Make a Compost Bin From a Wheelie Bin

Our council runs a green waste collection, for which they provide each household with a green recycling bin. This bin is for garden waste, you cannot put any other compostable waste in it.
Also when this garden waste is taken away, and your cospostable food waste has gone to landfill, none of the nutrients get put back into your garden.

That got me to thinking that I would much rather compost all my garden and compostable household waste and make use of it back into my garden.
So all I needed was a suitable container for composting in. I could have bought an actual compost bin, or made one out of wood, but then I would still have a green wheelie bin, only now there would be nothing in it.
Solution - Turn Green Wheelie Bin into COMPOST BIN
1) cut a flap on the front to allow access to compost
2) add a tap at the bottom to allow for collection of liquid plant food from the compost heap

Step 1 What you need

A quick trip to your local hardware store/ garden centre should get you everything you'll need at a price which is much cheaper than a compost bin.
1)Obviously a wheelie bin, if you don't have one you can buy them , but you may be better off getting an actual compost bin. However councils may be able to sort you out with one which has been damaged, i.e. the wheels have come off or similar.
2) A couple of concrete blocks to set your finished bin on. (ý6)
3) Hinges (I used stainless steel to avoid rusting, but this makes them more expensive) (ý4)
4) Machine screws to fit hinges and barrel bolt. (ý3) I chose to use nuts and bolts because the plastic of the wheelie bin is quite soft and i was concerned about screws not threading properly
5) A water butt tap (ý3)
6) A bag of gravel 10 to 20mm (ý2)

Comments

[gaiatechnician]

I think your wheelie bin needs to be upside down. I think eventually as they rot, the layers of compost can get stuck about 1/3 of the way up because the layers get squished as they get compressed towards the bottom. Other than that, I think it is very good. If it was upside down, maybe you could attach the lid to the wheels or something like that? A lot of rain falls on my compost bin in winter, (and it can get in through the air vents and make the contents soggy. If it had a big lid, almost like a hat, most of it would miss it.

[yetihair]

Thank you gaiatechnician,
Having now been using my compost bin since i made this instructable I can confirm that the compost does get a little squished and does not fall too naturally and can need a bit of coaxing with a garden fork. I have not had problems with the contents getting soggy, but i did have problems with it drying out last summer in the long dry weather. A bit of watering with rainwater and a bit of the leachate from the compost bin sorted it out.
So I have a couple of recommendations if you are considering doing this project.
1) use as straight sided a bin as possible. (so if your council supplied bin is like mine make a different type of compost bin. Check out the instructables composting ebook at http://bit.ly/fm3Riu)
2) make sure anything you put into the compost bin is cut small. I found woody items tended to exacerbate the sticking problem.

I agree that the ideal way to build this is to do it upside down. If anyone else fancys suggesting a design I would be happy to put a link to it on this instructable.

It is fair to say that when i was reinventing this wheel it turned out a bit square. lol!

[gaiatechnician]

I have an idealized process in mind.
I am keen on watering the compost during the year.
Automatically!
With compost tea from the bottom of the compost bin.
You could use the windowfarm method, which is an aquarium air pump powering airlift. That would be easy and a good starter method.
And someone could make it tomorrow!
You might even power your pump with a solar panel.
Or you could develop the "fermentation powered pump" idea to power it.
I am probably not the only person to think of fermentation powered pump.
I thought of it over 20 years ago but I couldn't make the darn thing at the time.
My version has no valves and can pump in stages. Your version can have valves if you want but I warn that water valves can be blocked or leak with the tiny debris from compost. Anyways, I think automatic watering of compost heaps is the way to go.
Brian

[Twarg]

This is exactly the sort of instructions I was looking for. Thankyou very much for your time and effort to share your creation with us all! Here in WA you can buy little wheelie bins for whatever purpose and my parents happened to have one in the backyard that isn't being used for -anything- which seemed a total waste to me. I'm sick of putting kitchen scraps seperate from the rest of our rubbish only for it to go into the same bin that the council picks up anyway, so I figured I'd turn it into a compost bin :D My folks are happy with this idea.

[dstocker]

Not sure how much room you have or how much extra work you want to put in to it but having it rotate would probably solve the compaction problem. Put a steel pipe thru the middle and suspend it on a 2x4 frame off the ground about 4 inches. Add some latches to the top lid and you should be able to spin the container on the axis of the pipe to mix the compost. This should be a lot easier than a fork. The 2/4 frame could have rollers so you can pull it away from the wall and put it back after rotating. You probably wont lose much if any "tea" if you can rotate it fairly quickly. You might have to beef up the pivoit points of the pipe on the sidewalls.

[sugarego]

i don't have any first-hand experience with composting, but since i *want* to compost, i've read a fair bit about it. from what i've read, it seems that certain compost processes get extremely hot. i don't know precisely which conditions create this heat, but i know that it is usually considered a good thing, as it will kill weeds and other undesirable elements. if you do manage to generate this kind of heat in your bin, you will cook your worms.

in fact, i just saw another instructable about vermiculture where the guy had to add a cooling system to keep his worms happy. (although he was in hot & sunny texas, not the UK.)

[finton]

You'll probably find that the worms will just move to a cooler part of the bin (it is not an even temperature all the way through), until the worst of the bacterial decomposition is through and they can move back into the middle of the heap.

[rose.marian]

I live in a small country town in Queensland Australia, and our local council upgraded us to twin-tubbed recycle bins, allowing us to retain the old single tubs for our own purpose. I had thought of a compost bin, and will certainly give this a go. Many thanks.

[awang8]

Something tells me the council won't be too happy about this... At my local hardware store, wheelie bins can cost more than a ready-made compost bin!

[romedeiros1970]

 Yep. Damaging a bin like this is actually illegal in most areas, as the bins are always considered the property of the city or the company handling the waste removal. 
Good job on the transformation, though.

[treesneedtobehugged]

Your lucky you have a green waste program! We have none in phoenix though will try to make one in phoenix

[brian3140]

is there anything green in phoenix to compost? lol :)

[treesneedtobehugged]

Actually i have been reasearching and the city of gilbert which is in Maricopa County or phoenix offers free compost bins! Also the city of tempe does to so if anyone is interested you can visit the city websites.

[lily-bell]

lol.... but a nice pressure wash job is in order.... thx for idea.......

[lily-bell]

" I think this is a neat idea, one could place it in one of those double trash can bins and have excess when you take out trash and "compost-able items"

[lizardknits]

I did something similar, but found I had to add screening behind the aeration holes to keep small wasps from building a home inside my compost bin. I used silicone to hold the screening in place.

[lemonie]

Lovely, I bet the council wouldn't like it if they found out? L