It is one thing to build your own stuff, but doing it out of trash is another issue.  A lot of my projects are built out of materials that I scavenge or find laying around.  My favorite place to shop is the local garbage transfer station.  I'm fortunate enough that they still allow scavenging at this one as most don't allow it any more.  

Smoke house

I had a 45 gallon drum laying around, so I felt that would make a good fire stove.  Somebody gave me a 6x6 metal down spout from a commercial renovation in the city and I also had some old cement siding, glass and tin kicking around.  

It may look rough, but it works great.  My DIY smoke house.

The idea is that the burn the fire in the barrel, so that the smoke cools off by the time it reaches the smoke house.  I have large industrial fridge racks in the house that I put the meat on.  Cold smoke bacon takes about 4 hours, beef jerky about 10 and chicken took about 5 hours.

I built it on the back side of the earthship as it had a natural slop to work with.  I pounded four posts into the ground and used scrap cement siding to cover it.  A piece of tin on the top to keep the rain out and a sheet of glass so that I can remove it to access the interior and see inside while smoking.

Turned out that the smoke was so thick that I could not see in side anyway.  lol  I started smoking with green birch.  I build a hot fire and then start throwing the green wood in.  It smokes a lot and when it dries out it makes the coals to smoke the next batch of wood.  Works well.  Then I found out that red willow is a great smoking wood.  So I tried it and O M G was that ever fantastic.  Who thought that out?  Our indigenous brothers and sisters.  

Solar Food Dehydrator

I found the plans on line at Mother Earth News.  If you want to build one, feel free.  I can say that it works great and I will be building another one as we love drying food with these tools.

Our DIY solar food dehydrator built in 2016.

When I was testing it, I managed to get 68C at the top of the solar collector, which is amazing as it is just a box pained black.  I've read that the pop cans don't really add to it, so my second dehydrator will not have cans.  But the collector works great!  The box is approximately 2'x2'x2' giving about 8 cubic feet of space for drying food.  I can fit about 12-14 trays depending on how deep the food is.  

We dry lettuce, kale, corn, tobacco, dandelion, alfalfa, grapes, cucumbers and whole range of other food in the dehydrator.  We looked and looked for ways to preserve lettuce and other leaf foods for the winter.  Most of them you cannot freeze or can, but they dry great and we then blend it up to make our own green, highly potent, nutrient dense, smoothy mix.  This and our raw goat milk and frozen fruit makes a fantastic drink.

I put a probe in the dehydrator and I've never seen it go above 120F / 50C.  Perfect for drying food.