My DC is getting full. Do I re-bag the sawdust and throw it in the weekly trash to head to the landfill or find a secluded spot in the woods and spread it out? I am more inclined to the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” approach in the back woods. I understand the potential hazards of some woods (walnut..), but want to do the right thing. Thoughts?
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Replies
I have a small fire pit at the end of my property that we use for marshmallow roasts. I usually burn it in the pit. My wife will mix some of it, with organic material and dirt to make compost, but I produce much more than she needs. I have a friend that has a big shop, and he has it vented to the outside and it just makes a huge pile in back of the shop.
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
If I'm reasonably confident that there's just wood in the bag/can (I sometimes suck up bits of plastic, etc.), then I just spread it out in the woods. Of course, I have 80 acres of woods to do that in, so I can spread it pretty thin; I realize that not everyone has that luxury.
If you do add it to the landfill, you can at least rest assured that it will decompose a lot faster than most of the stuff that goes there.
-Steve
>If you do add it to the landfill, you can at least rest assured that it will decompose a lot faster than most of the stuff that goes there.I would like to think that. Unfortunately, mine gets there in plastic bags. Surely there's a better way. I don't like consuming and dumping plastic. Dumping it right in a can tends to anger the sanitation employees apparently. ;) Someone suggested to me that wood dust would be too acidic to use in my garden. Anyone know if this is true? I have a couple of acres and wouldn't mind dumping it here if it doesn't hurt anything (like my well). Andy
You can put it in paper grocery bags and tape them shut; I've done that in the past (with ashes from the barbecue, too). That at least gives the microbes a fighting chance. (Although modern landfill practice creates such a dry, anaerobic environment that decomposition of anything tends to be pretty slow.)
Straight off the saw, so to speak, sawdust is indeed too acidic for most plants (and can also tie up nitrogen as it decomposes). You can use it on plants that like acid (e.g., azaleas or blueberries), but for other plants it's better to let it sit and compost for a year or so first.
I add domestic non-walnut sawdust and shavings to my compost pile from time to time. I'm a little worried about what the extractives in walnut and exotics might do to the garden plants, so I avoid putting those in the compost.
As for spreading it in the woods, sawdust isn't any more acidic than the leaf litter that's already there, so that's not a concern.
-Steve
I make a LOT of saw dust also. I mulch my garden with it as long as it isn't blackwalnut. I've done this for years and it decomposes well. My wife mulches her flower beds with it too. My neighbor uses some of mine for stable bedding and I put a lot of it in our compost heap. A 5 gal. bucket of sawdust in trunk in the winter works as good as sand for traction. Wecome to the wonderfull world of sawdust!
Sounds like lots of folk use sawdust in gardens. I guess using the type of wood that already grows on my lot is ok (maple, pine, poplar, birch). I assume I have to avoid using the exotic woods (ipe, wenge) this way but why is walnut so toxic?
At least that's a few less plastic bags in the dump.
Andy
Andy,
It's the juglone in walnut. It's toxic to many plants. http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/hortcult/fruits/blkwalnt.htm
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 11/19/2007 2:23 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
Mmmmm... juglone...
It depends on the walnut. Black walnut in particular has toxic elements that are natural herbicides. You should look at the drip line of a native black walnut sometime -- what does grow there looks like the mutants from the black lagoon.
Composting does work. Look around for books and sources. Saw dust and shavings are consider 'brown' and need to be mixed with 'wet greens' to compost well. You also need to keep the pile moist and avoid compaction so air gets in and helps the microbes break things down.
Typing with a broke finger so, excuse the mistakes.
Dan Carroll
Thanks Dan. I actually have a 'wet greens' generator. If we give him larger portions, maybe he'll waste more food that I can mix with the sawdust. ;) Andy
I live in the country ( rural West Maryland) with no garbage pick-up. The kitchen scraps go in a half buried bottomless barrel ( makes good compost for the garden). Cans, glass, plastic and newspapers are taken to town (once a month) for recycling. Broken glass and other non burnable are taken also once a month to the various garbage collection centers scattered through the County. Sawdust and wood chips are used as a mulch in the blueberry patch, or scattered in the path between raised beds, or given to the neighbour for chicken bedding, or mixed with horse manure and fertilizer to produce excellent compost.
what does grow there looks like the mutants from the black lagoon.HAY that could be me! I had a huge old black walnut tree in my back yard long ago.. I sat under it often in the summer time.. It was hit by lightning and split down the middle.. Damn! Loved that old tree. No nuts though..
I heard that you can jam in as much sawdust as you can into one of those 1 gallon cardboard milk cartons and use it as a fire log in the fireplace.
