Compost heating - Cheap, reliable and renewable passive heating for OffGrid Life

[OffGridEnclave]

presenting my "big" project for this year -> Compost heating to heat a 400m² offgrid house. (czech mountains, proper winter -25°C )

Main benefits:

-Cheap -> woodwaste and shredded bushes as material
-Reliable -> compost will do its thing, very hard to fock that up
-Passive -> after setting it up it will run for 15 to 24 month, 24/7 day and night
- Not Dangerous -> wood compost has around 50°C to 60°C max, no steam , no fire, no explosions

for smaller cabins this is much more easy to setup, for larger houses one needs space to be able to scale the compost in size properly.


part 1: Concept, idea and design, Spreadsheets with stats, basic rundown, etc
part 2: Integration into existing heating cycle, desing 12kW Compost Heating


part 1:

part 2:

I will be building a 12kW Compost Heating, integrate it into my existing redundant heating cycle and turn wastewood into glorious humus by heating my house.


for whoever does not like the utubes, the vids can be found on rumble and bitshute too..

Cheerz

 

[SolarPrep]

Google Hugelculture, or however it is spelled. Using the same basic idea to grow plants and food year-round. I've been wanting to try that, by building a large berm around one side of our property. You basically bury wood and plant waste, and it keep the plants warm.

 

[carolinabigfoot]

Cool, let us know how it went!

 

[OffGridInTheCity]

What a fantastic idea! I could totally see this in an off-grid, larger property over several years and you want to grow substantial food (e.g. use the result yourself). This would really stretch low winter solar production as you'd be running pumps / fans (low power) and the main power (heat) is coming from the compost.

 

[cdevidal]

Google Hugelculture, or however it is spelled. Using the same basic idea to grow plants and food year-round. I've been wanting to try that, by building a large berm around one side of our property. You basically bury wood and plant waste, and it keep the plants warm.

I love Hugelkultur (proper spelling) but would not want it next to my house out of fear it'd attract termites.

 

[SolarPrep]

cdevidal: from the little bit of reading I did on that topic, as long as you keep the pile far enough away from your house, termites should not be a problem. How you would determine that, I have no idea. Perhaps termites are lazy, and would rather munch away contently on a readily available pile of wood.

And then there would be the cost and effort to do the heat exchange portion of that concept. probably a non-starter. I just like the idea of a place you can grow things year around, or at least keep things ready to produce in the coming spring.

Fun stuff....