Your opinions on types of food dehydrators, please

[Grow 4 Food]

Nesco here too. I like it. I also have one that is a heat element only. It seems to work ok but you tend to do a lot more tray switching to keep dry evenly.

 

[chickaD]

I have an Excalibur - it's great! It works nicely even when I don't have a chance to switch trays. It holds a lot of food and includes the fruit/yogurt roll-up shields.

 

[unclejoe]

I have the Nesco American Harvest also. I liked it at first, but I think more that I liked the concept. It's cheap and extras like more trays and fruit roll up shields are more readily available.

I have to move the trays around if I want even drying, which is a a pain sometimes as I'll forget and then I ruin things.

The trays won't fit in my dishwasher.

I use it only for a few months a year and it takes up a lot of storage space the rest of the time.

With the rising energy prices I've begun being bothered with having it running for days on end. How much is it really costing me kind of thing.

I'm looking into alternatives.

To figure out what it is costing, you need to know 2 things

1) What is your electric rate
2) What is the wattage of your machine

Our rate here is 7 cents per kwh (kilowatt hour). Actually it's 6.6 but 7 is easier to work with.
If you have a 1000w (1 kw) dryer, it is costing you 7 cents per hour to run.
We have the American Harvester also. Ours is a 500w so it's costing us 3.5 cents per hour to run. It takes 10-12 hours for me to dry 4 trays of fruit which translates to about 40 cents. It really is a cheap way to preserve our bounty and the peach leather is absolutely decadent. Hope this helps
Joe