Q: How much does each Villager oven cost?

A: Each Villager Sun Oven costs approximately $14,000 US dollars, which includes the oven, shipping, equipment and food supplies.

Q: How much food can the Villager oven cook?

A: Over 1,200 meals a day can be cooked or hundreds of loaves of bread can be baked in the Villager Sun Oven using only the power of the sun.

Q: What happens during the rainy season?

A: Even during the rainy season in most countries there are still a few hours of available sunlight which gives the Villager Sun Oven enough time to heat up and cook meals for part of the day. Also, each oven is equipped with a propane back up system which can operate 24 hours a day rain or shine.

Q: What are other uses for the Villager oven?

A: In some cases the same Villager Sun Oven can be used to serve a number of purposes. Even though it is called an oven, enormous quantities of food can be boiled, steamed or baked at cooking temperatures of 500° F / 260° C with no fuel costs. The ovens can also be used as a micro-financing tool in which bread is sold to the village to generate income for the orphanage. The children are able to learn a usable job skill of making bread and the orphanage benefits from the additional income and money saved by not purchasing cooking fuel. Also, the oven can be used by hospitals to sterilize equipment.

Q: Who can benefit from the Villager oven?

A: The Villager Sun Oven is designed for large-scale feeding situations that require cooking great volumes of food quickly. This makes them perfect for many different types of organizations including: school feeding programs, retreat centers, sun-bakeries, community feeding, refugee programs, emergency relief, hospitals and orphanages.

Q: How is the Villager oven good for the environment?

A: Solar energy is the least polluting and most inexhaustible of all known energy sources. Each Villager Sun Oven, when utilized as a Sun Bakery, can save over 150 tons of wood annually which results in the reduction of 277 tons of CO2 green house gas emissions annually.

Q: Why do organizations using large scale feeding programs need solar ovens?

A: The world has entered an era of increasingly higher energy costs. These costs are often viewed from an economic perspective, but the toll they take in human and environmental terms, while difficult to measure and often overlooked, are even more devastating. Feeding programs are often forced to choose between buying food or the fuel to cook it. Villager Sun Ovens were developed to help feed large groups of people without destabilizing the environment or contributing to deforestation.

Q: What is required for the operation of the villager oven and what is the life expectancy?

A: Once assembled and put into place on a trailer the Villager Sun Oven need little to no maintenance. They are very simple to operate, a responsible operator can be trained in a matter of hours. The rugged durable construction of the ovens enables them to last for decades while the Easy Track tracking system adjusts to follow the sun. Being positioned on a trailer enables easy transportation for quick storage and security.