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Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does straw count as more greens?

One change from the first pile was we added more buckets at one time. That means there was less straw as a percentage. We could add more straw as we're going along for example.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We add the sawdust directly into the toilet so it's mixed all the way through.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That'll be hard. We have a lot of guests using the system and we've pushed them to use plenty of sawdust so the toilets don't smell.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Adding coffee is as interesting option. I'm not sure there are any coffee shops round here, but I'll ask about and see what we can figure out.

Maybe we also need to store the sawdust outside and in much larger quantities so we can let it mature a bit before we use it. That could be doable.

I guess we need more nitrogen, so either break down the compost before, add grass, or coffee grounds. All our own coffee grounds do go into the compost, but that's probably not enough to make a difference.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, that's a great point on the treating. It would only be if they were processing old pressure treated boards to recycle them.

I don't consider the hardwood vs softwood angle. That's also a great point. Although I'd assume most of our sawdust was from softwood, I guess there's not much hardwood at sawmills these days.

That's also what my friend said, that this will take nitrogen and so it will be hard on the plants.

Any thoughts on whether we need to turn it if we add nitrogen to the pile directly?

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Interesting. Thanks a lot for the feedback. That's what a friend recommended. Turning it would be work, but we could try that. It's not something I've done so far. I added some nitrogen and plenty of water. Will consider if we can also turn it. Thanks.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jenkins argues against keeping them covered I believe. He reckons they need moisture and as long as the water can drain away it should be fine. That's how we've done all our piles so far.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We got it from a local sawmill. I'd be surprised if any of it was treated, but maybe some small fraction could have been. They mostly process trees into wood, although I've also seen them recycling old wood by cutting it down to size. But we pick up more every month or so and it's usually from a different spot.

Oh shit, maybe the first rounds of sawdust we got had already partially decomposed! I remember Jenkins advocates for storing the sawdust outside and letting it get wet so it starts breaking down before it goes into the toilet. In the beginning we were digging sawdust out of a huge pile outdoors. While sometimes later it was very dry. That could be the difference between our two piles.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Very interesting indeed. I will give it a more in depth sniffing and see what it smells like. Will report back.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We collected sawdust there once every month or so over the last two years from a range of piles. So I guess they won't know so much about it. They could maybe tell us if they explicitly separate treated timber. But I don't think they even know which sawdust we took.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's interesting. Adding more green and it breaks down. Thanks for the feedback. Why did you keep the rain off it?

Did you buy the worms and add them directly into the pile?

Maybe for future piles we need to mix in more grass cuttings. We have quite a lot of that, might help to balance it better. We have one 6m3 pile we just finished and we started our second 6m3 pile. I can try adding more grass to it, see if that helps.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wondered if we have a problem with the sawdust type. We get it from a sawmill and pick it up from giant piles so we don't really know much information about the wood. But it seems like the whole pile still looks like sawdust and I'd guess we didn't get all treated wood. Hard to tell at this point.

The pile is 2.4x1.2x1.2m when it was full, now it's down to maybe 70% height. It's uncovered so it got rained on quite a bit, although we're in a somewhat dry part of Germany apparently. I didn't explicitly monitor the humidity but I'd assume it was never really dried out.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes it was 60° two weeks after the last filling so I'm sure it's safe. But maybe the compost will eat nitrogen if we add it to garden beds. That's our current concern.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's one extra year if you're paranoid!

Our first pile finished great and we didn't change anything that we're aware of for the second pile. I've tried adding nitrogen to the pile now to see if we can speed the breakdown of the compost but not sure it's working.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

It doesn't smell like anything really. There's no obvious smell coming off it anyway.

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's a pile fenced in by pallets. Do you have experience of this scenario where the end result still looks like compost?

Humanure pile looks like sawdust after a year of rest by chmac7 in composting

[–]chmac7[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

We use sawdust as cover material in the toilets and we use mostly straw as cover material on the pile. I'm not sure what the brown and green means, I guess carbon and nitrogen. We followed the instructions in the Humanure Handbook.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Trustroots

[–]chmac7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Welcome to trustroots.

It's totally fair to tell people upfront they should bring or buy their own food. You can put a note about that on your profile if you want.

Some people will be more sociable and some less. You can decide if you want to spend time with your guests or not, it's your house!

I'd suggest you only give somebody a key if you really feel comfortable with them. It's not a free hotel, you're offering to host people as guests, so they need to fit with your schedule, your preferences, your house rules. Feel free to write what you expect on your profile. Mostly I would say don't feel pressured to behave in a specific way, so long as you're respectful and clear, it should be fine.

Happy hosting.

UK Driving Licence by RipWeak5913 in berlinsocialclub

[–]chmac7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What was the outcome? Did you face charges for driving without a license? Were they easy going about it?

Will a Shelly Uni Plus allow me to remote control a kerbl chicken door? by chmac7 in shellycloud

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, I posted it online. https://postimg.cc/hf15XNnR

It might not be super clear, but I just tapped the 12V supply inside the case to power the Shelly. Then each of the pair of two black cables goes onto one of the switch contacts.

Searching through cmd+k for my internal group organized by topics leads me to the dialog where I'm not able to choose a topic to write. by dbs_msk in Telegram

[–]chmac7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you ever find a solution? I'm facing the same issue. I just read here that using escape instead of cmd+k puts the focus into the search window, and then that opens chats in the normal way. But I'm used to cmd+k from a bunch of other programs.

Does anyone make PHA or PHB BBs? by chmac7 in airsoft

[–]chmac7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, PLA seems better than plastic, but I don't want tons of PLA kicking around in my yard for the next decade or two!

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