Comments on: Heating a Small Worm Bin in the Winter

By: rom

rom — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:04:55 +0000

I hear you, where I live my basement does a pretty good job of keeping my worm bin from overheating.

It’s cost prohibitive to buy one for a worm bin (in the $500 and up range, mine was borrowed for a couple years), unless you can find a used one at a good price. Cheaper than buying new fish and coral every fall though. Probably more cost effective to get a cheap air conditioner unit and jerry-rig it to cool the area around your worm bin which still would be more than I would want to spend for a worm bin. I just saw the aquarium heater setup and thought to myself, “hey, that works the other way too”. I like tinkering but not if I have to spend a lot of money.

Here’s a thought. Same setup minus the heater and use a larger container of water (long rubbermaid bin?). Have the water returning to the bin fall onto a pile of stuff, (rocks,small rubber balls) whatever you can pile up above the water line to give lots of surface area to get as much of the water to evaporate as possible. The evaporation should cool the water. Not like a chiller or air conditioner but cooler than the water returning from the worm bin.

The creel I use for fly fishing works in the same way. You just dunk it in the water every now and then and the evaporating water keeps the fish from smelling without the use of a cooler full of ice.

Not really necessary where I live but i like tinkering with stuff.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:09:32 +0000

ROM – thanks for sharing that – sounds interesting. I’d be curious to know how much these ‘chillers’ might cost. I certainly wouldn’t need to use one in my location, but those living in extremely hot regions might want to use something like that.

By: Rom.Calgary

Rom.Calgary — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:24:54 +0000

You could use this setup to cool the bin as well. I used to keep a marine aquarium and had to get a chiller for the few months of summer that we get. It is controlled the same way an aquarium heater works and if you combine the two (depending on the power of the heating and cooling systems, the amount of water being cooled, max and min temperatures, etc.) in your setup you may be able to maintain a very small temperature range.

By: Order Your Domain

Order Your Domain — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:56:19 +0000

Actually as Mark mentions about the siphon idea, the pump should be lowered as to have water siphon push water into the pump. This will put less stress on the pump as long as not set too much lower. Set the pump level to where the siphon begins to work. This will prolong the life of the pump.

Bruce

By: David

David — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:58:19 +0000

I’ve read about a particular farmer stacking up an enormous compost heap in early winter, he has a system of copper tubing going through it to heat water for his home. I think it might also heat his house…

By: Bentley

Bentley — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:51:26 +0000

Hey Steve,
That’s exactly what I did this year – check out my posts in the “winter composting” category on the blog. I have straw bale walls, and a layer of straw over the top – along with a thick tarp. It has worked very very well, maintaining temps in the 70’s during some extremely cold winter weather.

EDIT: Just realized what you meant, Steve! That’s a great idea too.

By: Mark from Kansas

Mark from Kansas — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:56:14 +0000

Steve,
That’s a great idea! Go for it! May I suggest that you try your project without any worms in the bin? If your project fails or needs tweeking you won’t lose any worms.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:41:11 +0000

ok, I wont touch on what I think of Al Gore, but he has done good, and assuming he flew commercial flights that were going where he went anyways…………………………..
Ive been tossing around the idea that a big warm compost pile, leaves grass clippings and manure as well as whatever else you compost, should be a reasonably warm temp in the middle,(run piping thru center of pile then into worm bed,)60-70 degrees even in the toughest of winter, as long as it has some mass, and maybe has a vapor barrier over it during extreme winter chills, any thoughts?

By: Mark from Kansas

Mark from Kansas — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:08:47 +0000

When it came to heating my bin, I had several goals. I was trying to sustain a worm habitat under the harshest conditions. Bentley is correct when he said there would be a surplus of feed stock. Then what?
I precompost my feed stock for two reasons; first, to try to destroy weed seeds and second, to destroy as many pathogens as possible. So, there is no decomposing energy left. My opinion is, that if the habitat could not sustain, what is the point of paying $25.00 for a pond of worms, only to have them die? I also wanted high quality castings that have a lowered value of pathogens.
By the way 99% of my reasearch came from this web site.
Thank You Bentley .

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:21:01 +0000

Dustin,
Microbial heating is an awesome thing – there is no doubt about it. I am totally in awe of the fact that my outdoor worm bed is sitting at ideal worm composting temps, yet outdoor temps are very winter-like.
Volume is critical for sustained heating however. Adding more food waste to a smaller system will help add some more heat in the short term, but the law of diminishing returns will come into play eventually. Your waste will pile up and eventually you won’t have any more room in your system to add more. The bin should stay warm for a period of time, but eventually (and inevitably) it will drop in temp – especially if the location of the system drops below freezing on a regular basis