150° Compost the "Easy" Way with Aerated Static Pile or ASP Composting
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Read the Ultimate Guide to Vermicomposting at the Urban Worm Company!
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Video Summary: Most composters will fail because they:
►A) don't use enough high-nitrogen material or
►B) they don't turn the pile enough to keep it oxygenated.
We can't help with A, but for B, we overcome that need to turn a pile by pumping air straight into the pile using aerated static pile or "ASP" composting.
Timestamps:
0:15 Why Most Composters Fail to Make Hot Compost
1:00 Why a Hot Compost Pile Needs to be Turned
1:55 How ASP Replaces the Need to Turn a Compost Pile
2:04 Description of the Urban Worm Company's Aerated Static Pile Composter
3:00 What is the Plenum Layer in an ASP?
3:20 What is the Active Layer in an ASP?
3:45 The Timer Settings and Schedule for Our ASP
4:07 What We Do When The Compost Temperature Crashes
4:44 Volume Loss in Our Compost
4:55 How We Manage Composting Indoors
6:16 How We Use Composted Material to Feed Our CFT
Learn more about ASP Composting with the Urban Worm Company's Intro to Aerated Static Pile Composting
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► Koala Bounce House Blower: amzn.to/3viG2Uy
► Infinity T4 Inline Fan: amzn.to/3f713fs
I have REALLY enjoyed your videos. Recently I did ASP Composting in 44 gallon Rubbermaid cans. I used an aquarium air pump, 12vdc power supply 100w resistors with aluminum heat sinks. It worked very quickly. It did get too hot so I'll add temperature controllers. I was pumping air 24/7. After seeing this video I'll add a timer.
I have a few more small scale ASP projects to try.
I love learning new things about compost, but it cracks me up that cinderblock shed + blower + underground pipes + drilled PVC + mulch, etc is the "Easy" way... :)))
Hence the quotation marks around "easy"! ;)
But seriously, once it's built , it really *is* the easy way.
Have you thought about capturing the heat ? Either to heat a house or use a heat exchanger and heat water ?
LOVE the woodchip diffusion idea!
It makes a great plenum layer!
Thats fine for those that want to go big time. I myself do the outside composting with leaves turn the pile when it gets to 150-160. I use rabbit pellets as an initiator . Ive done this for yrs, this is for my personal use only and find it does well enough for me.
Curious if you could also show the next process with the worms. Thanks for a great video.
Really smart system you got going there sir
Thanks Robert! It works well.
Dude 1 month in and my worms are HAPPY . I actually scooped out a handful and stuck em in a 30 gallon no till pot . Yeah. 😊😊
thanks for this info, just getting started on worm farming in the philippines, and looking into composting methods. first time to hear of this, i like it
Fascinating. What a perfect set up for your set up. I like that you can use the material as soon as it comes out of the thermophilic range to feed the worms.
Would like to try this on a slightly smaller scale and go from there.
Cheers
You got it Clive....thanks! The one thing I'd caution against is going smaller. A 1.5-2 cubic yard bin like I have is about as small as you'd want to go because you need to volume to trap the heat.
This was a very succinct and information rich video. Well done! Thank.
Thanks Bud!
Great video. Please share the switch used for the blower.
I am enjoying a very hot pile right now. The key is that it’s been very wet here and I seem to have the right mix. I am going to try to turn it 1x weekly. Would love an ASP but it’s not I the cards right now
Yeah, it's not for everyone!
When I was doing my Masters in Watermanagement we went to visit an aerated static pile, I loved the idea and think it always wanted to it in an smaller scale, lie you are doing here. Just one think that you might be aware.
The guys in the facilty had to call the fire department a couple times because they actually got the pile too hot an burn.
