Bonfires

[GMM]

The spring is coming and, inconveniently, our LA has stopped its 'all you can eat' approach to green waste, so now we have to rent wheelie bins. Although you can rent more than one, and we'll get a couple, there's a limit to how many dirty great bins you can have around the place, and I reckon that 2 weeks of cutting our grass will probably fill one of them. We also 'employ' a gardener (yup, it's a pretty big garden). Although he's getting on a bit, he still seems to be able to cut down a lot of stuff in teh few hours he's here. The obvious solution (which most people will take) is, unfortunately, to burn the excess, as the last thing I want is to accumulate piles of rat-infested compost heaps that never get used. So....What's the best arrangement for burnign garden waste? Obviously, it needs a bit of time to dry out first, but this can be reduced by getting a good blaze going. My first thought was/is a galvanised incinerator bin but before I get one, I thought someone here might have some insight.

Cheers chaps

[Martin Brown]

A single grass cut would fill mine, but I use it to make leaf mould and compost everything. If you have a decent amount of stuff to add at once it will be a hot heap and nothing bad will be willing to live in it apart form the odd slow worm or grass snake on the edges.

It shouldn't be rat infested unless you put food waste on it. And a few cubic yards of good home made compost is always useful in the garden.

Wait until it is tinder dry, build an open bonfire and then torch it on a fairly still day with the wind blowing away from your neighbours.

I tend to do this only for diseased wood that I don't want on my compost heap. Everything else gets composted. The only thing is that you want a hot compost heap away from the house because it smells a bit funny for a few days after adding bulk material due to short chain fatty acids (or oil of wintergreen with lots of pine needles and bark).

[Nick]

+1 but traditionally it's bad form to light a bonfire of a Monday. Galvanised incinerator bins are a waste of money. An open fire works well. Better still a fire pit. Nick.

[Huge]

The first time you use it, the zinc will melt off it and then it will rust just as fast as a 45 gallon oil drum.

[Tim Watts]

So has ours (Rother DC in East Sussex). I am now suspicious...

[alan]

[GMM]

Suspicious? Hmm...I thought I was the cynical one! Birmingham here, so not directly related, presumably.

I can only assume the business plan didn't work out. As I understood it, the council sold the rights to collect garden waste to a commercial set-up who would turn it into compost and sell it back to us all. The problem presumably is that everyone chucks a lot of stuff out but nobody buys any compost, as anyone who's interested makes their own.

So now they're charging everyone for something they used to get for free and it's pretty clear that the skies around here will be full of bonfire smoke once the summer starts as there seems no other reasonable way to get rid of stuff. I'm just trying to be pragmatic and get a system before it's s crisis. In my last place, the compost heap just grew and I'd rather avoid repeating that.

Despite the criticisms (interesting to read) of galvanised incinerators, there might well be a little business in cornering the market in them just now (for anyone who's that way inclined).

Sounds like it's time to dig a hole....

[Terry Fields]

One of my neighbours has one, I think it's the only one in the 500 or so properties here. After enjoying the fruits of its operation, I've come to the conclusion that it isn't an 'incinerator', it's a 'pyroliser'. 'Incinerators' run at >1000 degrees with maximum airflow through the mass. The output is mostly CO2 and water vapour.

'Pyrolisers' run at much lower temperatures, and by dint of having only a few 1" diameter air-holes at the base, and a very short chimney in the lid, they decompose the mass under heat essentially in the absence of oxygen, the output being a random collection of smoke and a gazillion organic compounds that smell bad, cling to clothes and furniture, and irritate eyes and lungs. Due to the lack of combustion, a modest amount of mass in the pyroliser can smoulder for days, with the potential to cause annoyance all the way to next weekend's reload. His young children will doubtless continue to enjoy the delights of a now dioxin-contaminated garden as the weather improves.

The last time he used it, to burn some tannelised timber (which contains arsenic), we had to ask him to put it out as the smell was getting past the closed windows, doors, and vents. On the hottest day of the year. We're thinking of moving.

[Martin Brown]

In Belgium they essentially give away their green bin generated compost to anyone who wants it. You just bring along empty bag(s) on the appropriate day in your local town square usually coinciding with a plant fair. It makes reasonable sense to compost green waste in bulk. The larger volumes increase the heat and speed up the process.

I have had my compost heaps 2m cubes get to smouldering internally once or twice leaving only grey ash. Most times the internal temperature peaks at 70-80C and then cools down again.

There shouldn't be much smoke at all from a well laid bonfire - only flames and lots of them. The material you burn should be tinder dry before you start a couple of weeks sunshine for light weight material.

If you must have a monstrosity for burning stuff in then the heavy iron wire framed things seem to work better and last a decent length of time. Galvanised steel bins don't survive long after being used.

If you have a garden large enough to fill a couple of green bins then you should be able to make and use the compost. Unless of course your garden consists entirely of manicured lawn and nothing else.

