Help

[Jacqui]

hello I have had my hot in for exactly a year now with absolute no success, I am about to empty it for the fourth time and try again?... I just can’t get it hot, is there anyone out there ?....

[nortonbeak]

I have had my mini HotBin for three weeks and it is currently at over 60oC. I feed it with grass clippings mostly. That means that I add a few handfuls of shredded paper and wood chip.
Looking at the YouTube videos and other posts, it is clearly vital to ensure that air can flow through the bin at all times. I started by adding a layer of twigs on the base plate and building on top of that. Every time I added more clippings I would make sure I agitated the contents with the supplied stirrer.
Allowing an open texture to the contents must be important, not ramming as much as you can into the bin during your initial fill.
Keep trying, it is very satisfying to see that lid temperature in the "zone" and steam pouring out of the top of the heap.

[Penguin]

I thought I’d read and understood the directions when my Hotbin arrived, but I couldn’t get the temperature over 40°C. So I went through the website and forums and read all the tips I could find, then started doing the following:

Drain any wet kitchen waste; don’t add things like gravy or sauces, just pour them down the sink instead
Chop kitchen waste into small pieces
Use only shredded office paper or corrugated card for the paper component
Make sure you’re adding waste in the right proportions. Half as much paper as kitchen/garden waste; one fifth as much bulking agent
Mix everything really well in a bucket before adding to the Hotbin
Don’t leave the Hotbin lid open longer than necessary
Add fresh waste every few days, or whenever the temperature starts to fall
Use the kickstart bucket and/or add some chicken compost pellets to get the temperature up at first.

If you have old waste at the bottom of your Hotbin restricting the airflow, you may need to remove it and finish composting it in a traditional bin, or mix it with fresh waste and add it back into your Hotbin bit by bit.