Plastic water butt used as compost bin

[Millymollymandy]

I've mentioned this before but it is really worth bringing this amazing thing to everyone's attention!

As some of you know we have plenty of water butts and compost bins all over the place here - but we've found it takes quite a while to produce really good compost!

Now one of our 500 litre plastic water butts sprung a leak and had to be replaced and we were not sure what to do with it. My husband had the idea to drill holes all around the sides and in the bottom and use it as a compost bin. I was sceptical.

However it has turned out to be the best recycling we have ever done as it is turning rough stuff into compost at an amazing rate of knots - just one month and it is turning stuff that's only half rotted into perfect friable useable wonderful compost!

It helps that it is teeming with red worms, and when he tips out the ready to use compost into another larger container, he keeps a proportion of the good stuff full of worms in the bin.

It is sited in a pretty shady place as well - it originally was in semi shade but the trees grew so much it is really dark and shady there right now.

If you produce a lot of compost but find it takes a long time to rot down it might be worth investing in one of these water butts - you can buy the smaller ones of 250 or 350 litres for about €25 - €35 here in France, but those commercially produced tumbling compost bins cost hundreds of £££!

Just thought I'd share this!

[ina]

So it's turned out to be more or less a giant wormery! Great! Don't think you could buy a "proper" compost bin that size...

[becks77]

Wow thanks for that great idea for recycling my leaky water butt, how many holes to drill and whereabouts please for best results?

[Mr and Mrs luvpie]

If you want another use for it, after we had messed up the conection between two water butts, we decided to stick with one for the time being and cut the other in half to use as giant planters for our carrotts, worked a treat, more space than our other pots, more space in our patches and no carrott fly as they are high up!

[Millymollymandy]

That's another good idea! You could also use the bottom half as a clamp for storing carrots in in damp sand.

Becks77 - without going outside and having a look, I think the holes are drilled about 6" - 12" apart all over and most importantly (for the worms and for drainage!) in the bottom as well. The holes are about 5mm wide (ish). I will check with my OH though and get back to you!

[becks77]

Thank you,
Do you think its possible to secure the top enough to alow rolling around to create a tumbler type?

[wulf]

It sounds like it works fast enough as it is. I suspect it is to do with (a) the volume of compost (generating internal heat) and (b) lots of worms working round the lower edge and speeding up the process of composting. Tumbling the compost would be hard work because of (a) and would probably disrupt (b) so I doubt the effort would be worth it.

Wulf

[Millymollymandy]

Thank you,
Do you think its possible to secure the top enough to alow rolling around to create a tumbler type?

Hi I checked with hubby who says he used a 10mm drill bit, so holes about 1cm across.

The whole point is that you don't need to turn or tumble the bin - it does in one month what these ridiculously expensive tumbling bins do! Granted we didn't start off with unrotted stuff - we moved semi rotted stuff into it - but it did in one month what any of our other bins would have taken 6 months to do! And somehow or other thousands of red worms found this bin - that's why plenty of holes in the bottom are needed.

[Thomzo]

Great minds think alike. Some of you may remember that I had a water butt disaster last year when one of mine fell over and got badly damaged. I've put it at the back of the shed and use it for all my kitchen waste. It has a small crack in the bottom now and the hole where the tap used to be. I haven't added any more drainage as the liquid floods out of the tap hole. I collect it in a bucket and have been using it to feed all the fruit and pots (although it does smell a little bit).

Like Mandy, mine is in a shady part of the garden. I keep the top on it but there is a large hole where the downpipe used to go into it. As it's under trees it tends to get water dripping into it but no major amounts of rain so it keeps the contents moist but not flooded.

I think it's brilliant. I haven't tipped it out yet but it eats all the kitchen scraps (and I can put cooked veg waste in there without having to worry about rats etc).

Thoroughly recommend using a water butt as a composter.

Zoe

[Millymollymandy]

Thomzo are you going around agreeing with me today? This is the third posting I've looked at from topics I was watching where you've agreed with me!

(Gosh do you think we're doing something right?)

[Thomzo]

Thomzo are you going around agreeing with me today? This is the third posting I've looked at from topics I was watching where you've agreed with me!

(Gosh do you think we're doing something right?)

Nah - it's just that great minds think alike!

Either that or we've both been around here so long that we've started thinking the same way - eek scary!

Zoe

[snapdragon]

I've re-used my plastic dustbin (which used to hold the 'bin' bag before the advent of wheelie bins) in the same way - in a shady corner and punched holes in the base with a garden fork, it was near full - and suddenly was all but rotted down

[becks77]

My first water butt has just toppled over
spilling its contents and damaging the container so now I can have 2x composters, one for allotment and 1 for garden
Lovin' this recycling :