Hot compost bin?

[Curtainconundrum]

I was really keen on getting a small hot compost bin for our tiny urban garden, but looking at others' experiences on here they seem a bit mixed. We have a small wormery but it fills quickly and we can't put onions or citrus in it. I also find it slow to compost. I'd like a small hotbin to take the bulk of our food waste. I like the idea of something completely closed so we don't have issues with rats. Do you think it would work in our situation?

I’ve got one and it’s very efficient. I empty it twice a year but stuff in it reduces quickly. It’s a mix of veg food waste, so peel etc, grass clippings from v small lawn and garden waste.

I never put food waste in other than raw as mine doesn’t run hot enough as I don’t pay it enough attention. I wouldn’t want to risk rats.

Sounds good. Does it smell? Due to our garden size I'd probably need to put it quite close to the house.

The amount of food you’d be looking to put in may well make for a runny (and smelly!) mixture - with the hotbins you have to give a good mix of stuff going in (plus adding shredding paper/ wood chips).

i had a job a few yrs ago that was looking at all different types of composters and for food, the ones that really worked well were the massive industrial rocket ones (the smell was quite something 🤢😂)

id maybe look at the recommended mixture of stuff to put in and compare with the amount of food waste you’d be looking to use it for. If they don’t match up much then I don’t think it’ll do what you’re hoping it will do (ie get rid of your food waste).

Small and hot compost doesn't really scan for me as it is the bulkness that is needed to heat up the bin in the first place.

For a small area, and I used to do this in my small courtyard garden in the UK, I had a tumbler which I'd use to start everything off and when it was full and given a few weeks to start the process, I'd transfer it to the wormery (split between all 3 trays) to run it all through the worms. Then restart the tumbler.

If you use a wormery the way they say it takes years to make enough compost. Once you get a head of worms going, you can run through it alot quicker.

If I didn't have the tumbler I'd split the worms through all 3 trays and feed them in turn weekly, and only when the bottom one was completely full would I then stop adding to it and just start feeding the top.

I find the tumbler gets loads of worms in it anyway so they just add to the wormery numbers when I move it all over. Plus you can add citrus and onions to it and by the time the worms get in there, they deal really well with it.

@AlisonDonut I'm not sure have a suitable space for a tumbler really. @buddhasbelly I was imagining that we'd also add shredded cardboard- toilet rolls, egg boxes as well as grass cuttings, leaves etc. I know they say it can go anywhere but I think to heat it up it might need some sun so will need to be near the house. We do have a bin for food waste that the council takes but that really does smell snd I'm keen to reduce it if I can. I also have a regular compost setup at my allotment but its not practical to take all my food waste there. I could take occasion excess peelings etc though.

I never put food waste in other than raw as mine doesn’t run hot enough as I don’t pay it enough attention. I wouldn’t want to risk rats. I’m not convinced by the idea that cooked food attracts rats. Rats like grain, fruits, veg, fresh rather than cooked. The reasoning against cooked food is more that it often has a high fat content. I suspect the reasons have got muddled over the years.

I know they say it can go anywhere but I think to heat it up it might need some sun so will need to be near the house The heat in a normal compost bin is the byproduct of microbial breakdown of the compost. It doesn’t depend on heat from the sun. Hotbins have a thick layer of insulation, which keeps heat in, but will also keep heat out.

We have a hotbin and use it for garden waste and vegetable peelings etc. It gets up to 30 degrees in the summer which breaks down the contents but it gets very wet so we’re probably not putting in enough cardboard type stuff. To be honest, it doesn’t really make us good compost, only sludgy mulch standard stuff. But it doesn’t smell. In the winter the temperatures drop right down so nothing much happens then. We put stuff in daily and only empty it once a year.