New Toy

Open, showing the inside finish

So this weekend we built a new dehydrator. We have gone through 3 commercial dehydrators in the last year. We are hard on them. I guess they are not designed for constant use. In our house we dry so many things. Herbs, onions, tomatoes are our main things. We grow several herbs and use drying to preserve them. We make our own onion powder from dried onions. (It tastes so much better than the stuff you get in the store.)
The tomatoes are what we get the weird looks about.  We make a powder out of the dried tomatoes that we use to flavor soups, beans and other dishes.

The inside is sealed with a food grade wood sealant, as are all the trays.. the outside is simply stained to help the wood last a little better.. 

it is about 5 feet tall and has room for 14 trays.. we only have enough of the mesh for 12 right now (we will pick up another roll soon)

The trays are 18x12, not super large but not tiny. We used a food grade mesh also as we do things like tomatoes that cannot go on metal. What you cannot see is the 2 small computer fans that are set so one pulls air in and over the heating bulb, and the other pull the air up through the trays and out the top.

 The links in the pictures are to the corresponding items that we used.

After staining closed

the heating bulb

Tray with mesh held over it

close up of the mesh

Controller 

the mesh

We spent just under $200 for all the parts, and we have enough of the food safe finish to do another one. This includes the wood, and we uses 1x1's and a nice 3/8 inch thick plywood. We used the nicer plywood as it will be seen ALL the time.

This Dehydrator is close to 1/3 the size and is more than 1/3 the cost. The best benefit is that if something goes, we can replace it not the whole thing. 

Now the most fun... getting to use it!!!