Keep posting the updates! That's some serious heat.

"Wedding mirrors"???
Wonder how big a parabola it would take to heat my house?
Linda C

Yea. I can't imagine what it'll do with all of its mirrors. Will it get hotter or just be more effective in spreading the heat? I have to imagine hotter. How do you control the temps? Or do you?

Seems it's fashionable in these parts to use these mirrors as coasters and place mats for table settings. Go figure, but when I did a search on ebay for cheap mirrors these came up. Seems it's use once and sell them on ebay. My gain!

Yes, it will get hotter, until all the environmental factors coincide to find a stabilizing temperature. With the big parabola, 8 square feet of sunlight is concentrated on less than 1/4 square foot of area. so the solar gain is 8 divided by 1/4 or 32 times what is normal. There is 450 btu's in one squre foot of sunlight per hour. Even the small amount of heat in the above configuration with both pasterize and boil water. Not to mention burn my fingertips. (Must remember to use leather gloves next time...)

{{gwi:189269}} could do the trick of heating more than one household. Do a search for solar furnace and see what turns up. There are solar furnaces in desert countries that are capable of driving steam turbines and generating electricity.

The way of the future is to decentralize power production. Reverse the effects of the Rural Electrification Act mentality.

Actually the way to heat homes in the future is with the common heat pump and combine that with heat sink that is in the ground, using buried pipes as the heat exchanger.

I'm eating this up. Very interesting. We have not even begun to explore the potential of alternate energy, not really. And energy isn't the only commodity suffering from the cheap/instant mentality. I've been exposed to some of those principles for ages by working in greenhouses, where even the most obvious ways of conserving energy can make large differences in the fuel bills and ultimately in the profit margin.

Oops,
Controlling the heat will be easy. Just cover up a portion of the mirrors with a rag or piece of paper.

I've always wondered why no one ever used parabolae [s?] to heat water to steam to produce electricity. Longitude and latitude don't matter as long as there is direct sunlight: design, produce, aim, and have freedom from oil. Of course, cheap sustainable power would probably mess up our ecomomy.

Elias ~ while you are designing, please invent a timer-activator-control for the standard cardboard solar ovens. I don't need 500°; I do need something that will gradually raise/lower the flaps to be in sync with the sun angle. Tried a lazy susan, but it couldn't manage the weight after the casserole went in the box. Actually, I want something that can handle large, heavy flaps for the hot water tanks without requiring in-person supervision.

LOL Dorph! I think you need to have your own TV show. You could give "Living With Ed" a run in the ratings.