[cynthia]

I built a compost pile yesterday that registered 150 degrees this afternoon (ambient temps around fifty, with a low last night below 40 and the daytime dew point in the low forties).
I too was thinking about harnessing this heat for something, even seedlings and I like the idea of the closed tube system your friend came up with, C_H, but most greenhouses because of design are not efficient in holding heat.
There are two greenhouse designs I am determined to make in my lifetime.
The first is a freestanding strawbale structure with windows on the south side and plastic or glass on the roof. It would be raised off the ground with urbanite (broken concrete often found for free) with an ample overhang on the roof to keep the straw dry during our usually rainless summers.
During the winter, it would have to be tarped and would probably be most suitable for overwintering semi-tender plants like fuchsias, lemon verbenas, etc. And maybe as a chicken coop.
For a reliable heated greenhouse that I imagine would be less fussy than the compost method is to build a cob bench for a cob, strawbale or traditional timber-frame greenhouse.
To heat the cob mass, you would build what is called a Rocket Stove (use favorite search engine to locate more information). This design uses wood efficiently. The exhaust pipe is embedded in the cob. The mass holds the heat such that in the best case scenario, unless you are way North, you are not building fires every day.
It would be interesting to hear more about compost-heat- captured projects.
In our community, our landfill currently harnesses enough methane to provide electricity for 1800 homes. The program is being expanded this summer.
cynthia

[Carlhole]

I'm pretty sure you could draw off substantial heat from the right kind of compost pile. Manure piles have been known to catch fire. They can get hot as hell. I knew this as a kid growing up in and around horse country.

And the microbes doing the work function optimally at certain temperature ranges - probably published somewhere if you know what to look for. The heat they produce is better understood as a result of their activity rather than a pre-requisite of it.

Should work great as long as you have a lot of shit to mix in it.

Manure Pile Burns
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/012266.html

[nocar]

I use compost heat on a very low scale. I keep a plastic compost container in my 8 sq meter green house in winter. The compost is fed kitchen waste and dry leaves. Everything, compost and green house soil, freeze in hte depth of winter, but when the sun returns in March the compost gets going and keeps the greenhouse above freezing at night, an important thing. In late May when night frost in the greenhouse is no longer an issue I remove the compost container and use the place for planting.

nocar

[strider3700]

Here is a guy in oregon that used compost to heat his hot water. Seemed to work quite well

http://ersson.sustainabilitylane.com/composti.htm

http://ersson.sustainabilitylane.com/greenhse.htm

Does anyone have any newer info on these people? they seemed to be doing really well and then decided to move and build a giant 4 story strawhale house and since then I haven't seen a thing about them.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

Has anyone here heard of Jean Pain?

I've recently obtained a copy of his book "Another Kind of Garden" and it seems revolutionary. He managed to devise a continuous system for utilising the composting process to product gas for combustion (transport), heating for his house, fuel for his stove, hot water, thermal warmth for his greenhouses totally on the cheap.

This is futuristic stuff. Basically he creates big 50 ton piles of compost that 'burn' at 60 degrees C (140f) for 18 months straight, providing all of the above mentioned benefits.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his vegetable cocktail, Pain explains, made of tree limbs and pulverized underbrush, is a compost, much like the pile of decaying organic matter that people build in their gardens, using food scraps and leaves. Buried inside the 50-ton compost, he says, is a steel tank with a capacity of four cubic metres. It is three-fourths full of the same compost, which has first been steeped in water for two months. The tank is hermetically sealed, but is connected by tubing to 24-truck-tyre inner tubes, banked nearby in piles. The tubes serve as a reservoir for the methane gas produced as the compost ferments.

