I can tell you with absolute assurance that if those pictured bins are "stable", and established, you could bring them in the house with you.

Put em in a closet, or the laundry room, or on a shelf in the bathroom. Anywhere.

A good way: those under-bed plastic storage containers can be made into wonderful worm bins and they'll utilize all that wasted space under the bed.

chuckiebtoo

FWIW: If you spouse isn't as into worms as you, the under-the-bed storage technique may be inappropriate for your situation.

@CB2 - Garage is as "inside" as they are allowed. :)

Are all of those delicious egg cartons for the worms? Lucky worms.

I have an aquarium heater with adjustable setting, & a compost thermometer in the brewing bucket. Temperature is 70 degrees. At present the brew is 4+ gallons of HM tea + fish powder, kelp & molasses. Castings will go in either 24 or 36 hours before 10 am Wednesday. Nature is promising a little sun and not much rain for the day the roses are supposed to get their medicine.

I'm working on housing the buckets for efficient use of heat.

EQ Good catch on egg cartons. I didn't "see" them. Wondered what it/they were.
cb How many hours @ 70 degrees ? ( 2 cups VC/castings) ?

Has anyone ever experimented with using hot water bottles to add heat to bins or tea in the cooler months?

I often see advice given to use frozen water bottles when a bin is too hot. Why not add something warm or hot for a cold bin....or brew.

I am thinking sealed mason jars or plastic jugs. Experiment with different temps and rotation frequencies.

How about a 2 quart mason jar filled with hot/ warm water and a small thermometer to drop in a bucket of tea?

For your bin heat charity, I think this heat sink idea would be safer and more efficient. If you lay a piece of folded newspaper on top of the bed, then a gallon jug of warm or hot water, I think the verd would be very happy. Top off the bin FULL with bedding, straw, or? for insulation to keep heat in.

Maybe a used thermos bottle could be re-purposed as a heat sink. In the bin or dropped in brew , It would provide a long lasting but lower temperature heater.

Any thoughts?

Pete

This post was edited by mendopete on Sun, Jan 18, 15 at 14:30

"Any thoughts?"

My poor cold cellar worms.

The pumpkin I fed the is acting like it is in a refrigerator.

Well at least it creates a desire for springtime.

I was putting a pair of gallon jugs of hot water in the cooler I was using for worms on the patio. It did a good job of staying 70ish even when overnight.temps hit 30, but i had to change out the jugs daily. That got old so I drug it into the garage where it stays warm enough.

Yes, the egg cartons are all for the worms. I have another six foot stack of egg flats just out of the picture. I get them from my church that goes through a few flats a week. I've been stocking up for some time on the cartons because I'm looking to expand my bins quite a bit.

@Pete - You mention safety. Can you share what your concern is? I have a room thermometer on the top shelf. The max temp is 90*. The tarp isn't air tight so it doesn't get overheated anywhere and the tarp isn't remotely hot to the touch.

I'm sorry Charity, I should have expressed my safety concern before suggesting alternatives.

Quote from NFPA report on electrical fires issued April 2013:
"In 2011, an estimated 47,700 home structure fires reported to U.S. fire departments involved some type of electrical failure or malfunction as a factor contributing to ignition. These fires resulted in 418 civilian deaths, 1,570 civilian injuries, and $1.4 billion in direct property damage. In 2007-2011, home electrical fires represented 13% of total home structure fires, 18% of associated civilian deaths, 11% of associated civilian injuries, and 20% of associated direct property damage".

Not to lecture, but as a retired career firefighter your photo makes me cringe a little. I'm not comfortable with a heat lamp in a adapted confined space, held with a spring clamp (I think), and the bulb pointed up so something flammable could fall on it. Reminiscent of pics in fire prevention, education, and investigation courses taken years ago.
I know there are safer and more efficient ways to heat your verd with electricity, such as seed mats or rope cables. It would be terrible to cause a fire heating worms.

Pete

I had the same thought Pete but could never have expressed it so completely as you did.

Was thinking of having that lamp pointing down at the floor but it looks to be a linoleum type flooring, on bare concrete it would hold heat well.

The other thing I was wondering, I know Charitycomposter mentioned a thermometer on the top shelf, did you mean thermostat? Something that would actually control the heat rather than monitor it? Just thinking that with a heat source (that of course is well protected from overheating anything combustible) and a thermostat to control that source from just running all the time it should work out well.

Years ago I got some thermostat controllers from Charlies Greenhouse supplies that work great, these are adjustable though you can also get thermocubes factory set at different ranges. Both of these are plug in so no wiring involved.

Have to also say, I like your thinking on paying things forward. This is the way we are and a big part of why we are learning the things that haven taken our interest lately. Gardening to grow food for us/others/chickens/worms, worms to assist in the gardening, mealworms for the chickens, chickens for meat and eggs. All together it becomes things we can do for ourselves and others.

It would be great if you could use the egg cartons whole and not have to tear them up.

I tear mine up when watching vermicomposting youtubes. I keep a huge Tupperware bowl in my lap.

Take out coffee trays are another source for this type of cardboard.

