Project Compost Tumbler complete!

Since I started my compost kick a couple weeks ago, I’ve been composting in this bucket. It’s really easy. All I have to do is unscrew the small cap and drop things through it. It seems to work pretty well, but the big disadvantage is that I can easily put its five-gallon max capacity in it in just one week. Luckily the stuff I put in it breaks down quickly so I can fill it up again the next week. But I wanted to do more with it – you can only fit five gallons of crap in a five gallon bucket, right? I want to have a continuous supply of compost with which to amend the soil when I start my vegetable garden next year, as well as for potting and other planting.

The bucket works wonderfully as I said, but I want to do more. I want to start composting more things so I can reduce the number of garbage bags I throw out every week and stop filling the recycle bin with things I could reuse (compost). So I drove over to this old man’s house in Loganville (that’s in Georgia for all you non Georgians) yesterday morning – he sells these things out of his front yard and has every type of liquid storage container you can imagine – and picked up two fifty gallon barrels for $35. They say fifty gallons but actually hold fifty-five. That might seem kind of high, but I couldn’t find anywhere else locally to get them. Besides, I really didn’t care. I got one for my compost tumbler project and another to use as a rain barrel, which I will put together later this week.
Below is the finished compost tumbler. As an aside, this barrel held some concoction of peppers, salt, and vinegar. And let me tell you, this puppy stinks! It should air out fine though, with all the holes I drilled in it.

The above front-on view I put up to show you the fit (as well as the length of the pipe) of the barrel between the resting points on the frame. I might cut the pipe when I get around to replacing the blade in my band saw. The frame itself was pretty simple to make. I made the bottom two rails out of a 3″x5″ landscape timber cut in half and turned on end. Instead of the 5″ side sitting on the ground, the 3″ side does. I did that so I would have a flat surface to nail the sides to. The sides and horizontal braces are made of 2″x4″ treated, finger jointed studs I had left over from building my shed. I used galvanized spiral shank nails to hold it all together – too lazy to go down to the shed and get a box of screws and the nails were already in the garage.
I’ve seen people around the Internet concreting posts into the ground and clamping the pipes on top of them, but I wanted portability. Should I ever want to move it, all I have to do is take the barrel off and move the base. Pretty darn easy. And no, I didn’t do it the other way because I didn’t have concrete. Well, that may have had a little to do with it, but let’s keep that a secret.

Forgive the weeds. We didn’t start pulling them until after I placed the thing there. I just wanted to show you this side shot so you can see how truly simple the construction is. The pole just rests in the “V” created by the two studs. For what it’s worth, as if you really care, each side of the “V” is 3″ long. I did this because the pipe is 1 5/16″ in diameter. By making the cradle (the “V”) depth twice that of the diameter of the pipe (and having the barrel full of stuff), this will ensure that it won’t get picked up and blown off during a strong storm.
And below, here she is, full of the compost that was in the bucket as well as newspapers from the recycling bin and most of the weeds that were in the pictures above.

In the above picture you can also see the series of 1/4″ holes I drilled around the circumference of the barrel. There is a vertical line of six holes drilled at 1/8th intervals around the circumference. I also drilled drain holes in the bottom as well as in the lid. You don’t want water sitting there and stagnating.
I forgot to mention, the the vertical style I chose to build seems (by lots of Googling on the subject) to be the most efficient method of tumbling because when you flip the barrel over, everything falls down and mixes itself. Having the pipe going through it also helps. I have seen horizontal models on the Internet as well, but people advise against them because when you turn it, the contents have a tendency to slide instead of mix as the barrel rotates. That makes a lot of sense to me. I also didn’t want to have to cut an access door. That would have meant putting hinges and a latch on it and I didn’t want to have to bother with that.

In the above picture you can see the band clamp holding the lid on. I was looking for a barrel with a screw-on lid, but couldn’t find any. This band clamp type works perfectly and it’s not really hard to take off and put back on again.
Since I bought two barrels for $35, my total investment in this project was only $17.50. The lumber I had left over from other projects, the nails I already had from building my deck a few years ago, and the pipe I used in the garage as a breaker bar. I have another one that’s better suited for use as a breaker bar that’s smaller and easier to manage so I was willing to make the sacrifice.
The ventilation holes are all 1/4″ diameter. The holes for the pipe to pass through I drilled with a 1 1/2″ forstner bit. A word of advice though – use a corded drill. My cordless worked fine for the ventilation holes but didn’t have enough oomph to keep the forstner bit from binding. My corded DeWalt ran that bit through the barrel like a red-hot hot knife through soft butter.
Total construction and set-up time was a hair under one hour. That included pulling the chop saw out, the time consuming task of pulling bent nails out of those extremely dry, extremely hard pine studs, filling, and putting the lid on.
The reason I went with a tumbler rather than just throwing everything on the ground and turning it with a pitchfork is because I already tried that, and living out here in the boonies, I get a lot of deer and other wildlife coming onto my property and they like to eat whatever I put in it. I had to put an end to that. At the rate we were going, I wouldn’t have ever made enough compost to pot a daisy with.
All in all, I’m happy with the end result. Why don’t you try building one yourself? Your plants will thank you.

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