Was there any bedding mixed in with the manure? Straw, sawdust, shavings, that kind of thing.

Lloyd

A very small amount of straw.

I looked closer at your bin (nice bin btw), it appears to contain a lot of wood chips and some appear to be quite large. I've never used wood chips as a 'by itself' carbon but I'm going to guess that this is why the pile won't heat up.

Wood and straw are high lignin content materials and are some of the most difficult to digest. The initial high heat bloom you obtained was a result of the rapid digestion of the greens (manure, kitchen scraps) and the easy carbons, once those were readily digested, the heat fell off.

A lot of the commercial composting operations use wood chips as an aid to aeration (porosity) as opposed to a carbon source for thermophilic composting. These wood chips are usually screened out and re-used again as an aeration aid or as a top covering for odor containment.

But I could be completely wrong.

Lloyd

Dunno. It had less than a week at high temperatures. Don't see how it could have burned through everything that fast.

And those wood chips are from a tree cutting service, so while there's lots of big chips, there's lots of small ones too, as well as all the leaves. There's no shortage of extra-small carbon.

"It had less than a week at high temperatures."

I had two large tumblers do exactly this (155F for three days then phfffftt) using straw as my sole source carbon with nice fresh grass clippings. Even after I added more clippings I couldn't get the heat I am accustomed to. I ended up hanging my head in shame, emptying them and starting over with shredded leaves. I feel for you.

Lloyd

Crap.

Well, I don't want to give up on the pile quite yet, mostly since I've no place to put all that crap. So sawdust and leaves, and maybe some fresh manure?

Have you tried peeing on the pile? I've never gone that route but I've seen lots of recommendations for it and theoretically the high nitrogen leads to high temperatures. Might be worth a try.

Question about your bin, are the slats just palleting boards and it looks like the bottom of the near side is removable?

Lloyd

Those are old 2x4's (ripped in half) from some demolition work I did on the house some years back. Yes, the front bottom comes off, makes it real easy to invert the contents or scoop out the bottom. There's a second identical bin behind it, with a few inches of airspace in between.

Although, if I had to do it over again, I'd arrange things with removable panels on two opposite sides. With just the one, it's hard to get at compost at the bottom in the back.

Our compost pile is in the open, and I fork off the uncomposted materials on the top, every spring, around mid-April, and dig out the finished compost, from the pit on the bottom. I imagine that you will have finished compost by next spring. Do you have an immediate need for finished compost?

Don't stress...I'm a new composter too and I had the same thing happen this year. My pile was steamy and decomposing, then it got very wet during the big winter rains we got here in southern california and....nothing. I thought I had blown it. I followed the advice of some of the great people on this site and I turned the pile, added a bunch fresh grass clippings, and within a couple of days it was back to steamy. What had happened was that the rain had compressed the pile so it was too wet and wasn't aerated enough. My pile is now in its curing stage, and i've begun filtering it into some really beautiful black rich compost.... Your pile will decompose. You might just need to make some minor adjustments.

Hi everyone.
What Lloyd said.:-)

I don't have any advice, but I wanted to say:

emanresu eht evol.

I think you need more greens. I also use molasses to kick up the microbes. Just buy some unsulphured molasses at the grocery store and mix a tablespoon of it with a couple of gallons of water and pour it on the pile.

You can use molasses as a sticker in your compost tea spray or any foliar feeding spray so it's a multi-purpose item.

That compost is either too wet or the Carbon to Nitrogen ratio is out of whack and needs adjustment. There is no need for a vent in a 3 x 3 compost pile since air will infiltrate into that material with no problem.

magma displacement

The new stuff I add, would I be better off keeping it mostly together in the center of the pile, or spreading at all throughout?

I know it is easier said than done, but if it won't kill you, always mix everything,
you get much faster results (better too ;-)

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Get the wood chips out of the pile, they have no place in a compost heap.
Dampen the pile and turn it regularly, but not too often.
A little more nitrogen added material such as grass clippings should re-start the cooking process.
There has to be days of lower heat levels when the pile is cooking and breaking down what is at the level its at so constant reading will put in your mind something's wrong....it is not wrong, just biding its time for more added material to get it going hotter.
Add more, check less.

Alternatively - just forget it. You'll get compost either way, eventually.