|
Such a timely thread! I've grown up in agriculture, but only in the common commercial sense. That compostpower/Jean Pain concept just pretty well blew my mind. I'm looking into buying my first house in the near future and have already fallen in love with hydronic heating. And I live in timber country, with a number of local sawmills, which ought to drive down input costs pretty significantly. So, it looks like for the cost of making (and having) a big pile of chips in the backyard, I could conceivably heat my house and have hot water for a year+. Any more experienced composters have feedback on what the potential downsides might be? I'm concerned that there would be a pretty distinct smell after rains, having it be a eyesore, etc.
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2014 09:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 06:30 |
|
|
I didn't think that the smell would be much of a thing, but the place I'd want to have a pile at is on the edge of town and I'd rather not trouble the neighbors. The sheer size of the recommended pile is pretty daunting though, and seems like it could easily cause friction with neighbors. Some coverage would help, but 20x20x6 ft is pretty eyecatching no matter what. I'd have to do some math on the chemistry that's happening, but ideally I'd want to sink the pile into a depression and use some big irrigation tube to allow airflow. It would make it much harder to change out the pile though. In my area we have about 3ft of topsoil on average and dirt quite a bit deeper depending on the local topography. Most wells are 100-300ft deep, and common, along with lots of rain. If you put the effort in, it would be pretty easy to pull it all together here, provided you had enough space. The mills might be a good way to save some otherwise useless materials, but I'd also be able to pull deadwood, storm falls, etc from quite a few places. It would be interesting to see how large of a bamboo stand it would take to produce an appropriate pile each year though. I assume that it would decompose roughly the same way though. Even if I don't wind up with the property I'm looking at, the family farm and large garden might be able to justify an experiment pile. It'd probably only wind up as simple compost, but it never hurts to have a proof of concept. I could pretty easily rock some hugelkultur out there anyway though. I'll have to see how much scrap wood we wind up with this spring after we clear the field edges. I did find this MIT paper talking about a range of digesters. The ones in India look like they could be done on a DIY scale. GardenPool is tight, but pretty heavily dependent on being able to keep animals around. Good concept for a tough environment though, as long as the city doesn't shut you down.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 07:10
|
|