It’s now over 7 weeks since I set up ‘The Reactor’, an external compost bed designed to heat the ‘inner zone’ in our 14 X 8 foot cedar framed greenhouse. Thanks again to Fiona’s patience and wizardry with Excel, I’m posting below 2 more graphs by way of an update on its performance. Anyone joining the blog here can look back at several previous posts for information on its design concept and construction. (Addendum: There are a lot of posts now about how this idea has developed and its implementation. If you want to find the other posts quickly, then click here).

Temperatures are in Degrees C…

The inner zone max./min. readings in the lower graph are omitted from the top graph for clarity. The inner zone max./min. temperature readings are taken at the opposite end of the inner zone to the compost heap, and its associated warm air inflow. So the lower temperatures recorded in this different location reflect the inevitable subtle temperature variations within any finite elongated space like this. The additions at point D were, for time and illness reasons a simple top up, with no changing of the contents of the inner core tubs of material).

Given the usual caveats about missing data – since we’re not always around; and lack of statistical significance; a few more observations are merited. (I do have even more temperature readings, but it’s just too cluttered to add them to the above graphs).

• It seems a remarkably stable system, thus far, when run in the way that I selected, i.e. with simple weekly top ups of compostable material. Regardless of external factors, the air seems to consistently gain about 7 degrees C after being passed through ‘The Reactor’/Compost Heap, regardless of external conditions. The inner zone structure itself consistently adds a further 2 to 3 degrees C benefit. This heat input seems to equate to roughly 0.39 KW of power per hour, 24 hours a day. (Actually, not quite 24 hours per day, since I give the 20 watt fan driving the air flow a few short breaks through every 24 hours). Over the time of its operation so far, i.e. 7 weeks, is this worthwhile?
• Well 0.39 X 24 X 7 X 7 = 458 KW hours.  At say 15 p per KW hour, this equates to about £68. Over an anticipated 16 week winter period of operation, about £153. So not bad. Even if any of my assumptions, maths and physics are a bit flawed.
• The downside to the stability of the system, is that there’s little scope for a rapid boost if very cold temperatures were predicted. Although adding an extra top up of material, particularly nitrogenous material, would likely raise temperatures a little within 48 hours. My perimeter water bottles do seem to help stabilise temperatures, when it’s sub zero outside, and additional ‘hot water bottles’ could easily be added as a short term fix for really cold nights.
• The last 2 weekly top ups have required less leaf material to be added to maintain a roughly constant heap/bed height. But I’ve maintained the original quantity of nitrogenous material on all occasions (mainly poultry coop manure, with a little horse/sheep manure to make up the quantities). In addition, more circulation of material has been undertaken recently, as heap temperatures have trended gently down – just a bit of forking or spading of the upper surface of the bed, and on one occasion so far, also digging out the material closest to the pipe on one side of ‘The Reactor’ down to a depth of about 0.4 metres, and thus allowing both extra aeration, and ‘fresher’ material to come in contact with the outer pipe wall.
• But how much material has gone into the heap over these 7 weeks, and been ‘burned up’ by the composting process? The tally is roughly: 30.5 tubs of shredded leaf material, including perhaps 3 tubs equivalent of kitchen vegetable material; 6.5 tubs of poultry coop manure, including paper and hay; 1 tub of shredded cardboard – I stopped using this once it became clear I would have sufficient leaf material; and about 1.25 tubs of mixed sheep and horse droppings – once the quantity of poultry manure dipped a little after Christmas. This equates to roughly 276 kg mixed organic matter added to the already full heap created on day one of the previous graph (19/12/2012). No significant quantity of material has fallen from the base at all yet, and the height of the heap has barely changed after all this time. So, this mass must reflect the quantity consumed during the aerobic composting reaction processes, allowing a bit for settlement, in much the same way that burned wood reduces hugely in both mass and volume during burning, as it turns to ash.
• In addition, a 7 week total of roughly 70 litres of urine will have been added to the bed during twice weekly waterings. The material in the bed certainly visibly changes between top ups – within a week or so kitchen waste becomes less obviously identifiable, and the eventual compost will be of higher quality than that generated in our original heaps where material wasn’t shredded before inclusion, or the nitrogen/carbon ratio so controlled.

My suspicion is that a different pipe material, or its location within the heap, or stronger fan could indeed extract more usable heat without detracting from the composting process, and result in a consistently different graph, with even more of a beneficial temperature gain within the inner zone.

• What about plant growth inside this inner zone? Well, nothing has died! However, there’s clearly an issue with available light, which frankly has been abysmal over the last 3 weeks. Consequently, I opted to have the SAD natural daylight running for about 4 more daylight hours from 26/12/2012. In spite it being very early in my trial, I think that mange tout peas (Oregon sugar pod) look promising, as do forced carrots (Early Nantes). The lemons are looking very healthy, but the beetroot (Boltardy) have grown very slowly. Yellow pak choi is also successful.

• 

• 
• 
• Slugs are also a surprisingly big issue, even at this time of the year. My first batch of carrot seedlings were wiped out overnight, and one of my 12 inch pots had 3 small dead slugs in today, after re baiting. So clearly the molluscs are appreciating the unseasonably mild conditions I’ve created.

