[doganjo]

Becasue I am very impatient and also becasue I love gadgets

I have bought a Mini Hotbin.

It cost £150, and is made out of recycled materials - it's like black expanded foam gone hard

Came with full instructions including a belt to stop it bursting it's belly  and its own  hot water bottle in case it gets cold. 

It came with a bag of 'bulking agent' - which just looks like wood chips, but smells nice.

So as per the instructions, i put a layer of small twigs on the bottom and in my wheel barrow I mixed up garden waste (grass cuttings and grass and weeds pulled up from beside it), kitchen waste (bits of uncooked food, tea bags, coffee grounds etc). torn up carbboard and paper, and the wood chips - in the ratio suggested.

Dumped it all in the bin and went in for lunch.

An hour later and the temperature had risen from 60C to 80 C

[Fleecewife]

That was quick!  This will be an interesting experiment.  The teabag bags are often plastic, so unless you know they are fully degradable, be prepared to fish them out of the finished compost.
   for some rapid ready to use 

[alang]

Been looking at these for the last 3 weeks. They seem to get great reviews as long as you set them up correctly at first. Certainly look like they produce nice compost and kill all the weed seeds. Wonder if they could help keep a greenhouse frost free in the winter?

[Womble]

My Dad once made a hot box composter from a broken chest freezer. IIRC, it had an air inlet at one end and an exhaust at the other. Because it was an insulated box, it got really hot in there! 

[doganjo]

Thanks, Juliet, I hadn't thought about tea bags.  I'll check the box and if they aren't compostible I'll empty them.

[arobwk]

Just thinking aloud here:  even if certain teabags are not compostable, would they not provide a micro eco-sphere for various microbes to populate !??  Maybe a bit like a porous lump of charcoal would

While I have noticed that some teabags have not broken down in my "system", I have left them in the compost mix (right or wrong).

[Fleecewife]

I suppose it depends on your views of adding plastic to the environment.

[arobwk]

And whether it's worth making best use of when already in the environment or whether better to dig them out (tea-bags say) in order to send it/them to land-fill or incineration regardless   


I dunno !  Life's micro-decisions are becoming so complicated 

[doganjo]

Hotbox is doing fine, not quite reached temperature yet but admittedly it hasn't been the weather to put stuff in or check it.

[doganjo]

It's now 6 weeks and I should have got compost now, but I failed in my care of the thing - it feels a bit like one of these tamagotchies (sp)

I keep forgetting to put everything in it every 3 to 4 days so the temperatirue dropped and I got fruit flies.  I emailed Hotbin and had a really nice informative reply saying it wasn't uncommon and that the bin hadn't got hot enough.  Gave me some instant things to do -  add chicken manure was one that had never even occurred to me, so I cleaned out my chicken shed and added a bag ful of mixed sh*t and sawdust.  Now being much more strict about what I add to the hotbin instead of throwing in my kitchen bin.
Hotbin said if I did what they suggest it should reach temperature pretty quickly. So I'll report back

[arobwk]

Perfect home-compost production is, from my experience, a rare thing @doganjo!


All those crumbly, ever-so sweet-smelling results we see advertised have probably required the advertiser to mince every single addition to the composter and then camp-out along side the bin to register temperatures and further churn the mix as required.     


The bigger the pile, the longer it's left, the easier it is !!


I'm liking your Hotbin reports though:  ta much.

[doganjo]

I asked them about the wee beasties and followed the instructions.  It's now coming quite quickly up to temperature and the we beasties have gone.  I've put as much as I can into it, including some shredded paper and chicken sh*t mixed with sawdust from their coop
There's a wee bit of seepage from the tap thingie at the bottom so I'm just going to put a container under it as that'll be good feeding when diluted

[doganjo]

Just took my first harvest of liquid feed. Nice and dark, doesn’t smell too bad. Time will tell if it’s effective

There's a fair few dead fruit flies in there so that should help 

[Q]

i just spent an hour turning a cubic metre of compost.. yours looks easier

[Fleecewife]

i just spent an hour turning a cubic metre of compost.. yours looks easier

I got one of my grandsons to turn 3 cubic metres of compost (all suitably socially distanced of course).  I didn't time him but he was amazingly fast, (the last time I turned one heap it took me a week but then I need plenty of pauses to wheeze!)  Now I'll need to tempt him back with roast lamb dinner to spread the compost  + =