Automatic Compost Sifter – Screen
Sieve – Screen Shaker for Soil and Compost

Over the past few days I’ve been corresponding with another visitor of the site who has his own design.  He sent over a video (below) which really impressed me and I implored him to send me more information and pictures which he kindly did!   Below is the HomeMade Rotary Trommel Screen by Ken:

“I had need for about 6 cubic yards of broken stone to level a steep area on my property.  Because rain water flowed through the area, I wanted just stone, no dirt to impede the water flow.   I have about 1500 cubic yards of broken shale and soil available if I could just screen out the dirt. 

To this end I built my rotary screener out of:

• a 55-gallon steel drum
• 2-24 inch id bicycle rims bolted to the drum.
• 4 caster wheels
• Four 3 foot long bars of 1-1/4 x ¼ steel bars
• A clothes dryer motor and belt
• Some 2 inch angle iron
• 2-8 foot long 2×4 pt lumber
• ½ inch mesh wire cloth.
• 2 inch angle iron
• Miscellaneous flat and v belt idlers

To keep the drum bicycle rims running in the casters, I used the drive belt on the motor/outlet end and a long v-belt bought from home depot for $1.99 on closeout at the inlet end.

I found the drum speed was too fast, around 55 rpm, throwing dirt all over the place, so I added a ¼ hp motor driving the washing machine motor at half speed, which worked out well. Both motor mounts are pivoted so the drive belts are tensioned by motor weight and the bungee cord

I didn’t want to throw the dirt and stones; I wanted them to slide down the screen as they moved toward the outlet. 

I made the screening opening 24 inches long so the dirt would fall down into a wheel barrow or garden tractor trailer and the stone would fall out the end, also into a wheelbarrow or trailer.

I installed the 2 side deflectors so the screenings would only drop straight down and not on the casters or frame of the machine.

I later added four easily removable wheels for ease of movement.

The barrel is tilted by having the inlet end casters raised on a 2×4. 

The barrel is 35 inches long, the machine is 48 inches long.  I originally cut 4 windows in the barrel for the screenings to fall through, added the steel bars and cut out the spaces between the windows to get a full circumference for screening. 

As soon as I get an other barrel, I’ll simply cut it in half and use the bars to space the halves 24 inches apart, making it 59 inches long.  That way I’ll have more space to toss the material in and more overhang on the outlet end to make it easier to position the trailer or wheelbarrow.

The screen wire permanently attached to the barrel can be of a larger opening size, for larger screening and a smaller mesh liner can be laid in and attached with twisted wire ties to the main screen for finer screening.  I used this process with window screen to separate pea gravel from sand. “

A big thanks to Ken for sharing this with us!  If you have any questions or comments please post them below.  Also, if you want to make an article submission for our site please comment below.

We’ve had a lot of interest in the Automatic Compost Sifter – Screen post. One visitor of the site, Richard Buxton, posted a comment and sent a picture. I was so impressed I asked him to submit some more details so I could post it up as its own article. So, below we present the “Son of Sid”:

A sieve-box moves backwards and forwards by means of an electric motor. Sifted material falls through a mesh base and a guide chute into a wheelbarrow below. The sieve-box is hinged to allow debris to be tipped out.

Two open boxes; similar to kitchen drawers but without bases, are nested inside one another and arranged so that the inner box may be tipped up on a piano hinge for clearing any material that does not fall through the mesh.

The two nested boxes have four small, in-line castors underneath to allow lateral movement along two rails. These full-length rails are supported on six anti-vibration mounts (Elasto Mount – AT type) that attach through angle brackets to the inside faces of the long-rails of a supporting table-frame.

Movement is provided by a reciprocating saw clamped to a board and firmly anchored across the running rails. The Saw mechanism is connected by means of a push-pull bar fixed to the outer of the two nested boxes with a gate latch and 10mm bolt.

The reciprocating saw has been modified to disable the original power switch and the simple speed control electronics have been removed and adapted to provide a slower rate of reciprocation. A watertight enclosure fixed to the saw mounting board contains the removed speed controller circuit together with an illuminated on/off switch and a speed adjustment knob as operator controls.

The running rails are joined together by cross batons in the manner of railway sleepers so that all moving components and all anti-vibration mounts act in unison. As the reciprocating mechanism moves so does the sieve-box assembly.

The fitted mesh is ½ inch square but a finer mesh of ¼ inch may be dropped in on a sub frame for a finer particle size.