One unintended consequence of having set up ‘The Reactor’ with its thirst for nitrogenous material, is that there now appears to be a supply shortage of liquid supplements. Apart from its obvious value as a nitrogen source, for several months before the greenhouse compost bed was made, I’ve been using it discretely (in both meanings of the word) as a rabbit, rodent and fox deterrent. And sorry, ladies, but it apparently needs to be male urine to be effective.

WHAT! I hear you cry.

In mitigation, and indeed support, of what had been a limited trial of dribbling from the much valued dedicated and inherited galvanised pee containing watering can around the property and poultry’s perimeter fencing (that’s a nice bit of onomatopoeia), I offer the following fascinating information:

(The metal ‘ash can’ which we also inherited with the house turned out to have been a pee pot for the household. We use it for wood/ash, and there’s an interesting recorded use of pee and wood ash being used historically as a cleansing house soap. This has yet to be personally verified).

Firstly, the excellent site of PMart – “America’s first discount urine store”, which sells a huge range of animals’ scents and urine to knowledgeable folk in North America to deter, or attract (if you’re a hunter), your particular friend or foe beast.

Secondly, the consequences of letting up on its use around the property, once the greenhouse compost bed took priority. Where rabbits are concerned, its regular application does seem to limit damage, and any gap in application or relentless rain sees the return of both scrapes and pellets.

With foxes, like all security measures, you only discover that they’re inadequate after the event. But there’s certainly lots of evidence of fox activity in the field above the poultry, with tracks heading towards the enclosure but as yet no attempts to breach the pee marked fence. There’s a little anecdotal evidence on line from other gardeners using it in this way. Click here.

Perhaps the potential value of human urine use is overdue for a wider renaissance. Click here, here and here for much more on how it’s been utilised as a commodity over centuries. I particularly liked the stories surrounding its use in gunpowder manufacture. The American war of independence nearly failed for a shortage of gunpowder. The French came to the rescue of the Americans with ample supplies having previously ramped up their own poor manufacturing systems.

Finally, and most recently, Sweden has appreciated urine’s merits to the extent that municipally organized urine collection from modified WCs has been trialled in a number of locations over the previous 15 years. The problem to date has been providing simple and cost effective links between this municipal collection, and the potential end user – usually farmers.

So maybe using human pee in upland Wales really isn’t so radical, or wacky after all? Feel free to respond.

A perceived issue with its use around a property is that of odour. Fortunately I’d told a friend about both our amusing uses for it and the watering can, before she dropped her horse off for a few days of grazing in one of our meadows. She’s brought along her own water buckets, but finding us not at home when she’d arrived, and the outside taps drained down for the winter, looked around for  a convenient water source. She was about to resort to the filled metal can behind the house when she paused.

Inhaled.

And Remembered.

Once on the ground in small amounts any smell from the initially sterile fluid quickly dissipates. As well as any smell just dissipating, the rain soon washes it away. And what a year for rain. The totals have now been summed and our figure of 2081 mm, or over 83 inches for the year is certainly impressive. More than enough to drown me in one go, if I stood still for too long.

For the UK as a whole, The Met Office has it down as the second wettest year ever since records began in the 1700’s. But the UK average rainfall figure in this wettest year is a mere 1330 mm by comparison. For all their comparative statistics click here.

Not surprisingly the year’s PV output is down. But not by as much as I’d have thought. It’s difficult to do an accurate comparison since over the last year a few trees which caused temporary shading on the panels have come down, and so the actual year’s results are almost identical.

(The system was installed in June 2010).

This is quite pleasing since this level is greater than than forecast at installation, in spite of 2 shocking summers. But what of the year ahead, after the gloom and wet of 2012? Interestingly, today there’s been much radio talk that the Met Office has confirmed that average temperatures have barely changed in the last 2 decades. But I can’t easily find a direct link on their website for this press release, which seems to have been made on Christmas Eve, when I guess most media outlets were well and truly wound down. A good day for burying bad, or unexpected, news? ( Addendum: Click here to read about how the news was released – and why I couldn’t find a mention of it).

With so little brightness of late outside, any photos have been challenging and they’ve all required a high ISO setting, so of poor quality, I’m afraid. But I can record the first flowers of Scilla tubergeniana, or S. mischtschenkoana, which reliably seems to rival some snowdrop cultivars in its earliness. A word of warning though, which the bulb catalogues don’t seem to mention. Our experience of it makes us think it’s a real delicacy for any early season slugs, so it does need monitoring closely and probably some protection, to avoid serious damage. Oh, and a chest soaked, prone photographer, to get an image like this, since the emerging flowers are held very close to the ground, though they rise with time to 3 to 4 inches, which is an unusual and pleasing habit.

Hamamelis “Vesna” is now in full bloom, and like most of our Hamamelis has needed a good 4 years to really settle in.

The first 5 cultivars in our growing snowdrop parade are now lightening the scene. Galanthus “Three Ships”, “Mrs.Macnamara”, “Bess”, G. rizehensis and one of our favourite good doers, G. “Atkinsii” (below), is also just emerging. Although it’s sterile, it still bulks up quickly.

Not enough flowers yet to be really exciting, but a strong hint of the delights to come in February. Meanwhile, in contrast, the Cyclamen coum are on fine form.

And lots of seedlings for spreading around (these are of white C. hederifolium).