"Once the gas is distilled, washed through small stones in water -- and compressed," Pain explains, "we use it to cook our food, produce our electricity and fuel our truck." He says that it takes about 90 days to produce 500 cubic metres of gas -- enough to keep Ida's two ovens and a three-burner stove going for a year. Leading to a room behind the house, he shows me the methane-fuelled internal combustion engine that turns a generator, producing 100 watts every hour. This charges an accumulator battery, which stores the current, providing all the Pains need to light their five-room house.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

From Wikipedia

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')ean Pain (1930 - 1981) was a French innovator who developed a compost based bio energy system that produced 100% of his energy needs. He heated water to 60 degrees celsius at a rate of 4 litres a minute which he used for washing and heating. He also distilled enough methane to run an electricity generator, cooking elements, and power his truck. This method of creating usable energy from composting materials has come to be known as Jean Pain Composting, or the Jean Pain Method.

[Ludi]

I had read his name but didn't know anything about him.

Neat stuff!

Anna Edey's "Solviva" also has many innovative ideas for compost.

http://www.solviva.com/

[Hagakure_Leofman]

It's just amazing Ludi

He ran his truck, tractor and chippers and car on methane gas derived from compost (apparently just a simple conversion). He heated his home with hot water through column heaters around the house. Ran his stove burners with wood gas from the compost process.

Just imagine getting your hot water from a compost pile, then having 50 tons of compost to grow your garden once it finished cooking!

It's radical stuff.

[Ludi]

Yeah, I find all that sort of thing to be very exciting! I wish I were more mechanically minded. Luckily, my husband is, and is getting more interested in these alternatives. Right now he's into designing a PV powered small car, though.

[Ludi]

The downside I see in compost-based energy production is the need to gather, move, and prepare large quantities of material. That's what would keep me from getting into it, not having any tractors, etc to start with.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

This stuff is really great because it's within the grasp of individuals. It's not a mass algae growing system swimming in a kilometer square vat of sludge cooking 'fuel' of the suburbanites to drive to office towers.

It's the kind of thing that will be actually doable on a small local scale. During energy decent these ideas will be invaluable so that we can continue to benefit from some of the technological developments that actually made sense instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Just imagine the personal sense of calm when running your own house off compost and not being electric grid vulnerable...

[Ludi]

I think it's very much doable by individuals or communities. But one does need to start with some power equipment - probably chainsaw, tractor, wood chipper.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'T')he downside I see in compost-based energy production is the need to gather, move, and prepare large quantities of material. That's what would keep me from getting into it, not having any tractors, etc to start with.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') think it's very much doable by individuals or communities. But one does need to start with some power equipment - probably chainsaw, tractor, wood chipper.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hagakure_Leofman', '
')I just bought 50 of these trees for $1.50 each.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') think it's very much doable by individuals or communities. But one does need to start with some power equipment - probably chainsaw, tractor, wood chipper.

[nocar]

it seems to me to be a 50-ton compost providing one household (or just one person?) with energy. How much needs to be added to the compost weekly to keep it going? Or does it run down and a new one is started? How often?

A nice niche application but nothing scalable. Compost energy comes from breaking down the stored energy in organic matter. You can not get out more energy than what is stored by the plants in the first place using sun light energy . It is a different process that burning it in a fire, but I doubt you get more energy back. Burning is better with dry matter, decaying in compost is better with moist matter.

nocar

[sugarrun-nursery]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hagakure_Leofman', 'H')as anyone here heard of Jean Pain?

I've recently obtained a copy of his book "Another Kind of Garden" and it seems revolutionary.

[WisJim]

http://www.jean-pain.com/mjp.htm
Looks like it is 15 Euros as an Ebook in pdf.

This site seems to have a good explanation (but I haven't read the book).

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

We've been over his stuff before and I am sure at some point someone will add a link for it.

the pile is 2 tons not 50 and he's been doing it for years. MotherEarth News did a couple interviews and trial piles based on his teachings, pretty interesting stuff and looks like the lay person can manage most of it.

You just need room for a 2 ton compost pile and the space to process the wood chips which do require a re-tooling of a wood chipper to (if I remember correctly) 5/16".