• Overall dimensions of table-frame: Length1340 – Width 560 – Height 950
• Sieve box: Length 610 – Width 455 – Depth 120
• Original speed 300 – 3000 cycles/min. Modified speed 0 – 200 cycles/min.
• Power consumption estimated to be in the order of 100W

This view shows the sifting box tipped up.

You can also see a rudimentary mudguard covering the castor wheel but some
sifted compost is visible on the running rail so I think I will need to fit full length
mudguards instead of these boy-racer ones.

Son of Sid has a very smooth action
The speed controller is subject to variation due to ambient temperature but luckily the purely
accidental selection of components I used (potentiometer and two resistors) allows me to adjust the speed accordingly.

If I load it too heavily I need to turn the wick up a little to get him running properly and as he empties I can turn it down.

The concept idea came from Sid the Sifter and my motivation was nothing more than laziness.

People often say, “Here’s something I made form bits I had lying around.”
True I did use a few lying around bits but I bought most of it – the most sexpensive of course being the saw
which cost £36 ($52)

This picture shows motor, control box and combined tool store and cup holder. (I am NOT responsible for the brickwork in the background).
Three quarter view. Notice tipping hinge and strain relief bracket on table frame – slotted into carrier box to reduce tipping strain
The Design
Speed controller: The Red Wheel is a combined switch and speed potentiometer - on the full speed setting the switch bypasses the speed control. I removed this control completely – five soldered connections
Speed controller reverse: You can easily see the five joints all in a circle that hold the potientiometer on the circuit board. The new control potentiometer connects to the two pads on the left. I used a 120K linear pot and added ballast resistors by trial and error to get the speed range I wanted. I think the total resistance was close to 850k – up from 500k on the original

A huge thanks to Richard for all the great pictures and information!

It all started back on 5/4/08 when I received the following email:

“Hello Rob,I stole your idea and took it on one stage… hope you like it!  Check out Sid, he’s just doing his job… that’s all!Cheers for the inspiration”Attached was the following video:

I was blown away at the design!   I promptly asked for more a few picture of the mechanism which I received (click thumbnail for larger image):

I also received a little more info:  “I used some old drawer runners for the carriage to slide smoothly and the spinning crank bit is an old component from some office furniture, I think it is a bracket that you bolt a leg onto and then screwed the plate onto the underside of a table/desk top.  Quite good as it has a “Hex” shape recess to take an M10 bolt, so the shaft can’t wear out and start spinning around.”

My only question / suggestion to this amazing design was, “Any thoughts on how to make this so you don’t have to dump out the contents?   I’ve wondered if a gravity fed system with an agitator would work.”

The reply came: “You were so right about the – having to stop every 4 shovels to take out the stones!  A radical free think was required this morning and now Sid sieves, sorts and spits without the need to stop… ever!  I end up with rocks over 1 inch in the barrow and stones between 1/2 – 1 inch in the blue box which I recycle to create the walking areas between the raised beds!”

Here’s an updated video:

WOW, no more shoveling. But it got even better with the next design that did 3 individual sortings at once!!!:

Well, just when I thought I had seen it all, the design got even better:

Just amazing!!!    This beautiful contraption makes my little manual compost sifter look like a couple of dumb boards nailed together.

If you have any comments on this design or would like to share your own version please comment below!

A month ago I discovered my niece has 7 sheep and she needs to get rid of a couple.  I contacted the owner of the property behind our place and the said we were welcome to try out sheep weed abatement, but if the neighbors complained we’d have to get rid of them.

So, here are the new editions to our urban farm:

St. Croix Sheep: Maggie (dark brown) and her son Joey and Leo in the back

We had to separate Maggie from one of her other children and she’s not happy about it.  Her bleating for her other son is not making the neighbors happy (we live in a pretty urban area… there just happens to be an empty lot here) and we’re hoping she’ll calm down soon.

Here’s the “pre sheep” lot (click for larger version)

I’ll continue to take pictures as things progress… that is assuming the neighbors don’t call the animal cops on us.

Anybody bets on how long it will take these sheep to clear the weeds in the 1.5 acre lot?

• Adding gutters to the house
• Plugging holes in the wall with hydraulic cement
• Using 4″ irrigation draining pipes to pull the water as far from the house as possible
• Cleaning up existing irrigation drains and water paths to make a clean exit for the water
• Making some small changes to the grade of the landscape to encourage water away from the house
• Addition of a large sump pit and pump to the basement.

Last year I was unable to fully test the combination of all my efforts because it was a really dry year… well, California (specifically the Bay Area) got slammed over the past 48 hours by one of the worst storms in the last 10 years.

