Vermicomposting - My First Worm Bin - DIY with Ikea Stuff

As promised, this post will detail how I built my worm-bin using Ikea Hacks.

Items needed to be purchased:

• Ikea Samla Containers - for 2-layers with moat, I got 3 (2 medium + 1 low) with 1 cover. I used Samla because they are the most affordable and easily available.
• Worms - I started with 100g
• Coco-peat (Shredded Coconut Husk) - 2.5kg ideal, so that you can top-up.
• Soil - organic fertile soil (1kg is more than enough for a start)
• Additional Samla container to keep your tools and supplies
• Daiso Laundry Net (lint protector), large enough to cover the lid of your box

Equipment you need to build the bin:

• Old Black and White News Paper or Brown Cardboard Boxes with no paint/glue/stapler/etc. Just old plain brown boxes to shred.
• Or even better, brown leaves!
• Drill to make holes on the bin
• Some digging tools, I use disposable plastic spoon, fork and aluminium chopsticks
• Marker and Ruler/Measuring Tape to help draw holes on the boxes
• Some Fruit Peeling (non citrus) - ideally, coffee powder/tea bags/dragon-fruit/papaya/banana peelings

Here goes!

The 3 Bins I purchased, 1-storage, 2x to make 2-tier Bin.
Bottom Bin is for water collection.

Samla 28-cm deep bins are used for this project.
if you're interested to get the 'moat',
do get an extra 14-16cm deep bin as an addition.

IKEA Samla, same thing as the above pic.

Just showing the width of the box here.

I am going to start drilling the holes for the cover.
This allows worms to breathe and water vapor to escape.

Handheld 7.2v drill should suffice. I used the 8mm bits.
if you use smaller, just make more holes.

I try not to do the holes near the corner.
Makes it harder for worms to escape when it's wriggling upside down
trying hard to get to the holes on the lid..
Ensure that your laundry net is able to cover all the lid, this is to prevent
creepy crawlies from entering the bin since you'll have some vege/fruits.

I am making the first box bottom holes, so that water can escape.
You don't need lots of holes,
as there won't be that much of water anyway.

Am Adding a little design to the holes, was hoping to get
the slope-effect so that water will go to the middle hole.
Realized it makes no difference - seriously!

This is how the bins will look-like when put together - STACKED!

After the drilling, to make it 'chemically-safe' for the worms... please wash the bins!!
Note, I did not put soap... the soapiness came DEFAULT for EVERY BOX! Yucks!

Ensured that bin is clean and dry, wipe it dry and
try rinsing one more time to ensure you don't see soapy bubbles.

I use Classifieds, as they are mostly black/white.
Color ads brings unwanted chemicals...

I bought some furniture from Ikea, used the boxes.
I had to REMOVE the tapes, and staplers before shredding them
as Shown below!

This makes great bedding.. note, the brown paper is essentially - dry.

I wanted to try adding some variety.. makes no difference...
In my opinion, just going with the brown paper - or - newspaper is enough.
The purpose of these paper is to absorb too much moisture.

I used some bottle spray filled with water (tap is fine),
but seriously, I shouldn't have done this as the decomposition
and the condensation will naturally cause the brown to get
soggy and wet!

I didn't have coconut peat-moss on my first day, I simply used some
fertilizer-soil. Potting Mix! I think you ought to go with the volcanic
one if you have a choice, since there are some traces of coco-peat.

After making the base with paper, i poured some soil in.

This is my 100g of Malaysian Blue Worms,
the bedding here is coco-peat.

The bottle i used with water to moisten the bedding.
(I REPEAT - NOT NECESSARY)

Sharing with you all about my mistake in making a 'too moist bin'...
Well maybe in non-tropical climate, this is needed.. but not in SG.

These 2 photos above details the bottom of the 1st layer (top layer bin)
How the holes looked like from the bottom.

I drink Nespressos, after I used the capsules,
I dry the capsules first, then remove the powder to
harvest the used coffee powder for worm food!

mixing everything to the mix..
note, I only put about 5 table-spoons worth.
Don't put too much! Too Acidic!!!!

Using glove to handle this box, so that i won't accidentally
touch the worms. Hands are salty - burn worm skins.

Apart from Used Coffee Powder, I added dragon-fruit peelings.
Not too many.. We don't want to 'cook' the worms as the
Aerobic decomposition generates heat!

Some mistakes I made:

1. Making the bedding too wet. It'll only get wetter and wetter.
2. Not covering the fruit peelings with sufficient soil and brown paper. It's imperative that you cover it properly if you don't wish to have fruit-flies manifesting the bin.
3. Not noticing that worms trying to escape = habitat not worm-friendly enough
4. Scavenging and moving the top-soil too much

Notes to a successful start of wom-bin:

1. You don't need to tussle the waste around. You simply need to give it a glance, check on to ensure that worms aren't escaping.
2. The bin is suppose to have ZERO sour smell. The only smell would be a morning soil smell you get from our reservoirs or gardens/parks. It's the fresh damp smell of soil if you put your nose into the bin. Outside the bin - NO SMELL.
3. Ensure that bin is ALWAYS covered with the Laundry Lint Guard Net.
4. Do not spray any chemicals, insecticides above/around/near the bin. 
5. If you have accidentally allowed fruit-flies to infest the bin top, no worries, just take the laundry-net (as most will be stuck there), and go to a field/garden/open-area, just let those flies go. They pose no real harm actually.
6. Don't add too much food-peelings etc to the bin for a start, the worm need to acclimatize and get themselves used to the environment. Don't bring in too much changes or tossing in the bin or they may get upset and try escaping from the bin.

