Wednesday, August 5, 2015

trommel

It's my dream, too, own a very good composter. This is a little awkward, but I want to live in a world in which everyone composts their poops, and pee. Now, the standard composting toilet is a nasty thing that barely works. It's wrong in concept. The proper way to compost pee is to absorb it with grass and leaves, simple as that. And the proper way to compost poop is to blend it with grass and leaves, in a pile. It will then dry and there will not be any issues with odor or a mess, or harmful bacteria, either. Once it's dry, it can be composted at a controlled level of moisture, and the result will soon be a clean loam.

Regardless of whether I'm going to attempt this or not, I want a good composter, which is basically a trommel: a rotary screen. In other words, it's a cylinder made of screen mesh. You fill it with the material to be composted, establish the right level of moisture, and rotate it on a daily basis, and the finished compost sifts out into a bin beneath the trommel.

Trommels are nothing new. They're used in mining ... and in industrial scale composting ... but I haven't seen them advertised for home composting. Strange.