Manure Heap Temperature

Manure Heap Temperature

Bit by bit I'm slowly measuring and understanding things better. Although the information is already available, see and doing for yourself seems to make it easier to learn.

Obviously a manure heap gets warm and people have been using this to make hot boxes for centuries to raise the temperature for small plants and lengthen the growing season but just how much heat is there.

This morning at about 7:30am the outside air temp was 14.1 Deg C, the ground was 17 to 19 Deg C in various places around the garden and the outside of the manure heap varied from 24 to 32 Deg C. It is a large manure heap, 12ft by 8ft by 3 or 4ft tall. Inside the the heap, where there is fresh manure, 1ft down and about 3ft from the edge the temperature was 50 Deg C. The heap was steaming rather well.

I'm wondering about making a smaller heap next to the greenhouse, putting a large container of water and covering with manure with a water pump and running a hose pipe through the green house. The pump could be powered by Solar PV panel.

I'll need to monitor the manure heap temp for some while to see how long, days or weeks, the temperature stays high and what the effect of piling more manure on top is. I'll need to know whether this temperature is just for fresh manure and also what effect the outside air temperature has upon it.