- Joined
- Aug 8, 2005
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- 11,048
Weird Science <pat pend>.
Over at an associates house I came across about a 20 gallon fish tank. It was about as funky as it could get. Some dirt on the bottom, standing water at one end, partly filled with trash and probably a good sampling of all the common mold and fungi in the country growing in it including small white shrooms.
I set it out in the full sun where it wouldn't be messed with and covered it with a piece of sheet metal. That night I got to thinking this could be an interesting experiment.
So the next day I went back, put an oven thermometer inside, painted the sheet metal flat black and weighted it down so there weren't much air gaps.
A couple of days later in mid afternoon, partly cloudy all day, I went back. The thermometer read around 210-220F.
So it's sat out in the yard there for about 10 days. All visible molds, fungi and mildew are gone, along with the odor of anaerobes.
At a guess, if you've got full sunlight, some sheet metal, flat black spray paint and say, 3 days you can live without your tank, turn it into a solar oven. No need to disturb anything in the tank I don't think. Only certain rare and most likely harmless spores would be likely top survive. The heat would probably penetrate woody materials at least 1 inch, possibly 2 or 3.
As an afterthought, the water in the tank, maybe a half pint, probably assisted the heat penetration, evaporating during the middle of the day and condensing back to liquid at night, maintaining 100% humidity which aids atmospheric thermal conductivity.
Over at an associates house I came across about a 20 gallon fish tank. It was about as funky as it could get. Some dirt on the bottom, standing water at one end, partly filled with trash and probably a good sampling of all the common mold and fungi in the country growing in it including small white shrooms.
I set it out in the full sun where it wouldn't be messed with and covered it with a piece of sheet metal. That night I got to thinking this could be an interesting experiment.
So the next day I went back, put an oven thermometer inside, painted the sheet metal flat black and weighted it down so there weren't much air gaps.
A couple of days later in mid afternoon, partly cloudy all day, I went back. The thermometer read around 210-220F.
So it's sat out in the yard there for about 10 days. All visible molds, fungi and mildew are gone, along with the odor of anaerobes.
At a guess, if you've got full sunlight, some sheet metal, flat black spray paint and say, 3 days you can live without your tank, turn it into a solar oven. No need to disturb anything in the tank I don't think. Only certain rare and most likely harmless spores would be likely top survive. The heat would probably penetrate woody materials at least 1 inch, possibly 2 or 3.
As an afterthought, the water in the tank, maybe a half pint, probably assisted the heat penetration, evaporating during the middle of the day and condensing back to liquid at night, maintaining 100% humidity which aids atmospheric thermal conductivity.
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