Building a solar kiln for drying firewood with scrap – ideas, suggestions, resources?

Mission:

Making a solar kiln for drying wood (avg 16" length, but a few 18" pieces; all hardwood) to burn this season.

Materials:

– functionally infinite supply of 14'x2' sheets of 3/16" lexan

– 2' steel "brackets" with hinges on one end and 5 bolt holes evenly spaced close to the end opposite the hinge, about 2.5" wide; rough diagram below

<=o{|}============o=o=o=o=o== (o are centred bolt holes, not threaded, 3/8" diameter; not to scale)

scrap 2×4's, bolts for the holes, a few pallets, and other construction scrap are available though the goal is to use a minimum of these

Current design:

using the hinged brackets to make a folding lexan shelter for the wood, with pallets as a base and scrap 2×4's to provide a little structure (snowload protection), so the lexan isn't resting on the firewood. If you can picture it, it would be a slightly angled top section (snow and rain can drip off), then two sections of lexan tall, held together by 2-3 brackets each, making it about 4' tall -plus the height of the pallets- and 14' long. Unless this is against a wall, it will be the same on both sides.

Issues with the design:

– getting the wood out once it's dry

it's not all evenly dry though none of it is freshly cut and I'll put a gadget in them to monitor the change in dryness. I'll make several of these with the expectation that some will finish earlier than others and to accommodate the amount of wood. Picturing folding up the sides to get at the wood, I'm thinking it's going to be too heavy for the wife and hard in general to pull out pieces of wood without leaving a pretty big gap at the top.

– achieving a good seal to get the heat up above ambient but with enough ventilation through the "roof" to let moist air out

I'm planning on using the gaps of the rushed workmanship to provide enough gaps for passive ventilation

Improvements I'm considering:

I have some aluminum sheets that are the same dimensions as the plastic and painted black on one side and would like to use that for extra solar gain.

using a gadget that measures the change in conductivity of the wood in each kiln to figure out when its roughly dry. These would cost ~$10 to build but would be good for future seasons and would give data for how well the kilns are working as well as a barometer for a basic weather station.

Now, build your own design with the same materials and I'll make which one the community determines is the best and will post the progress.

I still have about a month until I'll need full time wood heat and the wood is already dry enough that it should be properly dry by that time, but I'll be building them this weekend so get your designs in, folks!

The winning design will get a wifi wood dryness monitor/barometer (designed for low power on a cheap solar panel) since I'll have 10 or so made… though probably wont get much use out of them this year.