Self-Airing Compost Aerator Lung

I am passionate about recycling, but not willing to spend too much time in airing my compost. Traditional aerator is hard work, because you will need to turn and twist it every so often to make sure that it got enough air to breathe.

I stumble across a compost Aeration Lung after helping my brother installing his self aerating compost bin, so I made a replica and never looked back.

Plus this doesn't cost any money apart from some electricity and elbow grease to get it going. You will have to fork out some money to get the traditional aerator with continuous hard work.

Material:

• Thick PET plastic bottle x4
• Empty toilet roll

Tools:

• Heat Gun
• Acto knive
• Drill

Strip off the marking on the bottle. Then cut the top part off and the bottom part. This part is used for the pipe.

Once the top and bottom had been cut off, you end up with a cylinder. My bottle is quite big, so I sliced this into 2 pieces. If your bottle is small you might not have to cut it into two. You can use the heat gun to shrink it a little bit by inserting the toilet roll inside the tube. Be careful as the plastic will melt and it is quite hot so wear gloves that can protect your hand and fingers.

Slide the half into the empty toilet roll and head both end of the plastic until it joined.

WARNING: The plastic will melt before it will join together, so exercise caution and make sure you wear some gloves.

Once you have two tube, join them together using heat gun, again exercise care.

Once the tube joined, made another pair and repeat the process above again.

Drill holes between the two tube about 1-2 inches apart.

The aerator hat is to widen the pipe's surrounding area so that the holes are not covered and choked, thus allowing the air to circulate more freely.

To make the aerator hat, cut another bottle around the middle about 1/3 from the top and remove the neck of the bottle.

Then attach the hat to the top tube using the hot air gun.

WARNING: again, this process will melt the plastic bottle, so exercise caution to make sure you didn't get burned and wear some gloves. Gloves will protect your hand and also allow you to shape and move the joint so that it stick the way you want it.

Once you are done with joining the hat, you should have two pairs of tubes each with it's own hat.

Now you will need to join them together to make it one long aerator tube.

If you compost bin is quite long, you might need to have one more pair of tubes and hat.

For mine this is quite sufficient with two pairs.

Once done, you need to dig up hole in the middle to stick the aeration lung in then just continue with you normal compost mix. For best result you need to balance the Carbon and Nitrogen ration C:N. This can be done with the following:

• One layer of organic household waste
• One layer of garden waste (the mowed grass is the best as it is rich of Nitrogen) Grass has an N-P-K value of 4-1-2 when it’s still green and moist and fresh.
• Shred a few pages of paper (carbon) you can get from news paper or from your paper shredder, but not too much.

Your compost will tell you what it needs. Too much nitrogen and the pile will start to stink; too much carbon and decomposition will slow down dramatically.

I hope you enjoyed this post and Happy composting without having the hard work.