Breakin' It Down

...into compost. Yard waste that is. I decided that a wire mesh compost bin I made last summer wasn't working very well and chose to make my own new one from a 55 gallon barrel. I managed to find a pair of these drums on Craigslist for this project and a rain barrel. After cleaning the barrel I started on the frame of the composter.

Cleaned up.

The base is a simple rectangle slightly larger than the barrel.

Attaching the uprights.

 I made a simple triangular frame on each side to support the barrel. I don't think it will be terribly heavy getting filled with leaves and lawn clippings so I didn't make them as sturdy as I could have.

Side frames on.

Next I focused on the barrel itself. The bacteria in a composter need to breathe so I drilled holes on both sides around the outside of the barrel. Then I cut a door out by drilling out two corners and using a jigsaw to connect the dots. I didn't follow a template at all so the cuts aren't all that straight. But since it is a simple composter that will sit in the back of the yard I'm not all that concerned about it.

Breathing holes.

Door cut.

I then added the hardware. When turning the bin, the compost needs to be churned so I added some 8" lengths of pre-bent flashing to act as agitators similar to those found in a dryer. I also added a pair of hinges and a  barrel bolt latch to the door to open and close it.

Agitator installed with some 1/4" bolts and washers.

Door installed.

Finally I mounted the bin to the frame to complete the composter. I did this by using a length of 2" PVC pipe as the axle and drilling a 2 1/2" hole through the top and bottom (now the sides) of the bin. The PVC measurement is the inside diameter so the holes in the bin needed to be larger to fit around the outside diameter of the pipe. I then used some metal pipe brackets that are typically used to attach the pipe to joists to fix it to the frame. The pipe doesn't spin but the holes in the bin are just loose enough to allow the bin to rotate around the pipe.

Used a hole saw to cut the space for the axle.

PVC axle.

Complete!

I took apart the old bin and moved all of the yard waste from it to the new composter which nearly filled it up. There is enough room below this bin to add another one on the same frame but I would have to get another barrel from Craigslist. The other one I plan to use for a rain barrel doesn't have bungs to seal the top. This was a fairly simple project and I hope it will prove to be a better composter than the original wire mesh one I had from last year. The entire project cost less than $50 to make which is less than half the cost of store bought models.