You can make a really neat sawdust 'bomb' if you fill one of those really heavy-duty contractor garbage bags, tie it up tight, and put it out for garbage pick-up. When the truck comes and you time it just right so the hopper isalmost full when the guy throws it in and then pulls the lever for the compactor so the clamshell comes down on the middle of the bag and the plastic gets stretched tighter and tighter............. POW! The guy disapears in a cloud of sawdust. Then you duck down from the window, quickly so he doesn't see you and ROFLMAO.
Don't ask me how I know this or I'd have to kill you. ;^)
Paul
I have friends with compost piles who are thrilled to take my sawdust. One woman says that she will take all that I will generate. She teaches classes on composting and has many flower and garden beds. When Denver asked me if my commercial shop recycled anything they were thrilled when I told them about my friends.
My garden has a bunch of raised beds and I dump my sawdust in the paths between the beds. It keeps the weeds down a bit.
I keep wondering if I can make it into composite logs for the fire.
Doug
"I keep wondering if I can make it into composite logs for the fire."
You can, you just need a binder. Melted paraffin is sort of the industry standard for that, as it's cheap and burns cleanly.
-Steve
Carya, you can add it to your garden as a top mulch right out of the DC. Mixing it with soil will unbalance your soil pH by making your soil acidic. The breakdown of sawdust in soil will draw down your nitrogen content by the nh3 (ammonia) cycle. Using it on top has almost no effect except to keep your soil moist and provide home for worms allowing the sawdust to breakdown at its own rate. The best process is to fertilize and then mulch with the stuff.
Thanks Mike. To be clear, are you suggesting laying it *on* the garden or turn it in (shallow) near the surface? I'm not much of a green thumb.
thanks,
Andy
on top as a mulch to retain soil moisture and keep weeds down. turning it in causes nitrogen depletion. as it decays it will become soil........
Thanks. One more dumb question: is there an eco-friendly way of dying it red? We were going to buy red wood chips for the gardens/trees next season but if I can use sawdust for all that... she would have to like the way it looks. :)
Andy
ummm, use mahogany..... But seriously, there are food grade dyes, I do not know what they cost however. You get to experiment I think..... aloha, mike
why would you want mulch that is such an unnatural color as red?
Not in a large garden but in accent gardens and around trees. People buy bags of red wood chips for that purpose. I'm not going to explain landscaping -- its a popular thing and looks nice. Andy
I burn my saw dust in a 55 gallon drum. Fill it up. Lite the top and it burns up very slow in about 6 hours. I generate too much to just spread it out on my 1 acre parcel.
We don't have a landfill here, just a transfer station. The cost to have them handle the saw dust is unbelievably expensive. I have found that it takes longer than one might think for it to decompose when it's spread on the ground. It would probably work much better if you could mix it with other organic materials in a proper compost pile.
That being said, it will decompose on it's own. So, I think spreading it out , if you have the space, would be perfectly fine.
Paul
I make sure I keep my collector free from floor sweepings, screws and other garbage. As long as it's clean, a local sawmill allows me to dump it on their pile. There aren't many uses for it around the property and you'll have a pile the size of a truck in no time. I use the shop vac for the floor and places where metal might be involved. That goes in the trash.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
I spread mine in empty lot down the street, along with grass clippings, etc.
I did come up with what I consider to be a clever, effective way to eliminate dust from my basement shop. I doubt it is original as few ideas are but I will share it nonetheless. I generate alot of dust grinding chair seats and parts which, try as I might, does not end up in the DC but spreads on every conceivable surface in the entire shop. So, and don't laugh (it works): I open the bulkhead and set up a powerful fan at the base of the steps. Then on goes the dust mask and out comes the leaf blower. The wind from the blower converts my shop into a duststorm, but after 2 passes, all of the dust is airborne outside and riding the wind to the woods behind the house. PMM
I apologize - I did laugh. The visual was of the guy from Mr. Mom all decked out to do the housework... Hey - if it works great. Thanks to all for the great suggestions.
I actually took it out to the woods and scattered it out. I took two of my little guys with me on the "field trip". Time well spent and did not have to upset the sanitation engineers....
Moist sawdust mixed with grass clippings and a little dirt is a great recipe for compost.
This is really easy, and wonderful for your plants. If necessary you can adjust the Ph with wood ash or limestone.
Thanks for the tip. I asked the nursury if I could shred the leaves in my yard and put them back on the lawn but they said it wasn't a good idea.
So if i add some lime to the leaves it wiil bring them back to a more neutral PH?
I also wanted to speed up my compost bin. Can I add something to get it going faster? Lime?
