O2Compost Hot Topics
Successful Manure & Waste Management
Paragon – Aeration Pipes and Starting the Roof
November 4th, 2010 by peter
- Pipes along back wall
You may have wondered where Peter Moon went (and that’s a long story for another day) but we have made a considerable amount of progress on our new Paragon Compost System and the next series of Blog Entries will be coming your way at a steady rate.
As shown in the picture to the left, the pipes were then extended with three vertical rises fitted with slide gate valves and then connected to a horizontal header pipe. This is how we can use one blower to deliver airflow to any one or combination of the compost bins, depending on which are actively composting at any given point in time.
Paragon Compost System – The Walls Are Poured
July 5th, 2010 by peter
Last week, the walls to our newest Paragon Compost System were poured. For those of us who do not have a great deal of concrete experience, it is a fairly laborious process to set up the forms and make sure that everything is ready to receive concrete. It’s too late once the trucks arrive, so care was taken to make sure that everything is on line and all the fittings are tight. For a concrete contractor, this is a comparatively simple process and no doubt they use many “tricks of the trade”.
On Friday, June 25th, the concrete truck and pump truck arrived and the fun began. The pump truck is operated by remote control so placing the concrete inside the wall forms only took about an hour to complete. After placing the compost, Roger and Ryan used a concrete vibrator to make sure that the air bubbles were displaced out of the walls and that no pockets were left behind. Finally, the tops of the walls were finished to provide a nice top surface.
On Monday, the forms were removed from the walls and the excess concrete was cleaned up. The next step will be to connect the aeration pipes, clean up the excess gravel in each of the plenum boxes, and cut the boards for the slatted floor. Following this, we will begin to construct the roof structure and attach the gates that will retain the manure in the bin prior to starting the airflow.
It will be a few weeks between now and my next blog entry. Roger and his wife are planning a 3-week trip to Europe, so we’ll “see you” when he returns.
Paragon – Holes and Posts
June 22nd, 2010 by peter
It has been an unsually wet spring here in Snohomish, Washington and between the pervasive rainfall, a case of bronchitis, and planned horse trips into the back country; it has taken quite a long time to get our Paragon System up and out of the ground. But despite all of the delays, we have recently made a good deal of progress. The following is our journal of significant events that have taken place.
Day 3 – Roger Portman (farm owner) and Ryan Burke (O2Compost engineer) staked out all of the post locations and dug eight 3-foot deep post holes using a rented auger. This was a labor intensive process, given that we live in glacial terrain and that rocks in the soil abound. In addition, the ground water level is near its high point and that four of the eight holes immediately filled with water.
Once the holes were dug, a bag of ready mix concrete was placed in the bottom of each hole to serve as a solid base. The objective with doing this is to provide a pad to support the bottoms of the posts and minimize short-term and long-term settlement of the structure.
Day 4 – Roger and Ryan wrestled the eight 8-inch by 8-inch posts into position and secured them with bracing. This was heavy work and both were be glad to see the last post secured. The biggest challenge with this step is to make sure that each post is on-line and vertical. As you can see in the photo, a good deal of bracing is required to make sure the posts do not move when the concrete is poured.
Day 5 – they built six aeration boxes (two per bin) as part of the concrete form work. Each box includes a ledge on which to place the slatted floor to spread the airflow evenly across the base of the pile. Each form included a 3-inch diameter hole through which the aeration pipe would extend. The forms were designed to knock out easily after the concrete was poured and allowed to set-up for 24-hours.
Day 6 – additional crushed rock was brought in to raise grade and provide additional support for the aeration boxes. The outside forms were also added, making them secure with metal stakes to prevent blow-out from the pressure of the concrete. In addition, the rebar was added on a prescribed grid pattern. In this case, the walls will be poured in place concrete that extend between the posts to form three sided bins. Lastly, the aeration pipes were added, as seen in this photo.
Day 7 (now Day 48 since breaking ground) – the concrete was finally poured – a cause for celebration. Because of soft ground conditions, a pump truck was used to transfer the concrete from the concrete truck to the aeration slab. While this cost a bit more, it made it much easier to direct the wet concrete to where it needed to go, thereby greatly reducing the labor of transporting it with a wheelbarrow. A concrete vibrator was used to make sure the concrete filled in all of the gaps to eliminate air pockets.
