Nope, once this starts going it will cook for months. probably longer than we will need the heat but we will have great compost for our perennials once it’s done. Once we water it in and have all our nitrogen mixed throughout evenly we will wrap it up and insulate it. No turning necessary

@@Earthdwellershomestead wrap it up like put a tarp over it to trap the heat?

Tarp it up yes, more for for keeping the moisture content the same throughout the entire time. Keeping rain, snow, and sunshine off the actual pile will help keep it a steady burn, along with insulating it with leaf bags

@@Earthdwellershomestead how do you control your humidity level? I need to get mine under control better.

For this project are you using thermal through just the compost tubes outside and one spot inside or throughout the entire underground areas

Very welcome, thanks for checking this out!

Thanks for checking this out!

We started out in a diy 6x12 cattle panel and heated the same ways, expanding everything as we grew! Thanks for checking this out!

Thank you!! Glad you found it from the other side of the world!

Thank you! It’s gonna get bigger and warmer from here lol

We’ve got a lot of content to sift through lol thank you for checking out the channel and hopefully we can share some useful information to you!

We stopped composting inside a few years back due to the pest activity from it. It worked to heat but it just wasn’t worth the headache of having mice running in and out of it eating crops, tainting water sources, and just being generally dirty critters lol we keep bucket traps to catch any that do venture in, thank you for checking this out and that was a great question! I see lots of people composting inside and I wonder what they’re dealing with as far as vermin

We have not dig down and insulated yet. We’re going to insulating the ground on the outside with organic materials to shelter the immediate soil, last winter our soil stayed above freezing about a foot away from the perimeter, but insulation will help a lot. Great question and thank you!

We’re transferring heat through water and air, thanks for checking this out

Great question! We try and respond to every comment on the channel, sometimes we’re busy but we make time to get back to everyone. Depending on how long you’re thinking you’ll need the heat you’ll build your pile based off that, each cubic yard of active compost generates roughly 1660 btu per hour, that’s a lot of warmth but for a short time. Doubling the pile size you’ll extend your burn by adding material for pile consumption while allowing it insulation also. I would suggest three to four feet deep and at least the same wide to start. About the size of a pallet cubed for reference. But then again if you don’t have the space you can experiment with digging down in the soil for more room. Again great question. Years back we used the compost inside the greenhouse for heat and a seedling table right on the compost. It worked great for heat but the rodents loved it all the same.

Fully saturating the chips at the time of building a pile is very important and depending on the age of them additional liquid nitrogen should be added. After all the experiments I’ve done not all of them had been successful but by adding chicken poo or farmyard waste and watering it it heavily I’ve been able to achieve the temps we are after. Great question

Yes sir, we’ve considered wrapping around the metal drum or running into it and back like you said, full of water for mass of course! Great idea man and we do plan on doing that next year with our pile, this video is from years past. We only spent about 20$ hooking up our compost heater this year as we had everything in place from the winter before. Thanks for watching and we plan to use a method like you mentioned next fall/winter!

It’s open to interpretation, but this is a good representation of Jean pains work. He used 50 ton piles mines only about 4 tons now. If you check out some more of our videos you’ll see that drawing heat to water requires much more energy in btu’s than the heating of air making it easier to heat air than water. Great question!

We live in northern Illinois, zone 5a/4b cold winters. We’ve grown through the last few with this method…so it works great lol thanks for watching!

It’s for copper wrapped around it to run water through for the compost to heat up, great question.

You mean the pipes in the compost ? Or my geothermal tubing Inside and underneath the greenhouse? You could certainly use only water flowing or only air movement through the pile individually… and if you meant the geothermal inside- then yes you could but my geothermal was perfectly directed into tunnels and boy it really did the job, with that said I think if you ran the heat from compost more directly where it’s needed then yes it could be done for months

@@Earthdwellershomestead i don't have the possibility to dig under the greenhouse so i just spiraled20 m of 40 mm airpipe(hoping for natural circulation) and 67m of 16 mm alupex in the sawdust and 33 m in the greenhouse soil. Closed loop with expansion tank and maybe even a radiator

We “burn” them In the stove inside the greenhouse for heat also now, but we composted the woodchips for months and it worked pretty well with a lot of nitrogen water and insulation from free leaf bags

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Our compost heated tubing isn’t going underground other than to transfer under the greenhouse wall, our geothermal tubing is underground but a totally separate system, if your burring a hot pipe you e gotta insulate it or loose lots of heat even if below frost level. We insulated our compost heating lines and turbine and buried it in woodchips for great insulation. Good questions thank you for watching!

