I would like to see the "Funnel Refrigerator" tried in desert climates, especially where freezing temperatures are rarely reached. It should be possible in this way to cheaply make ice for Hutus in Rwanda and for aborigines in Australia, without using any electricity or other modern "tricks." We are in effect bringing some of the cold of space to a little corner on earth. Please let me know how this works for you.
This is similar to the solar sunscreen funnel cooker I found on the web a while back. It's the model I plan to try in our back yard if I can ever tear myself away from war-and-peace blogging.
I take it back. this design is brilliant - it looks at first glance like the car sunshade design but it is much much better - cheaper for one thing. And the whole section on cooling foods down at night with the same device - brilliant. It will work very well in California...
and in Lebanon, where they could use it right now...
My only question is how do you keep the urban animals out of the food at night? we have raccoons, feral cats, squirrels, roof rats, and all manner of other critters that come up from the stream in our Oakland back yard. This requires some planning & strategy.
You could pretty easily keep them out of the food with a good screw-on lid. Keeping them from knocking over the cooling device in their attempt to get to the food in the jar is another matter. Hanging it in a tree wouldn't work (the funnel should not "see" trees to be effective). I suppose you could plant 3 poles in the ground and suspend it....
Now if I can find a hand crank coffee grinder, I'll be able to survive the Big One without a caffeine withdrawal headache!