[Alan Braggins]

Same here in Cambridgeshire, if you turn up where they compost it and take it away yourself (or pay skip hire to have it delivered).

[GMM]

So do I discern you may not be a great fan of fires? Well, me neither but in the circumstances it looks like the only solution, which was why I posed the question, essentially to determine what the best system is for having a good hot fire on a regular basis to get rid of all the stuff that never stops growing. So far as I can make out, it's perfectly legal to burn it, but I'd prefer not to make it a nuisance, although I suspect that there will be plenty of people who don't give a monkey's, so my contribution, better or worse, will be a drop in the ocean.

[dave]

Just to report same here in S.E. Notts. The LT charge £10 for a new (brown) bin (that's bins No 3). Plus they want £30 pa to have it collected every 2 weeks during "the season". I can see fly-tipping on the increase rsn - not by me I hasten to add. This is the bits 'n pieces approach that seems to have been discovered big time. eg Airline co's charges are now broken into many parts that add up to a lot more that a mere airticket. The NHS is probably the Meister of this approach. Councils are doing a similar thing by splitting various tasks off from the Council charges (while not reducing it of course) and charging us for each one (yes - we had them 'for free' before - not)

[Terry Fields]

errr...no!

What I was trying to flag up is the fact that dustbin-based 'incinerators' aren't, and give all sorts of problems. Others have mentioned in this thread that basket/mesh-type incinerators exist at much the same cost, and these are *much* more likely to burn stuff rather than merely decompose it to something akin to cigarette smoke.

I'd suggest (among other possible considerations) that in the absence of alternatives, burning stuff that's been dried, not overloading the incinerator but feeding it as necessary, and damping down at the end will probably be the best neighbour-friendly approach.

The stuff in my neighbour's pyroliser has finally stopped smouldering after 3 full days, and I can now open the bathroom window again without enjoying coughing, spluttering, and stinging eyes. However, there's a possibly fine-weather weekend on the way, so we'll be standing by for more of the same.

[harry]

Compost heaps are only rat infested if cooked food waste is put in. A good gardener can't get enough compost. I get my neighbours stuff as well as my own. I also shred hedge trimmings/branches. You won't burn grass cuttings in any meaningful way and they rot down to almost nothing in the compost heap. You need to take time to construct a proper compost heap.

[Danny Colyer]

As has ours (South Gloucestershire).

I'm told they've had lawyers working out exactly what kinds of waste the council is and is not legally obliged to collect. They've found that they're not legally obliged to collect garden waste, so they've decided no longer to include that service in the council tax that we pay.

I'd anticipated fly-tipping of garden waste (which used to be a problem round here before we had the green bins). I hadn't thought about the increase in bonfires preventing washing from being hung up outdoors :-(

[GMM]

I couldn't agree more although, having said that, I don't really mind paying, it's more the impracticality of the new arangement that's a pain. I can't see everyone suddenly being happy to spend their weekends queuing for the tip with a car full of smelly garden waste (not to mention all that CO2 spewing out of their car engines while they wait!). The alternatives are either fly-tipping, as you point out, making the garden into a huge compost heap and burning, which is the 'traditional' approach. The other possibility is to scrape the garden bare and have it tarmaced....

[Andrew Gabriel]

I use one - I don't have anywhere to have a bonfire which wouldn't leave a big hole in the lawn. I have 4 paving slabs which I put down in a square on the lawn, raised one brick up, and the incinerator sits in the middle. The paving slabs protect the lawn from heat as the bin glows red hot (wetting the paving slabs it a good idea too).

Huge's comment about the zinc melting off is true - I keep mine in the shed when not in use - it's about 15 years old now and still fine. Probably only used about ~10 times though.

Get one with max ventilation at the bottom you can find. Mine has a slit all the way around (so the ash can fall out, but it's also a vent) and a large hole in the middle of the base as an inverted funnel. I keep meaning to put a ring of holes around the sides a few inches up so it burns better at the sides when it's choked with ash after a long run. Some come with these.

[Andrew Gabriel]

There was a bod from the council talking about stopping collecting garden waste on the radio. His comment was that they and some other councils found you can only stop collecting about half of it. The other half ends up in the other binds and fly-tipped, and it's very borderline if you can actually save any money because it's much more expensive to deal with when it's in the wrong place.

[Martin Brown]

I quite like the smell of newly cut grass. I wouldn't be keen to carry it in my car though since some would always escape.

I don't see what the problem is with having a compost heap in a larger garden. I have three heaps about 2m cube for a garden of about 1/3 acre.

You will have the planners on you like a ton of bricks - it cannot be made impermeable like that they are already struggling with people tarmacing gardens causing fast runoff and flash flooding in storms.

[dennis]

Someone isn't doing the sums. The local councils have to meet recycling targets, these are a percentage and recycled garden waste counts towards it. If they don't meet the targets they face extra costs.

Of course it maybe that they just can't recycle enough of the other stuff to meet the targets even with the garden waste so they have given up and are going to pay the penalty anyway.