Thanks Nicolas! Piles catching fire are almost always in massive piles at large operations.With mine, it stays so moist that it's not really an issue
That's not paying attention to what's happening. And, I'm not totally convinced that a pile should actually start burning... In the first place the pile's temperature can rise only when there is sufficient bacterial activity and aerobic bacteria need a lot of moisture to grow and become active enough to generate heat, so much moisture that it's hard to imagine how the pile can burn. A lot of steam might be produced but isn't the same as smoke or an open flame.
finally after 9 months we are filling our first asp, worms growing fast will build a second 4x8 worm bin in a couple of days, wish me luck
Good luck Dennis! :)
Very informative video thanks Steve 🪱
You got it Matthew!
Thank you. This is so great. I created a 3 bin system for our horse waste. Should the bin be completely filled before starting to pump air or should air be pumped in during the filling process? Thank you.
Thank you! If you can fill the whole bin at once before turning on the air, that’s preferable!
Loving this engineering!
Thanks, great video! Doing ASP bin style might solve the problem I am having. Asian jumping worms love my compost when I am conditioning it. Arghh! So far I have not minded turning my piles and they get very hot. But I do not want the jumping worms to invade my cooling piles. I am looking into storage methods for my compost as well.
Thanks Thomas! The jumpers will likely be able to infest anything touching the ground, so if you go the ASP route, think about elevating it somewhat.
@@UrbanWormCompany Right! Thanks much!
Thanks for the great information
You got it Steve!
Awesome design and application Steve. Could this process be scaled down and adapted to the Urban Worm Bin?
@UrbanWormCompany, how do you rotate your ASP bins, meaning how do you always have feedstock available? Is bin 1 being used for feed while bin 2 is pre composting and bin 3 is being filled? Thank you for such an awesome video!!
Hey Cody, I answer the question over e-mail but for the benefit of everyone else, we generally only had two ASPs going at one time. We started ASP 2 about 3-4 weeks after starting ASP 1. That gave us a constant flow of pre-composted material for the CFT.
thank you
You're welcome!
Super helpful, thanks!
You got it! :)
Thanks for the update! 😎
You bet! :)
Great video! Just curious as to what ratio of brewers grains to wood chips you use in your setup?
Thanks Luke! We currently use about 90 gallons (12 cubic feet) of wood chips to 35 gallons (4.6 cubic feet) of brewer's grains. This is likely on the low C:N end of things so if you try to replicate this, aim for a bit more wood chips. ;)
@@UrbanWormCompany Thanks Steve appreciate the reply. I currently run some CFT's myself and would like to replicate what you're doing to speed up the precomposting of the feed material and increase fungal dominance in my castings. Do you find freshly chipped wood chips work well or do you stick to aged wood chips?
Great job, hats off!
I am buying an air blower for a system similar to yours in terms of volume, but outdoors.
- what do you think the characteristics of the blower should be?
- what are the characteristics of yours (in case I decide to get indoors)
Thanks!
Thanks Arwa! My pump is a bounce house blower motor made by Koala. I believe it's 1/2 to 3/4 HP.
How would this setup change if it was all outdoors? tarps over the compost piles to keep moisture in? Would I still want to vent the top of the pile some how?
Hi Steven, thanks for all your videos and awesome information content. basic question relating to ASP. my organic matter is made up of what would be termed kitchen waste, but it is on an industrial level. I work for a large fruit and vegetable distribution warehouse where on a daily basis we send huge amounts of waste to landfills. I do not have access to grains or wood derivatives. my question is would the process of ASP be the same if I was to substitute the food waste (your grain and wood chip)directly as my composting material for my pending vermicomposting
you will need a drier carbon source; rice hulls, straw, woodchips, etc. straight food waste is too wet and nitrogenous to compost. You're looking for something to bulk, aerate, and balance that nitrogen to carbon ratio.
Lawn grass + shredded cardboard + alfalfa meal+ drill auger once a week+ filtered water+ food scrapes= hot hot hot
I noticed my leaven in my garbage can composted goes down once a week.
wow, where to you get alfalfa meal???
A company called “Down to Earth” has alfalfa meal
The Vin Diesel of composting 😉
Ha!
