SM>I have to ask Chris.  Where to you find all the space for your 
ingenious 
                            Bin towers 
This is a melange of the individual pails and the continuous 
feed. We aim to get a bigger volume in a smaller footprint while 
maintaining the continuous feed. 
                    We build a tower of pails. 
The bottom pail differs from all the other pails in two respects: 
(1) it has a doorway cut out of the base at one side. This door 
makes composted soil accessible; it needs to be large enough to 
trowel, and to scrape composted soil from the inside edges of the 
pail. About five inches square should do it. (2) it retains a 
base. 
That said, prepare all pails as follows: remove the base of the 
pail except for a rim about one-inch wide. Soil will easily drop 
through the pail, except for a small amount which will ctach on 
the ledge. The ledge serves to strenghten the bottom rim. Drill 
four holes at ninety-degree intervals around the rim, exactly one 
inch from the top of the pail. 
Pass two quater-inch rods through these holes at right-angles, 
making a crude platform on which the upper bin can sit. Place the 
first bin on an impervious mat, such as a tray or garbage bag. 
Load it half-full with soil (so as not to have raw garbage 
spewing out the doorway immediately!) and then top up with worms, 
soil and scraps. 
When the first bin is full, place the second bin on top, resting 
on the cross-rods of the first bin. Continue loading with soil, 
worms and scraps. 
Continue adding pails until your tower is complete. Now soil and 
worms can be recycled from the base to the top as wastes are 
added. 
Excess soil falling out of the doorway will generally found to be 
free of worms, as they scurry inwards to escape the light. This 
soil is, therefore, directly suitable for pasteurising and 
potting. 
The bottom bin could have a shedding-platform made by fastening a 
plastic disc about half the diameter of the pail to a set of 
cross-rods halfway down the pail. Soil cascades off this platform 
down the sides of the pail and collects at the bottom, leaving an 
air-space above. Worms may not be able to escape this pile. 
Dismantling the tower is just as easily achieved as with the 
continuous-feed tube. We shovel mixture from the base into 
numbered supermarket plastic bags, dismantle and re-errect the 
tower, then reintroduce the material in composted sequence. The 
tower can start with the simple base and new units added as pails 
are obtained, or as volume of waste rises. 
If stability is thought to be a problem, four or five one-inch 
square timbers some six feet in length can be strapped around the 
outside of the pails, making a paling enclosure. 
christopher.greaves@ablelink.org     www.interlog.com/~cgreaves
 * 1st 2.00b #6263 * Don't Brake!
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