Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[Jetpad]

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.

With the sensor in the less dense but about 5 feet farther away pile, I'm able to read the temperature from inside the house

 

[vehve]

I'm thinking of putting one of those in the coop, but I'm a bit worried the signal won't penetrate the insulation of the house.

I left the lid open to the compost yesterday by mistake, and it stayed open all day and night. Luckily the pile is big enough to maintain heat, when I turned it there was still a nice heat in there.

 

[Jetpad]

I'm thinking of putting one of those in the coop, but I'm a bit worried the signal won't penetrate the insulation of the house.

I left the lid open to the compost yesterday by mistake, and it stayed open all day and night. Luckily the pile is big enough to maintain heat, when I turned it there was still a nice heat in there.

That's mainly why I got it. I have the package with 4 sensors. One is in the coop, one in the run, one in my mini-greenhouse and one (for now is in the compost). So far I haven't discovered much except the humidity in the area directly under the enclosed coop is 4-5% higher than inside the coop. It might just be because it is closer to the ground. The humidity inside the coop doesn't vary more than 1-2% from the general outside humidity. It's mostly lower but I think the error range on these sensors is as much as +/-5%.

I'm interested in seeing if the humidity rises much inside the coop during the middle of winter as the chickens get much bigger. Since your coop isn't too far from the house I think the sensors would probably penetrate the insulation of the coop (and your house) ok.

 

[vehve]

The house is a bit of Faraday cage, can't get a decent signal with a mobile phone in here. Hopefully, the lower frequency of the thermometer will penetrate.

 

[aart]

That's mainly why I got it. I have the package with 4 sensors. One is in the coop, one in the run, one in my mini-greenhouse and one (for now is in the compost). So far I haven't discovered much except the humidity in the area directly under the enclosed coop is 4-5% higher than inside the coop. It might just be because it is closer to the ground. The humidity inside the coop doesn't vary more than 1-2% from the general outside humidity. It's mostly lower but I think the error range on these sensors is as much as +/-5%.

I'm interested in seeing if the humidity rises much inside the coop during the middle of winter as the chickens get much bigger. Since your coop isn't too far from the house I think the sensors would probably penetrate the insulation of the coop (and your house) ok.

Pretty easy to test your hygrometers:

Hygrometers can be tested by putting 1/2 cup salt and 1/4 cup water in a dish or jar and mixing it to a slurry.
Put the salt slurry jar and the hygrometer next to each other in a large sealed plastic bag.
After 8-12 hours the hygrometer should read 75%... note any differences and you're set.

 

[Jetpad]

Pretty easy to test your hygrometers:

Hygrometers can be tested by putting 1/2 cup salt and 1/4 cup water in a dish or jar and mixing it to a slurry.
Put the salt slurry jar and the hygrometer next to each other in a large sealed plastic bag.
After 8-12 hours the hygrometer should read 75%... note any differences and you're set.

That's good to know.

 

[vehve]

I received my new hemp bedding earlier this week, so we cleaned the coop today. Also mowed the lawn a bit to get some greens to balance all the bedding out, and took down two bean bushes.

First I emptied what was left of batch 2:


Below the breathing pipe I noticed I hadn't stirred the stuff properly. Loads of uncomposted shavings here. I left them on the bottom after wetting them properly (I don't think the water get's to the part below the drain pipe too well.)


I got a wheelbarrow full of pretty nice soil.


Then I started layering everything I had: Spent bedding that was very dry, lawn clippings, some leaves, the bean bushes and a bit of soil, wetting everything a bit all the time. Batch 3 got completely filled, and batch 4 pretty much also. Since batch 3 was cooking pretty nicely already, I'm hoping it will get the rest of this stuff to decompose pretty quickly. I think this box will be very hot in a few days.

 

[vehve]

It was 13 deg C (55F) last night inside the box, now in the morning it had risen to 23 C (73F). I think this will be quite a quick cooking. I didn't stir it yet, I'm going to wait for it to get properly started first.

 

[vehve]

Three hours since I last checked, and now the temperature is at 26 C (79 F). It's also starting to put out some steam. I hope I didn't go overboard with the water yesterday, because this thing is going to smell if I did. I have to say, it is a lot more interesting to make a large batch at once instead of just adding a little bit daily. It makes everything go so much faster, you get a lot bigger hot mass to work with. If this has heated up nicely I think I'm going to give it the first stir in the evening to get some more air in there.

Lately I haven't been mixing the compost as often as in the beginning, but with these two batches I think I might go back to my several times per day regimen. I read somewhere that when you mix the pile, the oxygen content stays higher than an unmixed pile for only a few hours, so if I want to make this stuff cook as quickly as possible, I need to get back to my 3-4 times per day turning. In commercial compost production they circumvent this problem by forcing pressurized air into the pile to keep the oxygen levels high, but I'm just going to have to stick to manual labor.

The level of the piles has started to go down a bit too, I might move some of batch 4 into batch 3 to have some room to add to in there.

 

[vehve]

We're up to 32 C (90 F) in the box. I gave it a little stir, and moved some stuff from batch 4 to batch 3 to keep it full and make space for future deposits. With the amount of steam it was putting out, I would not want to put my hand into that compost right now.Tomorrow morning I will start turning properly.