Here's a few cheap ways for making a compost bin. This was posted in the middle of another topic but i thought it might be useful to someone who hadn't read that topic.
A compost heap needs to be a minimum of a cubic metre to get seriously hot enough to kill
weed seed and disease.
A very cheap one is to use four old tomato stakes holding a 4 metre length of chicken wire into a square. Then just fill her up. If the tomato stakes aren't supportive enough, a few lengths of bailing twine between diagonal opposite stakes will hold it. When you wanna turn it, just pull the thing down and rebuild it beside the original location. Then just fill er up again.
Or you could try as i've done, and make one out of the big cardboard square bins that the greengrocers use to transport things like melons.
Here's a few fotos of my compost bin. It's cardboard with holes cut in the side with a battery drill and hole saw. Takes about 10 minutes to make.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/m.longstaff/cooked.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/m.longstaff/turnover_time.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/m.longstaff/after_WMD.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/m.longstaff/turned_brew.jpg Not great shots but you get the picture.
Again, i use old tomato stakes and bailing twine to hold it all together. It makes about a cubic metre. I've usually got 2 or 3 going at once so there's aways some ready to use. It costs nothing to make one and it works.
The plastic bins can be quite expensive and although they're a bit quicker they don't justify the expense to me, and the volumes are possibly less than a cubic metre. I do have a plastic one but i got it from the recycling centre as a freebie:) Bargain.
