A few months ago, I moved. Rather than try to move my previous worm bin, I decided to try a different type of worm container–a 55 gallon drum. A quick google search found someone who sold 55 gallon drums, and I bought a couple. I wanted plastic, but he didn’t have any, so I bought 2 steel 55 gallon drums previously used for holding orange juice. (It’s amazing what you can fit into a tiny sedan.)
Basic setup: I filled the bin with a couple of bags of leaves I had retrieved from curbside last fall. I put in some water. I also drilled five drainage holes in the bottom of the barrel. The barrel came with a steel top–I put that on top to protect the worms and retain moisture, but I leave a crack so that some air can get in and out. And then I put in about 10 gallons of worms and vermicompost. You can see the lid on the lower right–I put a rock on it to deter critters.
Barrel o worms
While it was chilly but not freezing this spring, the barrel seemed to work fine, as you can see from this photo:
Worms in a barrel
However, as we head toward summer, I’m a bit worried. The drum is black, so any sun really heats it up. And the worms can’t easily retreat into the earth, as they could with my previous worm bin. I recently moved it to a shadier area–I hope that helps the worms a bit.
Last I checked, the worms were doing alright, and I even found a cocoon:
worm cocoon
The reason I wanted to try this is that 55 gallon drums are pretty cheap ($20 each, I think) and readily available, and I thought these would be a fun container to use when vermicomposting large amounts of atypical feedstock. That is, things like dog and cat poop, or human hair. I want to play around with them, and yet be able to use some of my worm castings on food plants. These containers seemed like a great way to segregate such feedstocks. I still think there is promise in these, but do want to see how the worms survive the winter months.
However, the downsides of the 55 gallon drums are many:
- Unless I cut a hole in the bottom, I will have a hard time incrementally removing worm castings.
- They are hard to move around–even 30 gallons of worms and vermicompost weigh a lot
- They don’t drain well–although I could have helped this by drilling more holes
- Worms can’t retreat out of them–again, more holes and placement on dirt would help.
- As mentioned above, they heat up.
After a few months of worm keeping in a 55 gallon drum, I noticed the local recycling center was selling soil savers for half price, so I bought two. More on that later.
July 10th, 2010
Update 2/7/2010: Just so you know, there are some graphic pictures below. If you aren’t interested in viewing humanure, please don’t read further.
Last week I had an interesting meeting with Mike, an official at a local state park. They have a desiccating toilet that just isn’t working as well as they had hoped. Here’s a picture of the toilet system from the outside.
Eldorado Canyon State Park Bathrooms
Below is a picture of the system from the inside. They have two large plastic vaults that have air flowing from the outside into them. The feces and toilet paper are held up via a metal trough, and air flow drys them out. Wood shavings are regularly spread in the system, which is supposed to help control odor (I think). Finally, the entire mass of poop is regularly sprayed with fresh water (on a timer). That is supposed to help decomposition. (I don’t understand how the water spraying and the air drying work together, and neither did Mike.)
Eldorado Canyon Desiccating Toilet System
Below is a picture of inside the system. Yup, that’s human feces and toilet paper. I visited during the winter, and the level was not high. Mike said that the entire mass freezes solid during the winter. The white horizontal line in the middle of the picture is a tool that lets someone distribute wood chips or move poop.
Inside Eldorado Canyon Toilet Vault
The primary issue with the toilet is a high pH leachate that accumulates at the bottom of the system, below the trough. Eventually that liquid gets so high that the system needs to be pumped. You can read his description of the issues; he goes into far more detail about what has been tried. He also summarizes what we discussed and the plan moving forward:
- I’ll build a compost bin, in the basement with the vaults, loaded with worms.
- I’ll get the worms started with food scraps from the office.
- I’ll make some experimental sections in the worm bin, and try adding some of the, er, material from the devap toilets, and maybe try soaking a different section with the excess water. The idea is to see what the worms like and thrive on.
- If the wigglers like human waste, but not the bilge water, then I’ll leave the vaults unmodified, add worms, and let ‘em go to town this summer.
