I've seen a few compost water heaters now, on my search for hot water systems. I was far from convinced that they were for us, however. Most seemed either a lot of work to maintain, or don't last very long. The geek in me still likes the idea, though - somehow it seems a little like hacking nature.
So I started thinking - maybe a compost heap water heater won't work for us for the main house. But before the house is up we'll be on site for a period of a month or two at least, essentially camping. Whilst Kyle and I are no strangers to camping, we're not against doing so with some added comforts. It also occurs to us that we'll be more able toconscript convince our friends and relatives to help if we have ammenities available.
To that end, I quite like the Compost Wheelie Bin Hot Water System (there are any number of other sites showing a similar design - I couldn't quite be bothered to track down who did it first, I just gave up once I'd found a site that quoted measurements).
It works pretty much like the name suggests - you stick green stuff in a wheelie bin, with a water coil down the centre. Several sites I found suggested it would last comfortably for about 4 weeks, though they also said it takes about a week to peak and suggested starting another one two weeks in to tag team them. Two of these, swapped in and out, could do quite comfortably during the build for our little house, and let me have my experiment.
For a more long-term solution I quite like the Pain Mound, and this is where I could see compost-powered water heating working for Kyle and I.
I first found this one through an instructable, and later tracked down the original book on the matter (long out of print but available as pdf). The bits that really caught my attention were that Pain's goal wasn't just convenient cheap energy, but fire risk reduction in the forests near his farm (an ever-present risk in rural Australia). A bit more hunting around and I found someone else had taken on the water heater idea and very recently produced another book on the matter, which I'm about to order a copy of.
It might take me a bit of work to convince Kyle (or even just myself) that compost-powered hot water is a good move though. The particular lifestyle we're looking for does not involve isolating ourselves from the world entirely and digging in off-grid. We'll still have our day jobs, we just aim to be less dependent upon them. Whilst education is a fairly safe industry to work in most of the time, in that the job itself isn't going anywhere, the idea of being able to retire at 35 if the work dries up (or if the mood takes us) is an attractive one. Not that we'd have to, we just could if we wanted to - the idea is to have choices, open up options, rather than lock ourselves into the traditional game of life.
So I started thinking - maybe a compost heap water heater won't work for us for the main house. But before the house is up we'll be on site for a period of a month or two at least, essentially camping. Whilst Kyle and I are no strangers to camping, we're not against doing so with some added comforts. It also occurs to us that we'll be more able to
To that end, I quite like the Compost Wheelie Bin Hot Water System (there are any number of other sites showing a similar design - I couldn't quite be bothered to track down who did it first, I just gave up once I'd found a site that quoted measurements).
It works pretty much like the name suggests - you stick green stuff in a wheelie bin, with a water coil down the centre. Several sites I found suggested it would last comfortably for about 4 weeks, though they also said it takes about a week to peak and suggested starting another one two weeks in to tag team them. Two of these, swapped in and out, could do quite comfortably during the build for our little house, and let me have my experiment.
For a more long-term solution I quite like the Pain Mound, and this is where I could see compost-powered water heating working for Kyle and I.
I first found this one through an instructable, and later tracked down the original book on the matter (long out of print but available as pdf). The bits that really caught my attention were that Pain's goal wasn't just convenient cheap energy, but fire risk reduction in the forests near his farm (an ever-present risk in rural Australia). A bit more hunting around and I found someone else had taken on the water heater idea and very recently produced another book on the matter, which I'm about to order a copy of.
It might take me a bit of work to convince Kyle (or even just myself) that compost-powered hot water is a good move though. The particular lifestyle we're looking for does not involve isolating ourselves from the world entirely and digging in off-grid. We'll still have our day jobs, we just aim to be less dependent upon them. Whilst education is a fairly safe industry to work in most of the time, in that the job itself isn't going anywhere, the idea of being able to retire at 35 if the work dries up (or if the mood takes us) is an attractive one. Not that we'd have to, we just could if we wanted to - the idea is to have choices, open up options, rather than lock ourselves into the traditional game of life.
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