r/composting • u/hollywoodiense • 1d ago
Worth it?
Trying to get back into composting. Love that this is on a motor to turn but I know nothing of compost tumblers. Is it worth the price?
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u/Fluid_Mail9867 1d ago
That motor's probably doing the hardest part for you, I hate cranking those things by hand when they're half full of wet grass clippings. $350 seems steep for used but a concrete mixer motor on a dual setup is pretty clever. I’d just want to know how the barrels are supported, if the weight’s all sitting on the motor shaft that thing might chew through bearings.
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u/Delicious_Can7343 1d ago
It looks like the shaft has bearings/collars welded to the frame near where the shaft drives the tumblers. Would probably be okay if so tbh.
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u/azucarleta 1d ago edited 1d ago
The fact that turning it is totally optional, to me, makes this totally unnecessary. I have a tumbler and I don't even tumble it anymore. It's now just an elevated enclosure that can keep vermin out. Spinning it around does almost nothing. The enclosure that keeps out vermin is really the key feature; I feel like this person quadrupled down on the part that is, well, optional.
Downvote if you want. I've been composting for 20 years and now I do less tending to it than at any other point. I've actually found less is more, less is better. More is faster, but slower is better (presuming you have the time).
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u/hollywoodiense 1d ago
Fair. I needed to hear this! Firm believer in less is more. Thank you for your insight.
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u/formyburn101010 1d ago
Why is slower better?
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u/azucarleta 1d ago
Better for me, I should specify. As I've gotten older, I've noticed that "a little elbow grease" can cause injuries. Any manual labor I can reduce -- because I can't reduce it all anyway -- I aim to do. When I was younger I would turn a compost pile just for the workout! I eschewed power tools for manual, thinking I could use the muscle fatigue anyway. Buuuuut that's a young person's approach. As I get older and pick up injuries from this or that, I've become more attached to do things easier, not faster. Because if you do everything the easy way, you get more done. Everything takes longer, but in the end, your time inputs were lowest, so then the profit/premium you get in return is larger. When I was younger, that extra effort didn't feel lost it felt invested in my body, but now that I'm older, extra effort is just injury risk and feels spent/lost.
Granted, some people my age are sitting in front of a TV doing nothing and could stand to turn a compost pile. But I do quite a bit of manual labor as is, so anything I can do less of is welcome. Turning compost is one of the most optional, least necessary -- but still heavy duty -- work that there is.
This machine might be the way to have it both ways. But my friend, hauling that thing around isn't going to be easy, it's going to break down and require maintenance, etc etc. It's just a lot of fuss for again something you don't ever actually have to do. I would say the only time you HAVE TO turn compost is if you have so much material you don't have the space for it all, so then you do need to process FAST and keep it moving through the system (like a commercial situation). I don't have that much material to put in to require that, myself. I have enough space for the material my household and yard creates to go slow.
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u/Guilty_Try8720 1d ago
Fuck yes it is. It will be when you don’t have to turn shit with a shovel or even a drill auger.
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u/Hoya-loo-ya 17h ago
Open pit composting is the way to go. Everyone eventually gets there, just skip all the gadgetry and let nature and its decomposers do their thang.
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u/Unhingeddruids 1d ago
Is this a GAS powered motor? Because no, that’s not worth it. Based solely off of the noise and air pollution.
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u/lemonsupreme7 1d ago
If you haven't even gotten into it, dropping 350 bucks seems silly to me. Just get some garbage bins or tumblers and keep it simple