Maintenance - Vermicomposting Toilets Forum

Drainage failure after ~3 years

julien — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:11:49 +0000

Hi Wendy, All,

I built my vermitoilet using your design, I've started using it (family of 6) early 2023, it has been good so far but 2 days ago, I found out all my worms were dead, the drainage is not working anymore, they were all drown. See picture below

https://i.postimg.cc/Gt0J8R7b/IBC-drainage-issue.jpg

I have 2 IBC tanks, the other one was never used yet, I'll call it passive tank. I had a lot of tree branches and large wood pieces for slow carbon release in the active tank, see picture below showing the other passive tank were I moved all the branches from active tank. Initially when I set up my tank, I added a lot of quick release carbon, wood chip, cardboard but it got depleted most likely, and because all the branches, I couldn't mix it up.

https://i.postimg.cc/VLtMr2nN/IBC-other-tank-wood.jpg

I think my system failed as the tank was lacking fast release wood chip to mix up with the rest, without it / carbon, it becomes too thick and blocked the drainage. Slow release carbon is fine but my branches were too long, preventing to mix it with new coarse wood piece.

The interesting bit, is on the 1st of June 2025, so not long ago, I saved all my worms from drowning, I had a blocked pipe, I fixed it and the water in the IBC tank flushed perfectly! I was really happy not having to dig into it more ... which I am doing now. So between 1st of June 2025 perfect drainage and now total failure, something happened. It was warmer than usual in Ireland, I guess it speed up the process of decomposition and led to this situation.

My plan is to:

1. Add more wood chip, the easiest to get in Ireland, to bring back the tank to a good consistency, good ratio carbon/poo & vermicast.
2. I will cut in small piece now my slow release carbon and may keep only one large for worms in case of, so I can mix the fast release carbon correctly.
3. I will start using the 2 tanks, I will switch between the 2 tanks every 6 months, something like this.

What do you think?

Thanks a mill,
J

human waste layer heats up

Joseph — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 01:27:21 +0000

Hi from Barichara, Colombia and thanks Wendy for sharing this fascinating system!

About three months ago we have introduced worms in our newly built system, and it is now in use for the last two months. Because of a slight smell of the human waste layer we almost daily have been adding a thin sprinkle of carbon rich material (ripped carboard pieces, wood shavings, etcetera). Since at some point the temerature of the organic material started to rise and worms creeped up and left the tank, we started to wet it down daily. After digging a bit today into the human waste layer, it turned out to be even hotter further down.. and steamy! So we have the folowing questions:

- How could be explained what happended?

- Should we stop layering of the human waste with carbon rich stuff?

- How can we (quickly) lower the temperature and create good conditions for the worms?

Thanks in advance for your answers :) Greetings!

Drainage problem

velacreations — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 21:54:50 +0000

I have a system that has been working perfectly for 4 years. Just last month, though, we starting noticing puddles of water in the worm bed at times. Since then, the drainage is very slow, and although the water drains, it's SLOW and backs up in the tank.

I have since flushed the pipes, thinking maybe they got blocked, but they were not blocked at all. The water still comes out clear in the drain field, it's just a trickle, though.

It seems like the restriction is the worm bedding itself.

Do we need to remove all the old compost in there and add new material, now? We periodically top it up with coarse wood chips, and we just add to keep it topped up, but maybe there's some sort of worm poop layer somewhere that's restricting flow?

Not sure what to do, but we have loved this system up until now. If we could figure something out without having to remove all the compost, that would be good.

Fly problem

meadowlark — Sun, 12 May 2019 19:16:00 +0000

I installed a system about 6 months ago, shortly before it started getting cold for winter here in new mexico and so far is working great. No smell when i open the tank to top up the organic material. However, now that the weather is warming up i noticed flies coming in and out of the tank. So my question is does the tank need airflow? I could put weather stripping on the lid to prevent the flies from entering and exiting. But does the tank itself need to breath?

Thanks in advance

organic material heating up?

cnbarr — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 15:54:50 +0000

So I just finished my system and added the worms about a week ago, and just this morning I noticed the organic material is heating up, It's not hot but it's definitely creating heat, is this normal when first getting a system going?

Im concerned its starting to compost and if so the worms will die from the heat, is there a way to prevent this?

The organic material I added was a mix of wood chips, bark, moldy straw, sticks, and topped off with partially composted horse manure.

Thanks for any help.

Topping up the organic material?

pomodoro — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 08:28:01 +0000

Hi,

Probably a silly question, but how do you top up the organic material without burying the worms? I would assume the worms need to stay at the very top of the materials right? Should I first remove the worms and vermicompost?

Thanks

Feeding the worms when tank not in use

pureportugal — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 13:21:07 +0000

My system is not up and running yet so I'm needing to feed the worms. Plus I guess some of us might have times when the system's not in use for some reason or other. So I was wondering what's the best thing to feed them with? At the moment they're getting kitchen scraps but as we learnt on the course, these worms are used because they favour excrement. Should I put some horse / goat poo in for them?

Also I assume that they need the tank to be kept moist - so I'm emptying my dishwater into the tank.

Temperatures?

Jo_ — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 09:00:55 +0000

Hi,

How do high & low (freezing) temperatures affect a Vermicomposter? Ty Jo