Always a great content. Thank you. If you dont mind, is there a design/blueprint we can find online to build our own ASP bins like you have?
Hi Jeremiah,
We kind of built this thing in place and simply cut the underground PVC as needed to route the pipe where it needed to go. For the best "package," per se, you should look at o2compost.com! Please tell Peter and his team that I sent you!
@@UrbanWormCompany thank you for pointing me to the right direction!
Nice
Great information.... several questions.... 1) why do you keep the air on and the temp up for 3-4 weeks? Is your objective to speed up the decomposition for the worms?
I love my URBAN WORM BAG.
Thanks Glen! For large amounts of organic waste, you need to stabilize the material before feeding it to worms. Otherwise, it will begin to heat up and/or rot.
Bounce house blower link points to the inline fan. How did you come up with the blower timing settings?
Thanks Joe! I just fixed the link. A rough blower timing schedule was suggested by Peter Moon of O2Compost. We just kind of toyed around with it and settled on 45 sec on, 30 min off. We actually ran our first ASP at 6 minutes on, 60 minutes off. That certainly heated up the pile but also dried it out too quickly so we dialed in on this number.
When you poke your head into the ASP when the blower is on, you can definitely tell that air is getting pushed through the pile.
tyvm
If you pitch the exhaust piping so the condensate runs back into the piles you won't have to water them so often to put the moisture back in them.
This is great input Jim. I wish I'd thought of it.
Curious where you get your wood chips from?
I just got them from a local landscape supply company. We got playground mulch because the particle size was lower. It's more expensive but it worked better for us because we were using the precomposted material in our continuous flow worm systems.
For how this system is designed, which is to only produce compost that has been broken down enough that worms can more efficiently digest and further process the material, 150 degrees is pretty impressive and likely more than adequate to meet objectives, so congrats.
But, it's not sufficient to do proper hot composting where it's important to get that temperature as high as possible to maximize aerobic bacteria and break down the material as quickly and completely as possible. In this case, the objective isn't to break down the material enough for the worms to finish off the composting, the objective has to be to do a complete job on its own and for that to happen, I don't know that can be accomplished without fully turning the pile.
Ehhh....I don't know about that. This thing cooks really well. I've gotten it to 170°F which is actually too high. If we let is go, it would compost everything pretty well. That said, turning helps gets the stuff on the edges into the middle for sure.
3:29 wow that is a lot of coffee grounds! any tips for getting that much in Charlotte, NC area? do you give them a container to store them in and pick them up once a week?
Hey Rolland....these are actually brewer's grains from a brewery! :)
@@UrbanWormCompany thanks, makes sense now. I thought they were brewing coffee, lol.
One guy just contacted his local coffee shops to place in a bin & put out by their dumpster to pick up.
After the foour to six weeks, could I the introduce worms to that same pile without moving it?
I suppose you could, but the worms won't work the pile top to bottom
Does this system work throughout winter if it is outside?
Yes....the temperatures make it a little more difficult, but composting through the winter is certainly possible.
How do you address the increased release of CO2?
I don’t address it at all. The spent brewer’s grains would otherwise be emitting methane -a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
How much air flow is needed?
We used 45 seconds every 30 minutes, but this all depends on the power of the pump, the diameter of the pipe, the size of the pile, the number of holes in the pipes delivering the air, etc. I would check out O2Compost.com for more information on that.
Bottom line, there is a trial and error period where you have to find what works for your pile.
What is curing involve? Letting it cool down?
Hi Kevin,
When compost cures, the carbon begins forming long chains to become "humus." This comes after the cooling process.
how the heck do we do this outside at home???f
ben affleck why are you making youtube videos on composting?
Ha! I wish.....
way too much work which is what he complained about in the first place. plus the expense
You should make a sussus amogus gaming tiktok video 😳😳😳😳🆘🆘😳😳😳😳
Ha! Go back to playing online with Jay, Pete!
^^Good trolling right here^^ 😂