Many have posted of heating their bins with sting lights in those see through tubes. They set it in a framework and set the bin on top. The stores are probably 90% off.

Pete - No lecture heard. Thanks for the insight, especially from someone with years of expertise in that arena.

Insulated brew in a good sized cooler with added insulation.
Lid doesn't close on a 5 gallon bucket.
Next winter batch will be 3 gallons, so the cooler lid will close.

Without a microscope I haven't any way of knowing what
got brewed. But the roses got it: whatever it was.

On openbugfarm I saw a setup someone there used for keeping mealworms warm. It was a immersion heater for aquariums in a 5 gallon bucket and the water was circulated through plastic tubing to disperse the heat.

Might be a very safe and economical way of heating indoor and even outdoor worm beds if electricity is available at the site. I am kicking it around as a bed heater for seeding trays in the greenhouse as heating cables and mats are quite expensive for any number of trays.

I am thing of using solar heat. A large copper pipe (6" o. d.) X 10ft long on top of my garage with hoses run to the beds and through them. I have solar panels for my electricity. A bank of 12volt batteries supply my power to the lights etc.

Nexev:

How did that setup make the water move ?

Barbara, they used a submersible fountain pump.

I have some of these pumps I keep on hand for coolant circulation on diamond cutting machines with a 1/2" outlet on them. They are quite inexpensive so I buy the like 10 at a time and keep extras on the shelf.

He used a smaller one and the way he manifolded it using the small tubing caused a lot of restriction. He balanced it by using the valves to close down the first ones on the run. Better to come off the pump with a larger line then manifold off the smaller lines. Easy to remember is twice the diameter 4 times the volume so a 1/2" line can supply 4 1/4" lines.

He also used a 50w heater. There is not much difference in cost in the 50, 100, 200 and 300w versions of these heater, all between $20 and $30 so the important part would be how much you want to spend running it, of course this is also going to determine how much heat is going to be pumped into the bed. Here a kwh (kilowatt hour or one kilowatt for one hour) is about $0.25 and a kilowatt is 1,000w so a 100w heater will use 1 kwh running constantly for 10 hours.

If run from sunup to sundown through the winter that would be about 14hrs a day so for a 200w cost to run would be maxed around $21 a month, 100w $10.50 and 50w $5.25 each month. That is assuming they run the whole time, they have thermostats for the water temperature so if they are able to elevate the soil temperature enough so the return water comes up in heat then they will shut off until the water in the bucket cools back down to the on temp, maybe bury the bucket right in the bed? Remember my mind is always on free worms, in something like Charitycomposters warm closet above it could sit on one of the shelves so the heat it sheds is inside of the enclosure.

I think it would be fun to setup all three sizes and run them along side each other and monitor ground temperatures compared to a set of controls like bare ground, 12" straw. 12" manure.

For an outdoor worm bed or for heating the greenhouse beds I am thinking of burying a 1/2" pvc manifold.

OhSoSlow, the issue I would have with using solar is when you are getting the heat. Solar is going to warm during the day and you want the heat at night. You could probably do some earth storage by putting the heat down into the ground with the trick being to figure out how deep to put it so that is rises back up through the night and doesnt cook the worms during the day.

If you put a circulation loop a couple feet deep it would probably work quite well but any shallower I would think it would warm the surface of the soil too much during the day and lose it quickly as the temperature drops.

Here is a link that might be useful: Circulated water heating system

This post was edited by Nexev on Sat, Jan 24, 15 at 11:27

Nexev do fish tank heaters still sometimes get stuck in the on position like they did in the old days? If so, sometimes aquarists would use a couple of lower watt heaters to prevent fish boils.

I was always worried about the combination of glass, water and electricity.

I always hated when I would adjust the temperature on the heater and accidentally click the heater against the glass side of the tank and hear that noise that means I cracked the water heater tube. I bet fish tank heaters have improved along with everything else in the aquarium hobby in the past thirty years. At a recent fish show I was shocked at how far the hobby has progressed and how things that used to be a big problem are now solved. Those hollow rocks are pure genius. No more does providing fish nice places to hide have to use up a lot of water space.

Cant answer to their reliability Equinox. As you noted though most of that electronics stuff has come a long ways both in performance and price. Seems I read some reviews where folks were talking about having them in service for some years.

Good point on using them together, one advantage other than the backup would be in setting one slightly higher than the other so that if one can keep up with the needs the other wont run.

Been thinking more about this through the morning and how nice it would be to lay in some 8" pipe a foot deep then circulate through that. I happen to have quite a bit of that in SDR30 (green sewer pipe). Just need to figure out how to seal the ends as I dont have caps or plugs. I could put in about 40' in the one long bed (16' long x 4' wide) and have over 100 gallons of heated water a foot beneath the surface.

Thinking this would make for a great seed starting bed and a worm bed too. If I could keep ground temperature around 70 or higher all winter for under $100 I think it would pay for itself in many ways. Late winter greens, worms and Dave the lone Coturnix Quail who lives there would not have to stay huddled in the strawberries to stay warm.