Could Your Compost Bin Heat Your Home? | Home Design Find
RSS

Home Design Find

No Comments »

Could Your Compost Bin Heat Your Home?

compost heating2 green
We are familiar with nature being used to warm a home with all kinds of simple tech ideas that leverage what nature does naturally.

For example, passive solar design with thermal storage exposes a thermal mass behind large windows on the south side of a home, uses the heat of the sun soaked into concrete or adobe, and given off slowly.This utilizes natural elements, sunshine, and the tendency of certain materials to hold heat for a long time.
compost heating1 green
This garden shed does that of course, but what if we took using nature one step further? Compost also gives off heat.

Why not capture that free heating – an idea first proposed decades ago (but using manure-based compost – smelly!) – and use it to warm a building?
compost heating4 green
Greg Denisiuk of Wachter Architects in Chicago worked with Michael Waechter, Charlie Friedlander and Peter Bowman at Waechter Architects to design a prototype as a garden shed – ideally in a community garden in a park, and using vermiculture (composting with worms) as the type of compost. Vermiculture does not smell at all, or rather, it gives off a wonderful fresh earthy smell.

As you see in their detailed diagrams, the heat is supplied both under the floor and in the back wall. Yard waste is easily shoveled in, and forms a ground layer of warmth beneath the floor.
compost heating3 green
A park was chosen because plenty of fallen leaves, grass clippings and yard waste can be endlessly supplied in such an environment.A restaurant that chops up a lot of raw fruit or vegetables could also make a lot of compostable material. (A vegetarian restaurant or fruit shake purveyor in a park – perfect!)

So many ways to build green!

Via Honest Architecture

You can receive our articles for free in your email inbox or subscribe to our RSS feed. Just enter your email below for the email subscription:

| Buy | Print

Leave a Comment