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Hello! This is my first post, and I stumbled across your board while googling to see if anyone had tried heating their house with horse manure
I have been thinking about giving it a try for a few years and have only just recently began experimenting and I am getting temps of over 80 degrees C from my muck heap (and that was today, with air temps of -4!) which is warmer than the setting on my boiler . So we have decided to go ahead and try to swap our heating onto this system.
We are planning on just by-passing our boiler and have it valved off, so that if it fails we will be able to just re-instate the boiler by turning it all back on. I just need a mad plumber to give us a hand to set it up
I'd be interested in speaking to anyone else that may have already tried this?
Do a search on this site for your answer as someone was on about this with a different user name a few weeks ago.
Y wouldn't like to try it but each to their own so to speak. i am trying to think of the user name but can't at the mo, sorry.
Member of the Ishloss weight group 2013. starting weight 296.00 pounds on 01.01.2013. Now minus 0.20 pounds total THIS WEEK - 0.20 pounds Now over 320 pounds and couldn't give a fig...
Secret Asparagus binger
Member of the Ishloss weight group 2013. starting weight 296.00 pounds on 01.01.2013. Now minus 0.20 pounds total THIS WEEK - 0.20 pounds Now over 320 pounds and couldn't give a fig...
Secret Asparagus binger
Put crudely, a muck heap in our coal bunker behind the house and run pipes through it. Valve it off from the boiler system, so that we can isolate the muckheap and the boiler and swap between them manually if need be. So instead of the system running through the boiler, its by-passing it and picking up heat from the muck heap and circulating. Set up costs minimal as its utilising the system we already have in place, just need the elec to work the (existing) pump and let it run constantly.
My boiler is set at around 74 degrees. In my muck heap I'm getting temps of over 80, then, as the reaction is settling, of 55+ which I hope is enough for a sort of background heat, rather than a hot burst of heat iygwim?
I understand the temp circulating in radiators needs to be a min of 45 degrees c, to prevent the rads rusting.
The research (what little I can find and through personal experience of muckheaps) seems to indicate that this temp should hold for quite some time. We are happy to have to remove it and replace it as and when, which is no problem and as we have a ready supply of horse manure, then I have no worries about that.
My only concern, is if the heat is being taken out of the heap, whether its going to be able to maintain enough to continue with the fermentation process, or if the process may break down because of it. I guess, as I have not found anyone that has done this before (other than someone heating water, which I read about on line and a nutty farmer who is a friend of a friend of a friend, who is actually doing this with cow dung) then its going to have to be a suck it and see situation.
I'm not convinced its going to be enough to heat the water when we have guests in, because they tend to use quite a bit, so I may have to swap to the boiler then, which is why I want to be able to shut it off and on when needed, rather than do away with it altogether.
I am working on the theory, that in todays prices, half a tank of oil is costing over £1000, which will last us 4 months if we use it sparingly. Any day that I can shut that boiler off is a bonus! And I can't see atm any reason that it shouldn't be ok for us to use, even if it is only for the days that we have no one booked in.
I am not sure how this will work in reality, because by removing the heat from the muck heap, you will halt the breaking down in the centre of the heap which is what generates the heat.
Hmm - circular sentance that hopefully makes sense.
Once you have pulled the heat out of the heap, restarting the breakdown could take a while, and involve a huge amount of muck heap moving - which may not be practical with pipes running through it in a coal bunker.
Is there a way that you could try the system in miniature i.e. heating a green house, before commiting to a large scale experiment?
2010 is my year of projects - 365 days and 365 projects.
I am thinking of setting it up onto a gravity fed radiator in the tack room to give it a try and also setting up in the bunker, filling the pipe and seeing what temps come out. But I know I won't get a true picture here, because if the mains water is flushing through the pipe, then its going to be heating it up from cold, where as if it was circulating through the system, it would be warmer going back in so it wouldn't be dragging quite so much heat out of it iygwim?
My reason for using the bunker, is 1) so that I don't have a muckheap at the back of my house!) and 2 because I wondered if it would contain the heat better and make up a bit for what I am taking from there. What I'm not sure about is the scale of it. I suspect it would work fine if it was big enough to generate enough heat overall. Although apparently the optimum size for heating a glass house or suchlike is about 2m x 2m, I know from experience, for a muck heap to generate enough heat to rot effectively, it has to be quite a significant size - which also ties in with the nutty farmer, who has literally just heaped it up outside his house.
Just a thought, maybe the whole system would work smoother if the boiler wasn’t valved off but kept running. Using the muck heap as an additional heat supply the boiler thermostat would cut in and knock the burn rate to minimum. If the muck temp dropped the boiler would kick back in and hopefully keep fermentation going. It would also make installation less expensive, just pipe in a loop to go through the bunker (possibly use an old radiator painted black as a heat collector buried in the muck). Valves installed on both ends of the loop would allow easy isolation from the boiler so the muck could be changed.
I think it's well worth an experiment on a small scale but you wouldn't want to pull much heat from the stack, for reasons outlined above. Keep it simple if you can but perhaps a thermostat in the stack could be utilised?
There again, our humanure heap sometimes gets too hot - I've seen temperatures well over 60 degrees C. Unusual but it does happen and possibly more often than I know about.
I think you would draw out your heat from the muck pile in no time at all therefore preventing it from breaking down. You would need to constantly replace the muck which wouldn't be worth the effort. If you want a more scientific evaluation try posting your question here.
Thanks for all your replies guys, much appreciated.
The I'm told from several sources that the boiler needs to be set at this temp, cant remember exctly why, but it was to do with the system that is in here at the moment and it causing the componants to rust if its not. Mine is not to wonder why, I'll just take their word for it.
We have thought of leaving the boiler in the loop, but again after speaking to a few heating engineers, they keep telling me that we would then be defeating the object if the boiler kicks in. It will then be heating the pile not the other way around and therefore also running the heating, so having to work harder than it would as it is now.
I'll take a look at the site you have highlighted TheGoodEarth. Thank you for the link.
Someone must have done some calcs on how much heat a tonne of horse manure can potentially give off, my feeling is that although you might get high temperatures in the middle, most of this heat is needed by the composting process itself and only a relatively small amount is given off by the heap. So although you can grow pineapples in soil over horse manure, the manure lifting the temperature of the soil by perhaps 10 degrees over a couple of months, I doubt if it would raise the temperature in the overall greenhouse by more than a few degrees, possibly 5deg. Hardly sufficient to heat a house (unless fantastically well insulated), let alone provide hot water.
Now it used to be common to keep pigs underneath the house in Eastern Europe to provide warmth in winter, perhaps you should build your house over your stables.
Lol! I love my horses, but I don't want to be *that* close to them!
I'm not sure (tho probably being completely blond here) what the effect of the amount of heat "given off" will have to do with my running the pipes through it? I can stand on the top of the heap and it feels quite cool, but just below the surface, I'm not able to keep my hand on it. With temps of -4 and lower this past week, I'm still getting 80+ and that wasn't just the middle, that was within 12 inches of the surface. It was only right down at ground level (litterally I hit the concrete) that the temp fell to 55. If you mean how much temp I can draw off (as opposed to it giving off) before the decomposition process is altered, then yes, fair enough, I have no idea.
I have just by chance got speaking to a tree surgeon friend, who told me that there is a college already using woodchip for the same means (as in piped through the stack, not burned). I am trying to check that out now. If that is right, then I'll be feeling even more keen to give it a shot....
This is my first post, and I stumbled across your board while googling to see if anyone had tried heating their house with horse manure 
