Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[scottcaddy]

Quote: Just ordered one of these....after borrowing one, they're the bomb!
I do like the bi-metal type,no batteries or wires and this one is long enough to do the work, and stainless to boot!
Scott

 

[vehve]

The temperature in the box was around 20C this morning, with outside temperature being 7C. I poured about 10 liters of water in the pile again since it was looking a bit dry. It should heat up nicely by tomorrow again.

 

[vehve]

Now we're cooking. Outside temperature was +3C in the morning, and the air in the box was +23C. Batch 3 is starting to fill up soon, so soon it will be time to start on batch 4. The bean bushes and Jerusalem-artichokes are waiting to go into the compost, so I should get a head start with filling it.

 

[vehve]

+25C in the box this morning, but the outside temperatures have risen to about +11C too. I'm estimating that it takes about 2-3 days for the daily straw additions to turn black in there. I think I'm going to call batch 3 full in the weekend and empty out what's left of batch 2. There won't be more than about a wheelbarrow full, since I've used most of batch 2 as fall fertilizer and also dumped quite a lot of it around the plum tree we planted earlier. Ideally, I want to get a quick start on batch 4, since I would want to get the soil that the beans were in heat treated in there too. If I don't get the heat up enough, I might have all kinds of surprises growing in our garden in the spring.

 

[Jetpad]

I'm trying an experiment today. I took one of the sensors (http://amzn.com/B00C3HBRIW) that I have for one of those indoor/outdoor weather stations and put in inside an empty plastic peanut butter jar. I'm not really interested in trying to monitor the humidity so there are no holes in the jar. The jar is just to protect the sensor. I dug down to the bottom center of my compost pile and buried the jar. I figured I could use it to remotely monitor the temperature. Unfortunately it has trouble transmitting from the middle of the compost to inside my house about 50 feet way. If I walk the indoor display to about 5 feet from the compost, it'll pickup the temperature. Not as convenient as I thought it would be.

 

[vehve]

That's an interesting idea. I still haven't found a new compost thermometer myself.

The last few days the air inside the compost has been jumping between 28 and 30 degrees, so it's heating up nicely again.

 

[vehve]

@Jetpad Oh, out of interest, what frequency does your thermometer operate on?

 

[Jetpad]

@Jetpad Oh, out of interest, what frequency does your thermometer operate on?

Looks like it works at 433 Mhz.
It's this one http://amzn.com/B00EW4970O

 

[vehve]

Okay, I was thinking that you maybe had one of the 868MHz models, but that frequency should penetrate better according to my understanding.

 

[Jetpad]

Okay, I was thinking that you maybe had one of the 868MHz models, but that frequency should penetrate better according to my understanding.

They do ok. They are advertised as working with a 300ft line of site. Mine are setup about 75-100ft away through a window and work consistently but any farther or any extra obstructions and they start dropping the connection. I'm going to try moving the sensor to a less dense compost pile today and see how it does.