First thing I did when I got home from work was head down into the basement to survey the damage and take some pictures.  Here is what I found (click thumbnail for larger image):

When I got down there I noticed that even though the floor was a little wet, it wasn’t flooded (thank goodness).  I then noticed that the pit was about half full of water and that the water was relatively clear and not completely muddy like it was in the past.  I attribute this to the filter fabric and then gravel I put in around the pit.

Next I noticed where the water was coming from.   On the west side of the basement where I had chiseled out some cracks I never got around to plugging any of them.  In the picture below you can see why the floor is wet in places.  The water is coming through some cracks (about 4 feet high), then running down the wall, then travelling in a “ditch” along the side of the wall and onto the floor.   My thought all along was if I couldn’t plug all the holes adequately I could just channel all the water along the perimeter and into the sump pit:

This is the best picture of all.  This section of the basement was by far the worst.  Water was POURING through the walls and I’ve even got a video of water pouring over the top of the walls.  Well, click on the image below to check out how dry this portion of the basement is:

Things I still need to do:

1. Plug the holes in the west wall.  There are still holes / cracks where the foundation meets the wall, but I’m hoping those are minor
2. Cut a hole in the cap of the pit basin to accommodate the pipe from the pit
3. Finish the plumbing from the pit to the pipe in the wall
4. Pour cement around the outside of the sump pit to clean up the rough edges
5. Continuously monitor for new leaks and plug them
6. Add an emergency water level alarm that will notify me if the sump pit fails
7. Continue to change the grade outside of the basement to take even more water away from the perimeter
8. Possibly adding french drains around the perimeter of the house to remove even more water

I’m really excited about how things have been progressing.  I’d actually like to see the torrential floods continue so I can really put these changes to the test.

One item that is still puzzling me is the whole question around the “water table” around the basement.  My dad never wanted a real pit dug into the floor of the basement because he was worried that once we had one that the water would just come in quicker and we’d be constantly pumping out water until we lowered the local water table.   I’m not totally sure what to be looking for, but so far it hasn’t seemed like the pump is constantly on.

If you know about water tables or have any thoughts / comments on the above please add your comments below!

I took about a cubic yard of compost (yard clippings, kitchen scraps, chicken litter), screened it, and sifted it onto my lawn with a shovel and then used the back of a garden rake to distribute it evenly over a few of the areas that were brown.  I had also read that you can use 1 part compost and 1 part sand as a top dressing to help even out dipped areas in a lawn (slowly adding 1/4 – 1/2 inch of material until it evens out the dip).  Well, I have an area around my water meter that is sunk down a little and I’d like to raise it up.  I mixed the compost with some sand and spread 1/2 inch in a foot radius around the water meter.

Well, about a week and a half later I couldn’t believe my eyes.  The 1 foot radius area around the water meter has sprung to life.  The grass was lush green and had grown about 1/3 as high as the surrounding grass!  You may not be able to see it in the picture, but the transformation was extremely obvious.  Unfortunately I didn’t see the same results in the other areas of the lawn.  The only differences between the two applications were:

1. This area tends to get more water than the other areas I applied the top dressing.

2. The other areas didn’t include any sand.
3. I applied considerably more top dressing to this area (to build up / level the ground) than in the other areas.

So, now I’m here scratching my head.  What was it that caused the transformation?  I’ve discussed this with many people and it comes down to two items:

1. Water retention:  The compost / sand mixture acted as a mulch and kept the water in the soil longer. 
2. Nutrient Addition: I didn’t think compost could deposit nutrients very quickly, but a friend who spend their professional life working for the agriculture department suggested that the nitrogen in the chicken manure could have given the plants a boost.

Maybe I should try a controlled experiment and have marked sections of my lawn setup with areas such as a control section, chicken manure section, fine mulch section, etc.

Post your thoughts & comments on my gardening forum.

A few other issues I’m contending with are regarding the sump pump: First, the sump (the hole in the basement) isn’t very deep, only about 3 inches. Second the basement floor doesn’t drain toward the sump as well as it should. This leaves puddles up to half an inch deep in places. I rigged up the pump float switch so it will turn on sooner and drain the water down further even though we don’t really have much of a sump hole. I also installed a check valve so the water doesn’t drain back into the basement once the motor turns off.