Day 8 – 24 hours after the concrete was poured, the forms were removed to reveal an excellent finished concrete slab. As can be seen in this photo, vertical rebar had been installed immediately after the concrete was poured (while it was still wet) and will be used to connect the pad with the walls. At this point, the only thing remaining to do with the walls is to form them up and pour the concrete later this week. Again vacation is coming into play, with Roger and his wife heading off to Europe for a 3-week cruise throughout the Scandinavian Countries. This will allow plenty of time for the concrete to set up and achieve its maximum strength.
Our next blog will show the finished walls followed by the superstructure and installation of the aeration system. “Stay Tuned!”
Paragon Site Preparation
May 10th, 2010 by peter
May 4 / Day 2
You may have heard that it rains in the Pacific Northwest, and this week it has been doing just that – Raining (with a capital “R”).
Rock Slinger Placing Ballast
On Tuesday, May 4th we placed a rock layer on the base of the excavation to provide a stable surface on which to pour the concrete slab for the Paragon Compost System. The base of the excavation was very wet and the soil would easily be churned up to become mud if this work was done with a front-end loader. To make this a fast and easy process, a “Rock Slinger” was hired to place the rock in the excavation.
The operator (in the red t-shirt) used a remote control to move the conveyor from left to right, up and down and faster and slower; and in this way he placed nearly 12 tons of 2-inch rock in less than 30-minutes, and exactly where we wanted it. Who says that video games are a waste of time?
Ryan Burke
Meet Ryan Burke, the newest addition to O2Compost. Ryan is a 2009 graduate from Washington State University where he completed work on his Civil Engineering Bachelor’s Degree. He has some construction experience and will help Roger Portman (farm owner) build the Paragon System. Ryan has no experience with composting. I will be training him and Roger to fill the bins, start up the system, monitor the process through the Active and Curing Phases, and take samples for laboratory analysis.
Composting is experiential. Much like learning to ride a bicycle or play a musical instrument, you must “do it to learn it”. As we go through this process, you will see that composting is really quite easy, and is an elegant solution to on-farm manure management.
Paragon System Breaks Ground
May 5th, 2010 by peter
May 1 / Day 1
Breaking Ground
We are excited to announce the first O2Compost Paragon System broke ground on Saturday, May 1, following two years of discussions and a full year of design and planning. The Paragon (ideal) Compost System is a combined effort between O2Compost and Barn Pros, the preeminent wood barn kit company in the Pacific Northwest. Our client, Roger Portman, is escstatic that he will finally have a simple and elegant solution to his manure management challenges.
Construction Site
The Paragon Compost System is a building kit that incorporates the O2Compost aeration system into a pre-engineered structure that is delivered to your farm, ready to assemble. The kit includes precut lumber, trusses, siding, preassembled gates, hardware, a full set of detailed instructions, and free technical support. The cost of shipping is more than compensated for by: 1) eliminating waste building materials; and 2) greatly expediting the construction process.
Manure Pile
This Paragon Blog will take you through each step of the construction process, and will take the mystery out of setting up an aerated composting system. It will continue to follow construction with a detailed account of system start-up – filling the bins, initiating aeration, processing monitoring, evaluating product quality, and ending with selling the finished compost to home gardeners in the community.
We will include a detailed account of the costs associated with construction and evaluate the return on investment for the project. With updates at least twice weekly, you can follow along in real time and see for yourself that aerated composting is a viable option to the “pile of manure out behind the barn”.
As we strive to promote sustainable agriculture throughout the world, I want to thank you for joining us in this adventure. Please be sure to invite your friends and fellow horse owners to subscribe to our blog as it will take all of us to change our “manure ethic” and make a positive difference for the world we live in.
Composting and Heat Extraction Experiment
August 27th, 2009 by peter
We are often asked the question “Can I warm water (or my tack room or my greenhouse) using the heat from my compost pile?” Intuitively, my answer has been “Yes, of course”, but the question that remained was how to best do this.
As an experiment, I assembed a heat exchanger using 50 feet of 1/2-inch diameter copper tubing mounted to a wire mesh frame, as shown here. My thought was to circulate water from an insulated barrel through the copper tubing using an inexpensive, low-volume fountain pump.
Heat Exchanger Unit
Using our new Macro-Bin, I laid the heat exchanger horizontally on a fresh bed of horse manure, approximately 2/3 up from the bottom of the bin. I then covered the heat exchanger with about one foot of raw manure and six inches of finished compost.