​@Earthdwellershomestead do you think that putting a pipe inside of a pipe would be sufficient? I saw you mention somewhere that air heats faster than water. I'm assuming the air being heated around the water line could be an alternative to insulation, but maybe I need more info. Haha

@cookiegriffith7556 that’s an idea, but the heating of the water occurs when “in contact” with the compost directly, our 4 inch diameter tube wouldn’t allow for much heat transfer as yes water requires much more energy to be able raise the temp. Great question

​@Earthdwellershomestead so, do you insulate your water pipe that's inside of your compost pile?? I was just thinking of using the pipe-in-pipe in place of insulation outside of the compost pile.

@cookiegriffith7556 we don’t insulate the the water lines inside the pile as it would have a reverse affect and not allow the best heat transfer, we only insulate our lines between the greenhouse and the pile, hope that helps.

I haven’t gotten that far in life yet 😂 but I know that you could set up a more “expensive“ refined system for heating a home. I’m going to use some ducting next year instead of drain tile. And may get more chips for a longer pile as opposed to tall for wind break, that -40f air was wicked the other day

You want the heat transfer systems in contact with the compost, this was what I came up with for this winter. Next winter I’m getting an even bigger pile going and tweaking it a bit but this is working well so far!

It takes a little work but if you’re able bodied it’s easy. Your building a compost pile to heat up- placing water or air lines inside while you build it, it’s quite in depth to type out but in our Jean pain compost heating playlist you’ll find what your looking for! Thanks for checking this out!

I couldn’t fit 8tons in a bin and we made our own bin out of fencing and leaf bags for free. Check out our playlist on compost heating

​@@EarthdwellershomesteadI checked the compost bin today I have for the backyard & there was some heat coming off it. Its the first time I've thought about getting energy from it

Over 6 feet high and about 14-15feet across. Once I build it up I’m going to figure out home many cubic yards all together allocated.

@@Earthdwellershomestead I would love to apply this amazing method! Thanks for the share. 😊 There isn’t enough room for a big round compost pile to be close to our 32 x 10 foot greenhouse. It would have to be about 50 feet away so I think we would lose too much heat piping it in. There is space on the long North wall for a narrow (7 or 8 foot wide x up to 32 foot long) compost pile though. Do you think this narrow rectangular shape could be effective for the winter months? Could a narrow pile retain enough heat? We are in zone 3 / 4.

@@earthfriendlylife6552 I would think that 7-8’ wide would be enough, circular is just best for a center mass and insulation 360 around. But if you got your tubing or hose in the middle and got it hot and insulated the outer walls it should do something for you. Our pile is about 14-15 feet diameter making for about 7-71/2 feet radius to the outside so we’re insulating that with leaf bags. I’m Interested to see if you can get yours to stay warm all winter. Thank you for the interest and feedback!

​@@Earthdwellershomestead Thank you so much for the feedback! I will have to keep you posted on how our experiment works out. I'm also considering using a trench type compost pile inside the greenhouse for direct heat. Hoping that we can prevent the soil from freezing; I think heating the ground is likely more important than heating the air.

@@Earthdwellershomestead Thank you so much for the feedback! ☺I will have to keep you posted on how our experiment works out. I'm also considering using a trench type compost pile inside the greenhouse for direct heat. Hoping that we can prevent the soil from freezing; I think heating the ground is likely more important than heating the air.

No it does not, and the reason is I don’t want to exchange gasses, we only want to transfer heat through the plastic recycling the air from inside through the pile heating it up and then it’s fixed back into the greenhouse. Good question thanks for asking!

@@Earthdwellershomestead thanks for the reply. The tubing I used had slits in it. I figured it would be fine and maybe help aerate the pile once I turned the 4inch fan on. My pile was at 100 degrees when i first turned on the fan and then it was down to 60 the next day. I think the air flowing through cooled it down. Might dig up the pipe and put a solid one in

@thebackyardrevolution you could be drying it as well, that would lead to die off of the heat producing microorganisms. Glad I could help. It took years for me to get it half way perfected lol

Yep holding about 100f or better inside 6months later here. About 80f on outer layer a storm blew the tarps off and it’s warming up so I left the pile to the rain for a day or two to help the breakdown before we take it and spread it around the property. We will be building another area like this for next winter also! Thanks for watching

@@Earthdwellershomestead Does it sometimes smell? Thanks for the reply!!

@@semi5alpha most aerobic compost should smell pretty fresh, anaerobic conditions is what will tend to make it smell unpleasant.