Commercial Compost from Chip's

[DDM]

Have any of you ever thought about setting up a commercial Compost pile for profit? I have plenty of property to set one up and an un ending supply of chips.
Several of the local landscape supply yards here are always looking for compost.

 

[ASD]

we looked in to it but hear in ca. their are a lot of regs. check with all your state depo's first !air quality / zoning / ag depo / if you plan on selling it you may find as we did lots of regs and paper work!!!!!!!!

 

[treeman82]

Best situation I could figure on would be to haul the chips back to your yard along with other materials, bring in a grinder / screener once you have enough material and then once processed sell it back to your customers, the leftovers going to a supply yard, nursery, etc.

 

[CaseyForrest]

Your chips arent going to break down fast enough for what you want to be feasible. We have a compost center where I work. It takes approximately 6 months from building windrows to final screen. Thats with a 50/50 mix of still green matter (whatever is brought in through-out the growing season, yard waste, etc) and leaves from the fall season. Most of anything larger than 1.5" never actaully breaks down, and ends up getting spread on side slope of the landfill. Youd need quite an operation to succesfully compost. And Im sure there are regs. and restrictions about run-off, odor. BUT, you can also get grants and tax breaks for running a compost facility.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

I knew a guy who landed a nice paying contract to clean out the stalls at a horse track - Santa Anita in California. All by itself, it was a nice moneymaker.

He took the hay & horse apples out to his property in the boonies, where he ran a composting operation. Tree companies paid him to accept their chips (yes, they delivered to him), and between that and the racetrack stuff, he made a nice profit selling compost.

Nice work when you can get it!

 

[DDM]

Dave I would just pile them up on an acre or two and let them age. If the chips are not turned it will take 3 years or so until they really start breaking down. By that time maybe you will have a better idea of what to do with them.

I figure it will take probably 3 yrs for a pile to mature.But i can turn them once a month i believe Turning them and adding lime speeds up the process considerably.

 

[treeman82]

You could bring in a grinder once you have a BIG pile to reduce particle size. That will cut into your profits, but it will also speed things up in the decay process and create a saleable mulch product at the same time.

 

[kf_tree]

the staten island landfill accepted chips for a while since they needed virgin soil to cap the dump. all the chips were plied in row's and they had these machines where the wheels went on the side of the piles and a big roter spun and rotated the pile. they also invested in this huge 1,000,000.00 grinder and stopped taking chips. now a couple million in equipment just sits there, what a waiste.

 

[john T]

the staten island landfill accepted chips for a while since they needed virgin soil to cap the dump. all the chips were plied in row's and they had these machines where the wheels went on the side of the piles and a big roter spun and rotated the pile. they also invested in this huge 1,000,000.00 grinder and stopped taking chips. now a couple million in equipment just sits there, what a waiste.

Yep.

The Fresh Kills Landfill.

And , Boy does it stink in the Summer....

 

[kf_tree]

Yep.

The Fresh Kills Landfill.

And , Boy does it stink in the Summer....

so john do you live near the isle of staten? or just down wind
who were you trying to buy a saw from down there?

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I figure it will take probably 3 yrs for a pile to mature.But i can turn them once a month i believe Turning them and adding lime speeds up the process considerably.

Liming would take away much of your proffit, the best thing to do is add a startter to the piles. That is partially composted material. then mix it all together.

Sartting, turning, then maintaining good moisture is all you really nead to do to get them to braek down. Adding some high N stuff, like manure may help too. If you can get it free.

One way I saw it done was as they used a medium screener to get the marketable material out of the piles, then mixed the old corse stuff with the new chip.

If you get it going then you can provide a place for the local landscapers to dump thier cleanup waste, for a small fee of course. Say $10 a load as you get started

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I figure it will take probably 3 yrs for a pile to mature.But i can turn them once a month i believe Turning them and adding lime speeds up the process considerably.

Liming would take away much of your proffit, the best thing to do is add a startter to the piles. That is partially composted material. then mix it all together.

Sartting, turning, then maintaining good moisture is all you really nead to do to get them to braek down. Adding some high N stuff, like manure may help too. If you can get it free.

One way I saw it done was as they used a medium screener to get the marketable material out of the piles, then mixed the old corse stuff with the new chip.

If you get it going then you can provide a place for the local landscapers to dump thier cleanup waste, for a small fee of course. Say $10 a load as you get started

 

[CaseyForrest]

Well, if you are TRYING to make compost, turning when the temp in the windrow reaches about 140 degrees is neccesary. The high temp can kill the bacteria actually doing the work.

 

[badcars2]

in my experience, and i have been making compost for several years. pile pile of wood chips and only wood chips will result in a pile of rotten wood chips, not compost. you need greens in their, proper moisture, manure too , as mentioned above. when compost is working properly, there is no smell at all. keep all the bacteria happy, turn the pile regularly and it will be happy. youll know it working the first sub freezing morning you look out and their is steam rolling off the pile!

 

[smokechase II]

They have a large composting facility next to SunRiver Oregon that appears to do a great job. They use grey water, big 5' diameter plastic tubes, smaller chips (they don't care for brush - prefer tree material), pre-treat in rotating piles and so forth. I think there is a lot to getting a quality product in a timely fashion.
One thing we determined a few years ago was that chip piles larger than 7 foot were generating temps high enough that we thought it was possible for spontaneous combustion. So turning those larger piles would seem to have some merit for additional reasons.

 

[CaseyForrest]

We've had several fires at our compost facility, nice thing is they are slow burners, mostly smolder, sometimes flare up.