- If the wigglers like human waste AND the bilge water, I’ll add worms to the vaults, and scale up by periodically pumping some of the waste water up into the stack.
- Worms will crawl and explore, but they also like dark and quiet. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll crawl up to the main floor.
- If the worms are successful, they’ll probably die off every winter in the cold vaults. The warm, freestanding compost pile will have to be maintained during the winters.
- It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the odor.
- I’m totally rooting for the worms. It would be phenomenally cool if worms could thrive on the wood chips, waste, and wastewater.
It will be interesting to see how the worms adapt to a diet of human waste. I found some links that indicate that they should do alright (thanks, Google Scholar!). Here’s one on a worm composting outhouse, which discusses some of the unique aspects of vermicomposting human waste (as opposed to the more typical feedstocks of yard and kitchen waste):
The worm bin should be operated like any worm bin. The moisture, temperature and aeration needs are the same. One difference is that human waste has a Carbon to Nitrogen ratio of 20:1 and so it needs a high carbon material added to decompose best.
Here’s another article discussing using vermicomposting to stabilize sewage sludge. Here’s an article about redworms reducing pathogens (a topic I reviewed last year). This is an interesting article on how feedstock affects E. Foetida weight and length (pdf). And here’s an interesting abstract for an article on the effects of stocking density and feeding rate on biosolid vermicomposting that is worth excerpting:
Specifically, the focus of this study was to investigate and establish an optimal stocking density and an optimal feeding rate for the vermicomposting of biosolids, with paper mulch provided as bedding. A stocking density of 1.60 kg-worms/m2 (0.33 lb-worms/ft2) and a feeding rate of 1.25 kg-feed/kg-worm/day resulted in the highest bioconversion of the substrate into earthworm biomass. The best vermicompost was obtained at the same stocking density and a feeding rate of 0.75 kg-feed/kg-worm/day.
Based on reviewing these articles, a key component of this system will be adding enough carbon to keep the worms happy. The main source of carbon currently is wood shavings, but they are purchased. I think that shredded paper and/or leaves would be good alternatives. Some calculations should be made to determine how much bedding substance to add.
In addition, redworms need a pH between 5 and 9, and I believe the leachate was well above that (update 2/7/2010: per a conversation with Mike, the pH of the leachate is 8.5 or 9). I don’t think the worms will be able to process or reduce that liquid directly. However, the source of the leachate seems at first blush to be the fresh water spraying, so if the worms process the waste and help maintain humidity, less spraying may be needed, and thus less leachate may be created. Even if the same amount of spraying is required, the worm castings may retain more of the water, and reduce leachate in that manner.
I’m a huge fan of Mike’s plan to start small (with a 55 gallon drum) and see how the redworms react to waste and/or leachate. This experimentation will be cheaper and easier to control, as well as giving Mike a chance to become familiar with worm keeping.
February 2nd, 2010
On the_worm_bin, someone posted about using silage for worm food–does it make sense?
First, what is silage? Silage is a fermented grain, usually (always?) corn, that is often used to feed animals over the winter. The fermentation process preserves the nutrition for longer than fresh corn would keep. However, silage will not keep forever. For more on silage, see these pages (at the top of Google’s search results): Corn Silage, Silage Fermentation and Preservation,
Someone asked: “Has anyone had experience in feeding their worms silage? I have a dairy operator friend that has some slightly spoiled silage that he is willing to allow me to have.”
There were a variety of answers. Someone suggested experimenting, and putting some on a location that the worms could either migrate towards or away from. In general, this is always a good practice when feeding new kinds of food to worms. They’re smart enough to run from what isn’t good, so give them the opportunity to do so! This advice was seconded by another member.
I found some links of interest. Here’s someone using silage, along with manure and hay, and precomposting it first: “RTS began accepting and actively pre-composting approximately five tons of separated dairy manure solids and off-specification dairy-cow feed (hay and corn silage) per day.”
