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Compost "Furnace" Kept His House Warm
When Richard Morton lived in Alaska more than 30 years ago, he made and used a hot water heating system that was powered by compost.
He built an 8 by 8-ft. concrete room next to his house, with a sealed walk-in door and a grid of plastic hot water pipes in the insulated floor. As he recalls, the 1-in. dia. pipes
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Compost "Furnace" Kept His House Warm ENERGY Alternative Fuels 32-1-3 When Richard Morton lived in Alaska more than 30 years ago, he made and used a hot water heating system that was powered by compost.
He built an 8 by 8-ft. concrete room next to his house, with a sealed walk-in door and a grid of plastic hot water pipes in the insulated floor. As he recalls, the 1-in. dia. pipes were spaced 2 in. apart, and fed into a larger, insulated pipe running underground between the composter and the house.
He hooked a solar-powered pump to the grid of floor pipes and also tied it into a thermostat in his home. The pump circulated water from the compact "furnace" to the house where Morton had baseboard heating.
Thanks to an electronic thermometer he set up to read the composting room's interior heat and display it on the outside, he could easily monitor the temperature. Having a detached, concrete composting room means no danger of fire, he points out.
Inside the room, Morton piled material to be composted such as leaves, lawn clippings, branches, and cow manure from the neighbor.
"I would go into the room wearing a paint spray mask each day (to protect myself from fumes), and flip the stuff by hand with a fork, but you could build an automatic turner," Morton says. "I removed the compost once every two weeks and plowed it into the garden where it made tremendous production. I had a huge 4-acre garden plot and this sure gave me beautiful soil."
"I was living in Anchorage at the time and had a 3-bedroom, 40 by 32-ft. home. This system kept it warm when it was 30 below zero outside. I only used the wood stove once when it got to 40 below," the Washingon resident now explains. "I'm an engineer (retired now), so I was able to design this system for myself. It really worked well and I think someone ought to go into business making these things - any heating engineer could figure this out for you."
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