• If I can’t get the water to stop entering the basement I’m going to have to come up with a way to get water to the sump and out of the basement. I’ll probably have to make the hole deeper and possibly wider. My dad was initially concerned that going deeper, thus breaking through the slab floor, would open up another entry point for water. I also need to resolve the puddling issue. I could pour more concrete and try to slope the floor more aggressively towards the sump, but this doesn’t sound like a very easy solution. I did come up with an interesting idea I may try. I’m thinking about utilizing the troughs (pictured here) and building a canal along the entire interior wall that will carry the water into the sump. I don’t know if I would use some kind of rubber or maybe even bricks and adhere / seal them to the basement floor with an epoxy or contractors adhesive (like Liquid Nails). Hopefully it won’t come down to this.

• After quite a few cycles of rain, finding leaks, chiseling, patching and sealing leaks, and then waiting for rain, etc. I decided I’d just patch all the vertical mortar joints in the blocks. After I did this, I noticed that when the next rain came I had successfully stops the ‘big’ leaks. There were still many places where water was leaking into the basement through capillary action in the blocks and through hairline cracks in the poured wall. While this still needs to be addressed, this is much better than the geysers I started out with.

• The next thing we did was to get gutters on the house. The more I investigate, the more I believe that when we get the waterfall effect it is because we don’t have gutters on the house. Gutters won’t solve all our wet basement issues, but they sure will help. Here is a picture of how much water can come off the roof during a really good rain storm:

Update: 7/11/07:
Well, we’ve got gutters on the roof and I’ve done some water management around the house. The goal was to take all the surface water as far away from the house / basement as possible. I was anxious to see the effects this would have on the basement this last winter, but unfortunately it was an unusually dry winter, so while we got a little water in the basement it was nothing compared to previous years. The big project I completed about 2 months ago was the major enlargement of the sump pit. I jackhammered a 36 inch diameter hole through the 18 inch concrete and dug another 2 feet down into the super hard clay. I lined the hole with filter fabric and poured in about 3 inches of gravel. I layed a 2 foot deep 36″ diameter piece of corregated pipe into the hole and poured gravel between the side of this pipe and the filter fabric. I fully expect that this will significantly effect the amount of water sill coming in through tiny cracks in the walls but I doubt there is enough drainage along the walls / bottom of the basement to eliminate the water pressure completely. Below is a pic of the new sump pit:

Basement Waterproofing Pages: 1 & 2

Before the rains started I did some inspecting. I discovered that MANY of the vertical joints in the cinder blocks were without mortar. Looks like the hydrostatic pressure and erosion over the years had taken their toll. I began to chisel out some of these joints to prepare them for hydraulic cement. I decided to put this on hold until I could see where the water was getting in. Nobody ever went down in the basement while it was raining and I was very curious what was going on.• And the rains came: I wasn’t expecting to have water in the basement so quickly. I had assumed that the water was only getting in through the walls through the blocks. The slab floor and the first three feet of the walls were suppose to have been one pour so I expected they were ’safe’. Well, whatever the case, I was getting water in through the joint between the floor and wall. See the image below. Notice the “trough” that goes around the whole inner wall of the basement. You can also see the discoloration in the water where new water is entering into the basement.
• And the floods came: A week later we got hit with a huge storm. About 4 inches were dumped within an hour or so and the basement was a sieve! The water was literally spraying in, especially in the corner pictured below. All the rest of the basement just had slightly damp walls with some minor leaking. This was definitely where the biggest problem lied.

• I decided now was my chance to see how well the hydraulic cement worked. I found a chiseled out hole where water was spraying in. I mixed up the cement as suggested, rolled it into a ball and pressed it against the wall… Well, my first attempt failed miserably. I must not have put enough pressure, or fumbled too long with my cement ball but either way it got too wet and just came all apart. I tried again and attacked the wall much faster and pressed hard for 2 minutes (not so easy to do holding your hands above your head). It worked! Not really as clean as I had hoped, but if done correctly, and if the conditions exist (for example not in a tight area) then this could be a life saver.

• A few days later I went back down into the basement. The water had stopped spraying and now I knew exactly where to chisel and what holes to seal. I mixed up some hydraulic cement, but much wetter than they suggest, more like an oatmeal consistency. I forced it into the cracks as best I could with a trowel. NOTE: You gotta work FAST with this stuff. It really does set up quickly. Even when it is soupy it still only gives you about 3 minutes of play time. I probably should have chiseled out more cracks and plugged more holes, but I didn’t have time.

• The rains came again: Not as hard and as fast as last time, but enough to show me how well my plugs were holding up. First thing I noticed was that the water wasn’t spraying and that there wasn’t any water coming from the main holes as it was before. I did notice that the water had found other avenues of entry which I marked with chalk.

