Trilobite Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 During study my mind often wanders...just tonight I had a thought. Would it be possible to heat tubs outdoors in compost? or would this get too hot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sophia Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 compost can get pretty hot, my husband reckons between 60 and 80 degrees as it's breaking down :dunno: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trilobite Posted October 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 Ooh thats a bit hot... Would there be a way to keep it at a cooler temp maybe by sitting it on top of the compost so only the bottom is being heated and the rest is exposed to the air so it cools down? Does compost have the same temperature in all any quantity, for example, would a small amount around the edges have a lower temp than a tank with a lot around the edges, or is the temperature constant? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sophia Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 It gets warmest and rots in the middle, hence why mine husband turns it over from time to time to have it do the work more evenly. The stuff he makes is in a sort of cage made of pallet wood so it gets air around the sides but is covered on the top by a tarpaulin. You'd have to have a pretty big pile for it to actually heat the container I think. Sounds like very much a trial and error thing to me but if you get yourself a load of lawn clippings it would be easy enough to set up. Lawn clippings are probably the fastest stuff to rot down. Keeping the blackbirds out of it would be another experiment :sml2: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trilobite Posted October 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 Awesome! My goal over summer will be to build a compost pile and find the best way to set up a system suitable for growing fighters. I'll have betta ponds all over the place. Haha blackbirds wont be a problem, my dog thinks its his duty to destroy every bird that enters the property :evil: In winter do you think the composts temp would remain constant? Time to do some lawn mowing I think, I think I have/had some pallet wood lying around somewhere. I'm wondering if it would be possible to tap into the hottest part and send it through a system that cools it down before it reaches the tub...? Hmm I've got a lot of trial and error to do.. I'll most likely fail but then I will be able to sleep easy knowing that it cant be done with my abilities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zev Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 Here - knock yourself out! http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=compost%20heat%20transfer%20system&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDYQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fetd.lsu.edu%2Fdocs%2Favailable%2Fetd-1101102-142703%2Funrestricted%2FVining_thesis.pdf&ei=-DuhTpaUI8eziQeIgs3rBg&usg=AFQjCNGCM4cLxnNsGgaIidNu5g13RqUzZA&cad=rja Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 I run two compost heaps. If you use lawn clippings you need to add saw dust to get the carbon/ nitrogen ratio right. Add a little lime as it raises the pH and discourages flies. As the sawdust rots it uses up nitrogen so add a little to compensate (urea or ammoniun sulphate etc). When one heap is full move it into the other compartment and this helps aerate the heap and stops the anaerobic decomposition which produces the bad smells. You want to keep it moist but not wet. It will only produce good heat when it reaches a critical bulk size. A compost heap is not a pile of anaerobic rotting vegetation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Navarre Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 rather than using the compost you could use the heat for example...and I am making this up as I go...a leangth of black alkathyne coiled in your compost heap and then running and wrapped around your tub. syphoning water as it heats out of and back into a resivour would be a cleaner more controlable way to utilise the heat. also means you can have a compost "bin" rather than masses of compost heaped up around your valuable fish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squirt Posted October 21, 2011 Report Share Posted October 21, 2011 rather than using the compost you could use the heat for example...and I am making this up as I go...a leangth of black alkathyne coiled in your compost heap and then running and wrapped around your tub. syphoning water as it heats out of and back into a resivour would be a cleaner more controlable way to utilise the heat. also means you can have a compost "bin" rather than masses of compost heaped up around your valuable fish +1 we have one of those for our pool, big black coils of piping on the garage roof, the sun heats the water up in the pipes, then the pump pumps it into the pool. The thinner the tube the hotter the waters going to be because there is more surface area to 1ml or 1L of water. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markvs Posted November 13, 2011 Report Share Posted November 13, 2011 I remember seeing a tv program where they used to use compost to grow pineapples in England in the snows of winter. The bad news, lots of labour turning it over, and vast amounts of raw materials required. They used horse manure and all other goodies. y question is what on earth are you going to do with all the compost? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akaxo Posted November 13, 2011 Report Share Posted November 13, 2011 rather than using the compost you could use the heat for example...and I am making this up as I go...a leangth of black alkathyne coiled in your compost heap and then running and wrapped around your tub. syphoning water as it heats out of and back into a resivour would be a cleaner more controlable way to utilise the heat. also means you can have a compost "bin" rather than masses of compost heaped up around your valuable fish this is probably a better idea than heating a tank or whatever directly imo. compost does get pretty hot and the temperature fluctuates a fair bit over time, the slightly technical paper on heating water from compost linked to above somewhere shows that in some of the graphs. you're likely to end up with some slow cooked fish if you're not careful. i've thought a fair bit about doing something similar but to heat homebrew barrels during winter. i have four compost bins so seems a shame to waste the heat generated. but gave up on the idea as not worth the hassle in the end. as soon as you put something large into a compost heap you start messing with it's decomposition and it wont generate the heat properly so the idea of running coils of hose through it is way better. though with the temperatures involved it may be worth investing in something better than the standard black irrigation hose. but the fact that the heat generated isn't constant and drops over a matter of days makes it all very tricky. it could be set up like a wetback system on a fire place so that heat convection circulates the water. the bottom of the water tank just needs to be at least 30cm above the coils being heated. you could also set up something similar using solar. there's no real way to control the temperature though and keep it stable without spending a fair bit of money. i ended up deciding it would be more hassle than it's worth and too likely to kill the yeast in the homebrew. if it was me i'd just take over the garage or a room inside and set up heaps of tanks in there. not that trying wouldn't be a lot of fun or anything... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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