off all excess
If the barrel has a bottom, you can cut it out and then create a roof out of it. If there is material to create a roof, then the bottom can not be touched. In any case, the bottom will have to be cut and bent as shown in the pictures, otherwise there will not be enough good ventilation in the dryer.
Next, you need to cut a window in the barrel, there will be a door here, and with the help of this opening, the dryer will be assembled from the inside. The cut piece is not to be thrown away.

You need to try to make the legs more authentic, since part of them can then be deepened into the ground, and the dryer will stand more confidently. Also, due to the fact that the dryer will be at a high level from the ground, air will circulate better.

However, it is not at all necessary that the mesh be metal. It can also be made from rope.

Step five. Painting
In the end, the already finished dryer is painted. This is an important point, since the performance of the dryer depends on the painting. And it will be painted black, since it is this color that will best absorb the heat radiated by the sun.

That's it, the dryer is ready. It remains to install it in a sunny place and you can begin the process of making dried fruits. If you need to dry fruits such as pears or apples, it is better to cut them into two parts. In this case, they will dry much faster, and when brewing, then you will need to spend less time getting a concentrated drink.

Another dryer can be improved by installing an electric heater on its bottom. In this case, the dryer will become all seasonal. The presence of a fan will not be superfluous.