'IMAGINE'

                                      The Celtic Viking Sun Oven

      Imagine an oven that cooks wonderful food simply by using the power of the sun. No gas or electricity, no solar panels or wind turbines, no coal, charcoal or wood, and no wiring or moving parts, except the hinges on the door. Nothing but the direct and enhanced rays of the sun itself!

Placed in a garden, a balcony, or on a flat rooftop, such an oven could be used for five hours a day, completely free, and at no cost to the environment, provided only that the sun shines. Evening meals could be prepared just after lunch.

HOW COULD THIS BE?
    Imagine a glass lens planted atop the oven. This would project the suns rays directly onto a metal heat-conducting plate, positioned high inside the box oven. This plate would then allow heat to move down columns or legs of the same material onto a bottom plate, distributing the heat.
Could this method possibly generate a high enough temperature to actually cook? Could this oven bake? Even roast?

Four ovens placed in a square together, with a corner portion of the inner lining removed from the top of each oven, could allow a large pot to be placed on top in the center for rice, millet, potatoes, or the staple of the area. Such a configuration (see image below) could not only benefit communal cooking in villages, but commercial bakeries and restaurants, along with government bodies like schools, colleges, and universities could save on their energy bills as well as protecting the environment. From the villages of Africa and India, to the trendy BBQ s of southern Europe and the southern US, the oven would be an environmental and financial marvel!


   THE BENEFITS COULD BE ENORMOUS!
  Imagine just how many people (mostly women) spend much of their life gathering wood for open fire cooking in villages around the world. The time, effort and energy saved could be used in a multitude of life enhancing ways. It has been shown that women who find themselves with extra time, turn quickly to education, and/or spend more quality time with the family. Some will enter business and contribute to the good of the world in their own individual ways. Imagine just how many people would love the chance to simply pop something in the oven, instead of walking miles every day to carry back large parcels of dead wood (and often broken off branches from live trees).

It has been estimated that although the likes of power plants, transport vehicles of every kind, incinerators, factories and even forest fires account for a massive output in global greenhouse gas emissions, it has also been estimated that 2% of worldwide emissions come from inefficient cooking fires around the globe. Such an oven could significantly reduce that figure, and if just one idea can save just 1% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, then that would be a major achievement in turning back global warming!

The first and most obvious problem to overcome would be the cost of the lens, the heat-conducting plates and frame. Maybe mass production, coupled with government subsidies could bring the cost down so that sun ovens could be produced where they would be most needed, and best utilized, the equatorial zones and the third world. Imagine that!

                                             WHO WILL MAKE IT?
           Celtic Viking Furniture has no means of researching or producing the sun oven. Neither will we try to patent or register any design in any way. Rather, we call on universities, scientists, inventors, boffins, visionaries, entrepreneurs, environmentalists and dreamers alike, to please take the idea forward.

Yours, for the future,
Mark Vivian, CVF
25th August, 2004

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