Here’s an article talking about using silage as bedding: “Fourth grade students helped a parent volunteer build five worm bins, which they set on concrete blocks. To test the effectiveness of different beddings, they placed shredded newspaper in two bins, pulverized cardboard in another, old corn silage in the fourth bin, and composted horse and cow manure in the last bin. Of these beddings, the manure worked best, because red wigglers love manure. Newspaper also made a fine bedding, but dry cardboard was a hassle to handle; when it was moistened, it got too soggy.”
I also made some points about the pH of silage; according to this, it has a pH of 4.3 (although I imagine the pH depends on where the silage is in the fermentation process). Worms like more neutral environments: “Redworms do best if the pH is around 7.0, however, they can tolerate levels from 4.2 to 8.0 or higher. Lime (calcium carbonate) may be mixed with the bedding material to correct acidity or to maintain a more
favorable pH. Pulverized edd shells also correct acidity. (Warning! Use only limestone and never hydrated lime. The wrong kind of lime will kill the worms!)”
Of course, all the links in the world aren’t worth real world experience. Someone else said: “When I use silage as feed for my goats, the upper portion of my silage drums are mostly spoiled and these go direct to my wormbins. I have not had any problem with doing that.”
So, in short, it appears that silage can be a worm feedstock. If you are a home worm keeper, this probably isn’t of much interest to you, because if you were offered silage, it probably would be spoiled and would come by the truckload 
. But if you’re in commercial vermicomposting, perhaps you can find a farmer willing to give you free worm food!
September 17th, 2009
Worms in hair bin
It has been a while since I posted about my hair composting experiment (you can follow all the fun here). I have made some changes. I moved the bin outside, since there was no danger of freezing (and since my fiancee was not a fan of the previous location). I added some more worms. And I also have mixed in some more bedding.
More than anything, this experiment proves to me how hardy worms are. Consider the environment:
- a plastic bin so wet that when I take the top off, it drips on the ground
- no feedstock except human hair in clumps
- bedding in chunks I ripped up, and not evenly distributed
- no care except a look see every month or two, and the occasional additional bedding added
As you can see in the above picture, they are still alive; there are at least two worms in that picture, and as I dug in the bedding I added today, I saw others as well. The worms in this bin are definitely not thriving like those in my main bin, but they were never expected to.
This experiment was all about how easily I could turn a plentiful unconventional feedstock like human hair into a valuable product–castings and more worms–with a minimum of effort and space.
Given that it has been almost a year (I started in June of last year), I’d say the verdict is pretty grim. The worms are trying their hardest, and surviving, but it’s slow going.
May 15th, 2009
In mid June, I decided to experiment and see if I could create worm castings, a valuable product, out of human hair and used paper towels. The hair came from my barber shop, and the used paper towels were from my office. For my bin, I bought a 10 gallon rubber maid bin, drilled holes in the top and bottom. I wetted down the towels, tossed the hair in and dragged towels over it. I also added some melon rind, to give the worms some good food to start with.
Finally, I separated out enough worms to fill half a quart container. Here was my separating setup:
Setup for separating worms from their bedding.
It took about 45 minutes to separate the worms in the picture above. For reference, the trowel in the picture is 11 inches long.
Since I was using excess worms from my bin, my plan is to let the worms eat the hair and turn the entire bedding to castings, and perish. My investment in time and money was minimal, and both bedding and feedstock were free. If the worms turn the materials into castings, this setup could scale quite quickly. This is a summer only option for me, since these bins are water tight, but won’t keep the worms insulated in the winter.
I check on the worms periodically. As of early September, the worms are still going strong. The environment is a bit soggy, which I dealt with by leaving the bin lid ajar, and there’s still plenty of hair and paper towels. The melon rinds have almost fully decomposed, and the worms are spread throughout the bin.
As of late September, the worms are still doing their work, slowly. The hair is there clearly, but the worms are present in it. I’ve added some more wet newspaper and towels to the mix. The bottom is kinda wet, but the whole bin smells fine.
I will update as the decomposition progresses. When the weather turns cold, I may have to dump everything into the compost bin or bring it inside.
October 4th, 2008
