[Greenbuilding] Compost issues

[Speireag Alden]

Sgrìobh Lawrence Lile:

>Yeah, the kitchen fruit flies are gone, but they've moved into the 
>compost toilet!  Yeech.

     Especially considering that they'll still scout the fruit in the kitchen.

     I've never had fruit flies in my composting toilet, except when I 
hadn't gotten rid of them in the kitchen yet, and I threw kitchen 
waste into the toilet and didn't cover it immediately.  However, I 
use a 5-gallon bucket.  It's small, so it's easy to target the new 
deposits, and everything gets actually covered with sawdust.  In all 
of the larger toilets I've seen, you just toss in a handful or two of 
sawdust or other additive, making no effort to cover because then 
you'd have to reach way down in.

     Thus, the flies have access.

     In a 5-gallon bucket with proper covering, no access.

     So that's the second point of control.

     The first is in the kitchen.  If you empty the kitchen waste 
container every day, it won't be a problem to seal it while it's in 
the kitchen.  Some folks apparently do this by keeping it in the 
refrigerator.  I do it by putting a weighty object on the lid to get 
a decent seal, because fruit flies are tiny.  But it seems to work.

>This would be one advantage of the 5 gallon composter models - no 
>time for an ecology to grow up around your system.

     Very little time, anyway.  I usually take the bucket out every three days.

-Speireag.

-- 
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true 
value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary 
pain.
--Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)