[pct-l] Food Dehydrators

[chelin at teleport.com (Sharon & Chuck Chelin)]

Good afternoon, dry food enthusiasts,

Using a food dehydrator need not be expensive, but the cost does depend upon
where you live and in which season of the year the drying is done.  A
dehydrator adds heat and moisture, i.e. humidity, to the air around its
location.  One of the best plans is to dry foods in the winter when the
inside of the house is being heated anyway.  If your house has electric heat
the cost is a wash:  When you are drying, the furnace or heaters will run
proportionately less and the dehydrating is, in effect, free-of-charge.  If
you heat with energy that is less expensive than electricity, the cost to
dehydrate is only the difference between the two energy costs for whatever
is used by the dehydrator, which is usually not a great amount.

In many cold climates it is also common for people to use humidifiers with
their home heating system to avoid ultra-low humidity inside.  When you are
dehydrating, turn off the humidifier because the then-drier air is great for
rapid dehydration.  The food dehydrator will add back some of the humidity
normally supplied by the humidifier.

The summer season is next-best if the dehydrator can be located outside, or
in an outside-ventilated area, but you will have to pay for all of the
electrical energy that it consumes.

The thing to avoid is using the dehydrator inside an air-conditioned house!
First, you buy energy to dehydrate the food: second, the heat generated is
not balanced by a reduced demand upon the heating system, finally, third and
worse, the air conditioner must then get rid of not only the environmental
heat, but it must get rid of all of the heat from the dehydrator.  That more
than doubles the functional cost of dehydrating.  Obviously, the same
caution applies to any use of heat inside an air-conditioned house,
particularly from cooking and baking.

Steel-Eye