The Cold Truth About Hot Compost: 4 Reasons Why It's Not Heating Up

a failure to launch for your compost pile we'll cover four reasons why on this video my name is Steve Churchill and this is the urban worm company [Music] I'm not a Gearhead and I used to have no clue why my car wouldn't start but a buddy of mine is a Gearhead and made things really easy to understand if your Carter's motor isn't starting there are three reasons why it's lacking air it's lacking fuel or it's lacking a spark to get the combustion going compost is similar it needs oxygen it needs the fuel and it needs a spark we'll get to that one later and it needs a fourth component water let's start with oxygen hot composting is or at least should be an aerobic process if your pile isn't heating up then it may be lacking oxygen so make sure to keep turning the pile every few days you can also increase aeration to a pile by adding one or more mesh chimneys into the pile you can make these with metal mesh chicken wire and this can help increase airflow to the center of the pile I would only do this for large piles though you also want to make sure that your composting material includes an excellent bulking agent like wood chips that add structure to your pile bulk helps create maintain little pockets of air called pore spaces and without these poor space cases your pile can run out of oxygen composting will stop an anaerobic decomposition and bad odor will follow also watch this video I did about aerated static pile composting for an automated way of delivering air to your pile aerated static pile or ASP composting takes them up front work and expense but it works really well and gang if you think I'm off to a good start with this video move that thumb or that Mouse over to the like button if you're loving this video Hit subscribe and if you're dying for more click that little alert Bell that tells you anytime we go live with another video okay now let's talk about the fuel in your compost pile and this is kind of a big topic your compost fuel requires a certain ratio of carbon to nitrogen in order to light up soil microorganisms prefer to consume carbon and nitrogen in a 25 to 30 to 1 ratio those levels of carbon allow for the microbes to consume that nitrogen and turn it into nitrates and ammonia if you've been composting for a while you've probably already heard of this number let's dig a Little Deeper though carbon Rich materials are often called Browns and this includes things like dead leaves wood chips sawdust and stuff like that Browns decompose very slowly nitrogen-rich materials are called greens and include most animal manures food waste and fresh grass clippings greens decompose really quickly the easiest way to get people to understand what is a green and what is a brown is to give you a hypothetical situation where you went on vacation for a couple weeks and got a phone call that someone left a pile of material on your kitchen floor I know it sounds weird but hang with me the more concern you would be is directly related to how green the material is if I told you that I left a pile of wood chips on your kitchen floor you wouldn't be too concerned about it I mean it's weird why would I do such a thing but you wouldn't freak out because wood chips are a brown but if I said I left a pile of food waste or chicken manure on your kitchen floor you'd be very concerned about what that would smell like when you got home that's because food waste or chicken manure is a green you're going to hear that you should shoot for a certain ratio of green to Brown material one website will tell you that you want two to one green to Brown while another says that you'll want one-to-one green to Brown why is that that's because not all brown materials are the same and not all green materials are the same carbon rich brown material can vary wildly when it comes to its own carbon and nitrogen ratio for instance leaves and wood chips are both considered Brown those leaves can have a carbon and nitrogen ratio of 40 to 1 while wood chips can be up to 750 to one nitrogen-rich wastes don't vary as much but it still makes a big difference for instance horse manure is considered a green with a carbon or nitrogen ratio of about 25 to 1 but so is chicken manure with a carbon and nitrogen ratio as low as six to one what you should probably do to come up with your own recipe is to visit one or several compost calculators to find what gets you to a 25 to 30 to 1 carbon or nitrogen ratio I have one that's really helpful and easy to use at the urban warm company and you can click that link on your screen right now but a Google search will show you plenty of other options and I would input your recipe into a couple different calculators to see if it gives you similar numbers now you may get different numbers in different calculators while using in the same ingredients so here's another Rabbit Hole to go down there's another measurement called bulk density that exists in the background of these calculators that can have a huge effect on the carbon and nitrogen ratio that they calculate bulk density measures mass per volume and here's how it works in real life five gallons of dried leaves will weigh far less than five gallons of sawdust so the bulk density of sawdust is much higher than the bulk density of dried leaves so you would need a far greater volume of dried leaves to affect the overall carbon and nitrogen ratio than you would for sawdust but does that mean that you can use a couple of buckets of high carbon sawdust rather than a whole cubic yard of leaves no and here's why materials with high bulk density like sawdust have low porosity so they are more likely to become anaerobic if they lack the pore spaces for oxygen to occupy and remember oxygen was our first requirement mentioned above okay so my own head spinning so let's move on the bottom line is you want a final carbon and nitrogen ratio in your pile of 25 to 30 to 1. if your carbon or nitrogen ratio is too low the pile May heat up but you lose too much nitrogen in the form of ammonia and your nose is going to let you know because it's going to stink if your carbon or nitrogen ratio is too high your pile won't heat up and your decomposition will be too slow it may take you some trial and error to find that magical recipe but when it works it will work because you're in that magical zone of 25 to 30 to 1 carbon and nitrogen ratio okay let's move on now you need an ignition source so you need a spark and just like a motor needs an ignition source so does your compost the microorganisms that make up a hot compost pile are called thermophilic or heat loving microbes they love both heat and they create more of it you need the initial heat producing microbial activity in order to get your compost going but it's not enough to Simply create some heat you've got to trap it in order to trap it you need a compost pile that's large enough to prevent too much heat loss one reason why small compost piles don't get hot is that any heat generated escapes out the sides and the top too easily so you want your compost pile to be at the bare minimum at least three feet wide three feet long and three feet deep bigger if possible this will give you a volume of one cubic yard or more and the process of turning it not only reintroduces oxygen to the pile it also moves the outer material to the inside of the pile in order to thoroughly compost all of that material all right now let's talk about water a compost pile needs moisture to be between 50 and 65 below 50 percent the heat generating microbes will die or go dormant and temperatures will crash in your compost above 65 the water will start to occupy those pore spaces the microbes will consume the available oxygen but the now anaerobic water will prevent the re-oxygenation of those pore spaces and this could leave you with a stinky pile so how can you tell 50 to 65 percent well below 50 percent the compost May ball up in your hand but it will fall apart very easily when touched there will be no wet residue left on your skin and it may not feel like there was any moisture in the compost at all above 65 if you squeeze the handful of compost you will get one drop of water that comes out between your knuckles if you're going to make an error either way I would say to air on being on the side of too wet if the pile gets too dry the material can become hydrophobic and will not absorb water even if you water the heck out of your pile the water will run right through it and right off the bottom so if your pile becomes hydrophobic you have to break it down down re-wet it all and then build the pile back up if you've been following this channel for a while you know that I'm a worm guy but composting is the gateway drug to Verma composting so I want to make sure people can get off to a good start on both okay guys that's it successful composting means managing the air the fuel the Heat and the water content of your compost thanks for hanging in there if you like what you heard hit subscribe and see me on the next episode thank you

Channel: Urban Worm Company

Views: 14,667

Keywords: compost pile, compost bin, hot compost, how to make compost, compost (material), how to compost, organic gardening, urban gardening, hot compost bin, hot compost time lapse, hot composting chicken manure, hot compost pile, hot compost vs cold compost, hot composting leaves, hot compost wood chips, hot composting in a bucket

Id: EJtQML_cYNk

Length: 8min 14sec (494 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023