Then I started the fountain pump to purge air from the system and test the apparatus – everything worked well, as I had hoped. I turned the pump off and turned the blower on using an aeration cycle time of 30 seconds ON and 30 minutes OFF. Within 24 hours, the composting manure came up to a temperature of 155ºF at the height of the heat exchanger and when I turned on the water pump, that water coming from the hose was too hot to touch for several seconds. “It Worked!”… or so I thought at the time.
After allowing the water to circulate for several minutes, the temperature of the water coming out of the heat exchanger dropped off considerably to within 2º of the temperature in the barrel. This puzzled me, so I kept the water pumping overnight to see what would happen. The following morning, I discovered that the difference in water temperature was still only a few degrees.
In an effort to understand what was happening in the bin, I inserted a temperature probe down to the exchanger and then through the wire mesh to approximately 12 inches beneath the coils. The compost temperature at this depth was 165ºF. As I extracted the probe, the temperature stayed steady to within 2 inches of the frame and then dropped quickly to approximately 85ºF. As I continued to pull up the probe, the temperature stayed low to within 2 inches above the coil and then quickly climbed back up to approximately 155ºF.
What appears to be happening is that the heat immediately around the coils is being extracted but the heat outside of this area is not “flowing in” to replace it. We know that compost is self-insulating and this yet another example of this phenomenon. Does this mean that compost cannot be used to heat water? No, but it is reasonable to conclude that the compost pile and heat extraction system would need to be much larger than my test apparatus to create a significant warming of pumped water.
O2Compost is now on Facebook!
August 21st, 2009 by peter
Question about Heat Transfer
July 6th, 2009 by peter
Laura Lemco, who has been operating an O2Compost system in Colorado since 2008, recently sent us this email:
“People used to joke with me that I should use the heat generated by that huge compost pile to heat my house. By why couldn’t a bin heat a greenhouse?”
Your question about extracting heat from the compost pile is very timely. I am currently constructing a heat collector using 50 feet of 1/2″ diameter copper tubing. Using an 80-gallon per hour fountain pump, I will circulate water through the copper tubing, heating it as it goes around the loops. Based on my calculations, water should cycle 200 times per hour thorugh the system.
My plan is to lay it horizontally about 18 inches from the top of the bin so that it is free to settle along with the compost. When the batch is batch is done, I will scalp the compost off the top and lift the collector off to use in another pile. I plan on heating water but it could also be used to heat a radiant floor. We are talking with a group in Alaska about heating their greenhouses in February and March. I also have a client in New York who has been experimenting with heat extraction to warm the seed trays in his greenhouse.
I will post updates on my findings as I move forward with my own heat transfer experimentations.
New System in Vermont
April 28th, 2009 by peter
Birdseye Building Company has just completed this beautiful O2Compost system for one of their clients. It was designed to compliment an adjacent horse barn and manage the manure and bedding from two draft horses.
Visit the Birdseye Building website to learn more about<distributed raman amplifier their services.
Heat Recovery From Composting
March 24th, 2009 by peter
Heat is the natural byproduct of the biologic process that we call “composting”. It is not at all uncommon to see pile temperatures well above 140 degree Fahrenheit, sustained for several weeks.
Quite often, I am asked the question, “Can I recover some of the heat from my compost pile?” The simple answer is “Yes”, but then we must also answer the questions “How can this be done easily and inexpensively?”
Gregg Twehues at Stone Barns Center in Tarrytown, New York, has been experimenting with heat recovery from his O2Compost Micro-Bin system with a good deal of success. In Gregg’s case, he wanted to use the recovered heat to warm seed trays in their propagation house as a means of reducing their overall power consumption. Stone Barns Center has extensive greenhouses and they grow organic herbs and vegetables year round for use at Blue Hill, a world renowned four-star restaurant located on-site: www.bluehillfarm.com.
With his first test, Gregg used a long coil of plastic irrigation tubing buried in the Micro-Bin, and he was able to heat the circulated water to 84 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 5 days. In his second test, he “sweetened” the mix by adding high nitrogen feedstocks and he was able to extend the hot phase of composting to nearly 3 weeks. In future tests, he plans to add 30 feet of copper tubing to the coil to improve heat transfer to the water.
This seems to be a growing area of interest. O2Compost was recently contacted by the Soil and Water Conservation District in Alaska to help develop a method of heating greenhouses in conjunction with composting horse manure and other feedstocks at temperatures below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, for weeks on end. This could be our ultimate challenge – we’ll keep you posted.
