Forced aeration composting?

I was thinking of making an aeration pipe to bury in my compost so I can let the microbes do their thing without having to turn the pile all the time.

Does anyone do this? I cant seem to find much on the subject of aerated compost because “active aerated compost tea” is all that comes up…

I was thinking like 3-4 psi would be good enough. Anyone have suggestions

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Check out the bioreactors in junction city oregon. Theyre making fuel and soil . It was recently sold to shell. It also recently had a major fire. They had to let burn down , took over a week to extinguish .

That’s pretty cool, but it looks like their process is a lot different than mine. I mostly compost wood chips, and I maintain a pretty small pile.

My reasoning is more oxygen = more gooder.

At what point do you think id be crossing the line? Pressure wise. I just added shit to my pile and I added too much clay, so I mixed in a lot of gorilla hair to the pile to give it better structure. This worked really well but i know redwood bark takes a while to break down so this is what made me want to do this.

The pile can breathe like crazy right now so I figured I’d try and inject some air. Does this sound like it might work? Should I plant some kind of cover crop on my pile since I won’t be turning it anymore? If so what ones would you recommend?

I’d be injecting air way below the roots (assuming cover crops) My pile is like 2 foot tall.

@Future @AgTonik @Autumn_Ridge_Hemp ? Anyone else?

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I saw a compost bioreactor in the southwest. It looked like the brownie “only edges” pan, which as an aside is utter sacrilege for the sanctity of brownies.

It was concrete pits with corkscrews to move and aerate compost downhill. The leachate falls through a drain and is ready to be used almost immediately as totally fermented organic matter. The solids that make it past the filter is some of the richest organic matter available that would burn if it wasn’t lightly top dressed or mixed as an amendment.

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After the sawdust from the mills is fermented its dumped into rows ontop of perforated pipes attached to big squirrel fans . If they planted ontop it would be the same on a mass scale . What you doing is a great concept , kinda like aeroponics with compost. soil aerobics. Good way to harness geothermal climate control in a greenhouse.

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I guess I was looking at the wrong bioreactor site, the one I read was using manure and capturing and burning the methane to generate electricity on site.

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They do both

Have you seen https://www.homebiogas.com/ ?

It feeds organic matter and lets off gas, leachate, and eventually solids. It’s really easy to scale somethings like this.

EDIT: It’s fermenting like KNF, Not necessarily the aerated compost you were hoping for.

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I’ve been looking into fermented plant extracts for a while and I’m going to set up a barrel for it soon. But my goal is not to produce biogas, im trying to pump air in to heat my pile up and speed along decomposition to create compost to spread in my yard.

Im tryna be cheap about it.

I thought about funding a fermented comfrey farm to sell at farmer’s markets for crunchy folks.

FOR THE SENSE OF SMELL, GOD, JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT DO NOT:

fermented comfrey farm

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Yeah I read it can smell pretty rank. I was gonna make a shack to put the barrel in and run a carbon filter on it lol.

To spare my neighbors.

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If you mix half fresh, half dry (brown) comfrey and spread a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses in a closed bucket, it makes an amazing extract after a month. Use a blow off tube into water like fermenting wine for the off gas. You put the end of the tube in a bucket of water, so it filters the stank like a water bong. The resulting putrescence is one of the best start to finish fertilizers.

EDIT: as long as your browns to greens are in balance, this will work for any compost.

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Plastic 4" to 6" corragat3d drain adapted to a carpentry dust collector fan or your fan and carbon filter , shit im about to do this too . Might be good to have a carbon filter vent from a grow room . In a garden bed a moisture monitor might help to prevent drying out underneath , drip system too.

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Man you can just put comfrey in a bucket of molasses water and put a lid on it and it’ll do it’s thing. Add stinging nettle and crab shell meal to the batch, it’ll really turn out some fire.

Oh sorry, I missed the reason for the water trap.

Ferment for the win.

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Yes!!!

I was thinking about your idea, and I am not much of a composter, but shouldn’t the pile be warm inside anyway? Your idea would cool it if so, which actually might not be bad. Outside air temp and internal pile temp would be the variables to play with. There is probably an ideal temp for bacterial activity to try to maintain.

@Franklin have you looked at tumble composters? I like this idea for aeration of a pile, but nothing beats turning the pile, I don’t see why you couldn’t cover crop with clover and nettle and turn this in twice a year, add deciduous leaves and wood chips and that would be fire.

Clover seeds are super cheap.

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Of course but like I said I want a low cost solution. I would need a big tumbler to produce what I want to produce. That would cost a lot of money.

Also I’d like to be able to not disturb the soil fungi by turning it if possible.

The current small pile is sitting beneath a big Japanese maple and a big live oak, I’ve got plenty of leaf litter dropping on it all the time and the Japanese maple starting to grow into the compost pile, which is another reason I’d like to leave it alone. Let the maple take what it needs from this pile.

I mean, that kinda changes the game plan, if you are trying not to disturb the roots of the maple, which are presumably under the pile. The cheapest thing you could do is lightly turn the pile and water it now and then, water bring fresh atmosphere behind it when it soaks the soil. The fungus will not be bothered by being disturbed in this way, only if they dry out, which you can prevent by watering and covering with leaf litter and clover.

As oppressed to installing a machine that requires maintenance and electricity

The pile is already really healthy, I’m not looking for tips on the pile I’ve already got. I was just providing a lil bit of background of the situation.

Im not talking about installing a machine. What I want to do is run an air compressor hose out to my pile and feed air into a big perforated pipe that I bury into the middle of my pile… I’ve already got the hose and compressor, I was kinda hoping one of the scientists here has already done this before and pwuld be able to save me from some trial and error.

I cant find much that specifically pertains to forced air composting when I’m looking up bioreactors, but it looks like it’s generally favorable to include more oxygen in cell culture bioreactors so I’m sure it’ll work. I’m just concerned about adding too much air and drying out the pile or something of that sort.