best compost heap/bin design?

Hello all.

Come the spring I will be setting too with the scythe and shovel in an attempt to clear my garden. This will leave a vast amount of waste, much of it compostable.

I was wondering what people thought was the most efficient compost heap/bin?

when I was a kid, I was in charge of turning over my dad's "proper" compost heaps, which were big things made from wooden slats. they were pretty big, and took a bit of looking after and needed to be covered with grotty carpet, but on the upside, they seemed to take vast amounts of waste, and there were three of them linked together, which made turning over the heap pretty easy.

Since I've had my own garden's, I've used the large plasic compost bins - round with a little shovel space in the bottom.

These are easier to tuck away somewhere, and don't need lumps of grotty old carpet, and I think they maybe get a bit hotter, but they are a pain to turn over, and they seem to fill up very quickly.


I was wondering what other people thought? What's your preference on compost heap design? How do you keep you heap nice and toasty, but keep it easy to get to? Do you find a "fit and forget" plastic bin enogh, or is it traditional heaps for you?

Any thoughts/comments/advice greatfully recieved.

Steve

 

For the one-off volume of ground clearance I don't think its worth building a container; the "hay" that we cut for compost I just pile up, ditto the grass cuttings. It will rot down, albeit not as quickly as a well managed heap.

Bins from pallets are favourite (I expect you can find some threads here, with photos, using the Search tool). I have been meaning to build a three-bay one (about 1M x 1M x 1M) for years ... but in the meantime I have a couple of plastic Daleks from the Council, and they seem to work well - except that the rats like to eat their way into them during the winter :( If you put them somewhere with sufficient space you can lift-off, place alongside, and then mix-and-shovel-back-in in lieu of more conventional "turning". Or lift-off, shovel-and-mix into wheel barrow, put Dalek back in original location, and re-load-from-barrow.

 

Hi Ripslider, heres a pic of my new Bins, The hub built them to replace the pallet one's i had, exactly the same but they were starting to rot after 10 years, The front comes out for me to turn/empty the compost...

 

Steve, ALWAYS listen to your dad.:gnthb:

 

Steve

Having a three-bay "composting complex" like your Dad's would be ideal but it's possible for those of us with small gardens to get good compost from plastic bins.

I have a council subsidised plastic bin which is square in plan and about one metre high. It's made in Austria and seems to be pretty efficient. Turning the compost is a strenuous job, though. You can't just lift it off because the compost clings to the inside of the walls where the horizontal sections fit together. You have to take out about half of the contents through the top and dump it on a plastic sheet. Ony then can you lift the bin off the remainder. You can work up quite a sweat (and thirst!) in the summer just turning the compost.

 

Having used the open bins for many years I decided to try Daleks to see what they were like. I have to say I didn't get on with them at all. It was impossible to turn the contents and I saw no reason to remove small amounts as it composted via the hatch.
I've always emptied a couple of open bins in the Winter to help keep the plants snug and the others in Spring as a mulch, but emptying the Daleks in one go was a nightmare and messy.
Last weekend I did away with two Daleks and rebuilt a mesh open bin which I filled with the Dalek contents and ten plastic bags of shreddings...and the sky is the only limit for more:D
And the added bonus is additional work tops, so beautifully demonstrated by Dee...Very smart and tidy too:wink:

 

Nick if you'd got some worms on the job they would have turned the bins over for you
As for emptying them I have to agree it's a major pain in the back, but I never empty ours completely, only dig out about half about three times a year.
The main two apartment heap doesn't get turned either apart from when I empty one side and turn the other over into the vacant space.

 

Worms were not a problem Dave they thrived,it was the fact that the plastic Daleks were in constant use and I was used to 'shutting ' down heaps until the entire heap was ripe and cleared out whole sale.:gnthb:

 

My Daleks are angled enough that I can just lift them off the pile. I also think that the doors at the bottom are a waste of time ... I've never made compost had no stalky-bits that would come out of a small door like that, and the rest of the heap just settle into its place

 

I use both types, triple bin setup for all garden waste and a dalek for kitchen waste. The process is almost identicle. With 3 bins. one is allways empty, bin 1 when full is sheeted, bin 2 then used, when bin 2 is full it is turned into bin 3 which is now sheeted. Bin 1 is turned into bin2 via a sieve with 1" square mesh. Anything that passes the sieve is ready for the garden and the rest is returned to bin 2 for futher composting, and so it continues. (22 large barrows of sieved rich compost in the first year). The dalek is tipped over, the fresh off the top goes straight back in, the rest goes through the sieve and any too big back in the dalek. (5 barrows from one dalek)