Lawren Richards

I perc mine for 8 minutes, but I've also developed a high tolerance for bad coffee.

I’ve been composting humanure for 23 years, most of that with the bucket method but more recently with a 2-story barrel composter I built in the straw bale house I’m building. The treatment area is near the hot water heater to help keep the temps above freezing in the winter, as my basement is unheated.  I live in the BC Interior.

Does anyone have experience with indoor composting? My cover material has always been whatever is on hand, so might be fir sawdust, woodchips I make from deciduous tree leavings, or chipped-up weeds like chicory. (Don’t use invasive weeds that you can’t control; I’ll burn any plants that survive the barrel.) I also shred all my paper and cardboard and use that, especially for visitors as they’re more comfortable with the familiarity of shredded paper.

I researched soldier flies as I’d like to feed the larvae to my chickens, but they generally like kitchen compost over the mostly/fibrous compost of humanure. When I worked for a septic company I did mycoremediation and found that Stropharia shrooms kill coliforms without absorbing toxins (so remain edible if clean, and I used a layer of sand as a barrier) but this year couldn’t find any so used oyster mushrooms (which do absorb toxins while killing coliforms).  I threw a single sawdust kit of mycelium on a 2/3 full barrel, a couple of flakes of wheat straw I had on hand over it(which I wouldn’t do again), and a screen over the top.

Second barrel will probably be full at the end of January and I’m going to throw a pound of my red  wiggler compost worms in there, as they love the fibrous cover materials, and I have read they lock up heavy metals and maybe some of the nastier common toxins. (We’re all toxic now, folks.)

I think 1year of composting will take 3 drums (55 gal), and I’m trying to figure out what to use for processing in the 3rd. The goal is to reduce the material significantly for easier handling, so after a year I can easily roll the barrels outside to a pallet bin for another year of processing. Or it might be enough to sequence them inside: 4mo shrooms to remove coliforms, 4 mo worms to remove other toxins & reduce volume, and 4 mo of ??  Ideas and questions welcome.

I know this is an old post but yes, I had an engineering student build one for me as a for/credit project. I was intending to use it for vermiculture but found that my worms like very wet soil, and wet soil doesn’t process well. So instead I used it for sifting clay and sand (for plaster) when building my straw bale house.

I will see if I can find the video link (here’s one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=le-Nmg0q9jE&list=PLgjAQtOWGENPUU6zETW0-hXkJnjNHWmsD&pp=iAQB ) that guided my student, but besides motor size an important consideration is being able to get wheelbarrows or garden carts under it and at the end of it, simultaneously and easily. Mine wasn’t quite high enough so is a bit awkward when running barrels of material a day though it.

Are either of the original posters still around? I would love to hear what you ended up building, and how it worked. I’m planning a greenhouse attachment for my strawbale house.

I live in the BC Interior and have kept it simple for the last 20 years: my greywater pipes drain into a small shallow mulch basin year-round, and many years ago when I found that the 2’ diameter was prone to overflow I changed it to a 2’x3’ oval mulch basin. No special plants but the local plants were Carboniferous-Age huge. The pipes that might freeze were kept unglued so I just popped them apart, knocked the ice out, and put them back together.

Anne Miller wrote:Once the yellow jackets, hornets or wasp nest is removed, if you continue to hear bussing then maybe there is a problem.

I suspect that one the outside nests are removed then there will be no problem.

There are no exterior nests, just a bunch of hornets grouped around what I assume are entrances to their nest. Goodness knows how I’d get them out, and I’m kind of wondering if perhaps the queen is gone and the hive is breaking up. I don’t know what time of year that typically happens.

Just discovered a couple of small masses of hornets (~20 hornets/mass) seething at the edge of the roof, so I assume I have them in my roof trusses. My ceiling is well sealed and I’ve seen no evidence of them inside and I’m wondering if there’s any issue with just leaving them alone.

Just as a later fyi: I had a huge bald-faced hornet nest next to my horse corral (not where the horse would hit it) and for 20 years they kept the area free of flies. They’d sit horseback then jump on any flies, and were not aggressive at all, even when I discovered the nest at a 5ft distance the first time. They liked to investigate shirt buttons, though, which was a bit unnerving for visitors.

I use cedar woodchips.  All other woodchips are used to mulch my composting toilet, and it's the only thing I could think do do with the cedar chips:  brush too small to use as firewood, too flammable to leave in piles.  And it helps keep the weeds down.

I have a similar problem but with invasives rather than grass. Large animals are not an option for a variety of reasons. My first major invasive was knapweed; I tackled as much by hand (pulling it up) as I could for 5 years; in the last 2 years it’s been superseded by chicory. More than an acre of the stuff. I’ve been pulling it up by hand, but lately just clipping it to try to get ahead of it going to seed.  Property is a steep 2.5 acres. I’m intrigued by the rabbit idea, but would they eat knapweed & chicory?