# You know the solar melting season has waned when you come home to this:



## waynesgarden (Jan 3, 2009)

Sun's lower in the sky. Tilting it reduces the reflection of the sun's rays off the glazing and more rays enter the collector.

Wayne


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

A lower sun also means the rays pass through more atmosphere while on the way to the melter and you do not get as much energy. nothing can be done about that except moving south. Many solar panel brackets have three settings. one for winter, one for spring and fall and one for summer. A solar melter might benefit from something similar.

You might make headway by adding some measures that reduce the energy necessary for melting wax as well. such as adding insulation to the melter to reduce heat loss. It is a matter of energy in vs energy out. you can increase energy in or reduce energy out. Even further but often even more expensive than energy loss prevention is energy increase. My first solar melter actually used reflectors to concentrate energy collected on the container. It worked very well and was a simple piece of sheet metal. It nearly tripled the temperature the melter got to.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Same here, been having incomplete melts the last two weeks.


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## Bee Bliss (Jun 9, 2010)

There are You Tube videos showing people who are cooking outside using solar ovens during the winter in the north (like Daniel said, using reflector panels). They do warn to avoid looking at directed sunlight due to possible eye problems.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

They must have better cookers than Oliver, & I have.
Mine is nothing fancy just a window over an insulated box.


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