See if there are people with chickens in your area, it makes an excellent bedding and often you get eggs in excange !
C.
citrouille,
Right on.
My chickens and 2 horses consume all my sawdust & shavings. It then gets recycled into compost for the greenhouse and garden.
I haven't figured out how to get the horses to lay eggs yet! :-)
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Your conscience will lead you to poke around your nearby towns to find someone who would love it. it is used for bedding for animals, fuel for furnaces (think pellets) and it DOES make great compost- mixed of course. You could buy one of those lottery ticket cage/barrels that will compost it open air but it takes forever. Just ask around. Before our shop got a wood waste fired furnace we donated it to a local horse farm for bedding.
I have a large vegetable garden and have mulched it for decades with oak, poplar and basswood sawdust and shavings. I do add ammonium nitrate to the soil based on annual soil test recommendations. I pile up the shavings around plants as well as in the rows. No weeds, no grass, they all get smothered.
I wouldn't worry about the walnut unless you're spreading it in a garden without letting it compost or age.
I pile mine up, and after its aged about a year, I spread it in the garden, sometimes along the paths between beds, which helps keep weeds down a little, and then it all get roter-tilled in at the end of the year.
after all, its the same stuff thats in the woods. turkeys seem to like scratching around in the dust in spots I've been cutting with my alaska saw mill.
Mine go to a local farmer. He uses it in this chicken coop, and as mulch in his orchard. He could take much more than I can provide.
Fine dust from my panel sander goes to the compost section of the landfill. I don't want my farmer friend breathing that stuff.
Edited 11/18/2007 8:44 pm ET by GRW
In Britain most trash is now collected as separated materials, so that paper, metal, cardboard, glass, plastic and organic materials can all be recycled. Although some of this recycling (eg plastic) still ends up with a negative balance sheet (so the householder is still paying local tax to enable it's collection and re-use) the glass, metal, paper, cardboard and organic waste collection break even or make a profit.
The profit comes from the fact that, for example, organic waste is composted by the collectors, who then sell it back to us gardners in bags. So, we get our organic waste (including my monthly large sawdust production) collected and transformed into a useful, saleable product that reduces the local tax burden.
Perhaps in the USA there is no such local trash collection service. In which case, perhaps an enterprising chap such as yourself might set one up....... Once a woodworker now also a compost retailer! I suspect there may be more money in compost production than in furniture making, in this wasteful era.
Lataxe the green
Lataxe, that would be more important if you're living on a little island. ;) Over here in NA, we have lots of space, water, and the like, so naturally we waste it. My country, I'm not so proud to say, is one of the most inefficient societies in the world (even more so than the USA). Of course, unless you're on pills, it takes several days to drive across it.
We're just now talking about compost collection in my area. I don't think they even recycle all the blue/black box material yet. I would certainly support tax collection to fix this problem. Then I might not have to close the car's vents as I pass the local dump on the way home from work.
Andy
Hate to disagree with a near neighbour, but it depends on exactly where you live. My municipality picks up yard waste, small branches and autumn leaves, and sells the compost in the spring for next to nothing. They won't take grass, unless you take it to the depot and pay a fee. I haven't tried them with sawdust because I doubt if they'd know what it was, and it isn't on the printed list. (What's this stuff?)
I believe Toronto now requires its citizens to separate compostable food waste for pickup, though it's hard to imagine all those whining yuppies complying. They used to have garbage pickup 2 or 3 times a week. OK, if you're from TO I'm only kidding. Really. I apologize.
Jim
Jim,
Yes, it does depend but I'm in the nation's capital with a million in the area. We should be composting kitchen waste. I know there is branch collection but I don't bother as I have enough space for that. Did not know they sell it back though. I'm going to do my own kitchen composting soon.
What galls me is that apartment dwellers don't even have blue/black box pickup here yet. That should have been where they started.
Andy
I realize that this is of no help in your particular case, but just FYI - Our shop sells it to chicken farmers for the equivalent of $2 per bag. Whenever I have 150-200 bags lined up (about once a month) I call them and they pay for the privilege of taking it away.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
my shaving go to the local pet store for their bird cages. They use alot.
I do make sure no treated gets in. Its good for the hampster cages as well.
The saw dust gets released. ("if you love it let it go"). Usually here in North texas we have a constant 30mph wind. I also use a leaf blower, a chemical mask, ear muffs and let 'er rip.
We have a "green bin" program here for food waste, tissue paper, etc. I can also put saw dust in there as long as it is in a paper bag inside the bin.
I would think it's better to spread it around the woods rather than put it in the landfill.
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