I have some spare wooden slats and posts that used to be in fence that I built to contain Jnr FD in the garden.

Rather than taking all the now unused wood to the tip, I have come up with the idea of building a Composter from scratch.

Can anyone show me any good designs for such a thing, also should it be just 1 bin or 2? What I have read so far says that you should have gaps between the slats etc (but the distance of gaps is a bit of guess work), and the composter must be directly built over spoil to allow worms up. I was ideally wanting to place it on a pebbled area, but I guess I could remove all the pebbles if necessary.

Any info greatly appreciated. Ta

I’m planning to do similar at some point this year. Here’s the online guide I’m thinking of using.

Make it with the slats vertical so stuff can settle down. Have two or three bins. Worms will find their way in. Fit a lid of some sort.

Remember you’ll want to empty it from the bottom, so spade access via a hatch would be good.

I made one from a bunch of pallets – heat treated ones, not chemically treated. We have three bays, kinda like this:

Except they have slots on either side at the front, so we can drop in spare boards to make a front wall, like on this one:

That way you can raise/lower the height of the front to make it easier to add material, or when turning the compost (shovelling from one bin to another).

On some of the pallets I knocked the slats off using a pry bar and a lump hammer, and put them back on a bit closer together plus an extra slat or two, to reduce the gap sizes.

I use some spare bits of corrugated iron for a roof. Works a treat. Having at least two bays/bins means you can turn it over easier, as you’re not turning it over into itself, you can just shovel from bin 1 to bin 2, so it gets well aerated as you do it. You can then start afresh in bin 1 with uncomposted materials while bin 2 finishes off. Having a third bin means you can be a bit less organised with regular turning, or just have three bins at different stages of decomposition.