• Again I waited for the rains to die down and the water to stop dribbling in (yes, dribbling is much better than pouring). Oh, and good news, in a week or so we’ll have gutters on the house!

• I chiseled out the marked areas and filled them in with hydraulic cement. I also attempted to plug the hole in the floor where water was still pouring in pretty quickly. As before, because of the amount of water and difficulty of access I couldn’t get the cement to work its magic. I figured I probably could get it to work if I got a huge ball and plopped it down there, but I opted to be patient and fill it in as I had the others. Here is the updated picture (I would have done more but ran out of cement).

On to Page 3

Well, the bad news is that we never had gutters on the house and we live in a pretty low area. Long story short, our basement turns into an indoor swimming pool every winter.

Don’t believe me? See here:

Yup, that’s about 5 feet of water. Want to see worse? Here is a video of what happens when it rains REALLY hard and the water pours from under the garage slab and into the basement:

Big problem, what do I do?

We’re not sure what we want to do with the basement but the final decision will be based on how well we can keep water out. Keep in mind that we are trying to avoid digging around the outside of the basement because of the cost and because of the difficulty in accessing the exterior walls of the basement (half of which are under the garage and house.

I fully understand that the first order of business is to get the water away from the house. This includes adding gutters to the house and pulling the water as far away from the foundation as possible. We’re hoping to also grade the land so that the water has more of a tendency to go away from the house instead of right to it.

Here is my order of attack:

DEFINATELY going to do:
• Get as much water away from the house as possible with gutters and drain pipes.
• Seal the big cracks / holes in the wall with hydraulic cement.

Other Options:
• Seal the interior with Xypex, or similar product for waterproofing concrete.
• Dry wells outside of the basement to pump away as much water around the exterior of the walls as possible.
• Just allow the water to enter the basement and pump it out.

The only thing I won’t try is Dryloc type products. I have nightmares of this stuff bubbling up and then having to remove it to try something else.

Next Page –> My plan of attack on our wet basement!

About a year ago I was really getting into compost. I’ve got heavy clay soil and compost does an excellent job of loosening up the soil for my vegetable garden.

Mother nature will compost pretty much anything if you give her enough time. Well, I’m pretty impatient so I’m doing all I can to speed up the process. In the backyard I went to our leaf pile where we’ve been dumping leaves for years. Under about a foot of leaves is some stuff that looks like it is completely
composted.

Well, with the addition of our new chickens we’ve not only got egg machines, but poopin’ machines too! I’ve rekindled my obsession with a nice hot cooking compost pile. Below is a picture of our pooping machines and out bio-stack compost bins (two of them).

I also created a compost sifter to help me make perfect compost. Click here for the whole story:

A few weeks ago I took the pine shavings and chicken poo / manure from the bottom of my chicken coop and mixed it with a bag of freshly mown lawn clippings. I mixed them together really well and added some water (from our flooded basement). After a few hours the pile was cooking at about 130 degrees.

Well, I waited until my grass / pine shavings / chicken poo pile had cooled down and then I turned it. Boy did I turn it good! While turning it I noticed that much of the grass was still green and that there were still many shavings so I was good on greens and browns. Moisture still looked good too. I figured all it needed was some more air and a little mixing and it would heat up again, but 24 hours later I’m still at 70 degrees?

Greens: check
Browns: check
Moisture: check
Air: check
Mixed: check

So, what am I missing?

Some friends suggested that I add some more “greens” to the pile. I had just mowed the lawn, but decided to not catch the clippings, but let them mulch / compost back into the grass.  Many people also praise the magic of used coffee grounds as an excellent source of nitrogen and it really gets the pile cooking. I called up the neighborhood StarBucks (they have a program for giving out bags of grounds for composting) and went and picked some up. They gave it to me in a plastic bag that was inside a plastic crate. I went to my cooled down pile and mixed in the coffee grounds. I stuck the thermometer in and am waiting for the results…

I went out to check the next day and found a PLETHORA of new little bugs. Turns out they are mites.  I was originally very worried about these little guys for my chickens sake, but learned that these ones only feast on dead plant matter or other little bugs. The temp had gone up, but just by a little. So far I’m not amazed at the results, but I’ll keep playing with them and maybe get a bag or two to do more testing.

When the pile of compost isn’t cooking the worms come in to do their job:

Check out my new article on lawn top dressing and then visit www.TheEasyGarden.com

Update, 4/27/09:
Found millions of tiny bugs in our raised planter.  I think they are from the compost since they aren’t on any of our new plants.  Check them out:

Hopefully there will be some good hints from the garden forum.