I think this should suffice for generating a simple, affordable and good worm bin.

Vermicomposting... as an added improvement to the HDB!

Oh well, it's not like a 'direct' improvement to the home per-se but I was hoping that having more greens around the home will do some beautification, and improve the overall home well-being with a more 'fresh' and 'organic' feel to the overall household.

While struggling to get my greens up, I realized that fertilizer is so-so-very important to the well-being of the green!!! Without them, all my greens were dying left-right-center.

As such, what better way than 'growing' or 'cultivating' your own organic super fertilizer! Hopefully, this can also benefit and inspire more of my neighbors to activate their green-fingers at home too!

I followed a few blogs, and read about 10-15 pages of web-sites as part of my R&D, as such, I wouldn't say I am a "pro" yet, much more to learn.

In the next few entries, I will share with all of you readers on how I started, what were the mistakes I made and rectification to the process and stabilization as well.

Hopefully with the following entries, you'll be inspired to start your own organic journey of VermiComposting - yes, even in a small HDB apartment, with a baby, and a wife who is super-anti-creepy-crawlie.. :)

This is the end-product, I did a few improvement by adding another layer of 'water-moat', but I realized it's of no use and it's not the best way to keep the worms out.

My R&D Links that you might find helpful:

1. More Information about Composting Worms
2. More Information about the Theory behind Vermicomposting
3. How worm casting is created
4. Making your own bin, a DIY Guide, but I will also offer my version with my explanations
5. Where to get the most important thing - The Worms (this is the most affordable starting point in the places that I have searched as of 2014-Oct. The most ideal is to go to the Singapore Gardening Forum and try to barter?)
6. Another DIY Guide number 2
7. Another DIY Guide number 3

Clarifications:

1. My Goal is to have sufficient and possibly grow the bin to a level where I do not need to purchase fertilizer for my greens.
2. I don't intend to multiply my bin size, nor single-bin concept as there is limited space.
3. I plan to grow the quantity of blue-worms, in the event where it grows to significant numbers, I plan to either sell them at low price to neighbors or give them away.
4. I want to minimize the space and effort taken to clean/maintain and utilize the process.
5. I am not a serious anti-waste champion, in fact, I select my waste and feed them to the worm the past 4 months I have been doing it. So I am not really 'throwing all my waste' for them to compost yet...
6. I started my project with 100g of composting worms (budget constraint), and keeping things low cost... as such, I doubt I can really discard all food and fruit wastes for the worms to clear on time before the other 'friends' of the community come visit and multiply.
7. My goal is to keep a fuss-free, low-cost, easy to maintain  and conceal a green project that can fit in a HDB service yard without as many undesirables as possible. 

That's it! Let's go on with more posts in time to come soon!

Getting an Interior Designer... or Your Own Contractor

We went to about 4 Renovation Expos in 2011-2012. Met with 5 Interior Designers as well as 3 Renovation Contractors.

We were contemplating of whether we ought to get a contractor or an interior designer firm (ID) to renovate the new place.

Let us share with you our thoughts and wisdom (the lack of it), for the considerations:

1. We have never own a home, never done our own renovation. We don't know the ropes nor the process of going through a renovation work.
2. We need an 'seasoned' professional experience to advise and tell us what are the considerations we need to make in renovation.
3. We have no theme in mind, no clues on what we want...
4. We need a 'person-to-blame' if all goes south!
5. We want to find out what is the market like, what is in, what is not, what is everlasting...

As such, we decided, since we have time, we shall do some window shopping to see what our options are at that point in time.

We eventually narrowed down to 3 reasonable quotes:
a) a contractor whom our friend recommended
b) an ID which we can work with, someone relate-able and not too expensive
c) another ID that is quite new in the market, but more affordable than option B

We decided to go with "B". Simply being relate-able and similar taste and 'design-personality', we thought it will turn out better amongst the options we've got.

Total budget for renovation reached about SGD 31,000 including air-conditioning with Inverter, false-ceiling in every room, a walk-in wardrobe, nice Quartz counter top and all electrical/carpentry work in.

I wouldn't say it's the most affordable, but it's decent quality at a decent price.

Satisfaction of my ID - 7/10
Outcome of Renovation work as compared to plan - 7.5/10
Timeliness - 8.5/10
Follow-up - 8.5/10
Number of mistakes or issues that cropped-up - 5-8 items

Will I engage them again to do my second home... That's a good question, probably not, considering that I have now a better picture of how a renovation process would be like. IF I do have the time, I would try to get my own contractors to do the necessary work and manage the project by myself.

The Beginning..

We got our flat in Punggol during a balloting exercise in 2010. I went to seek plenty of advice on this, and I thought these are some of the good ones to consider when getting new flats.

Location

"Location is everything." a friend says. You can change everything in the house, you can even make an apartment on the 2nd floor looks like it's at the top floor of the building. Having said that, you'll never be able to change the distance to the bus stop, the distance to the MRT station, the distance to the bus-interchange around you.

As such, it'll be wise to plan getting a place around the location in which your family will need to commute to and fro daily.

There are a few locations consideration:
1) Location to public transport services
2) Location to amenities such as clinic (wouldn't want to walk too far when sick), food-centres (quick fix for dinners after work), super-market (drinks for friends during a hangout at your home)
3) Location to work-place. You'll travel to and fro work daily. That'll take up quite a bit of time. It'll be good to consider the travelling time taken daily.
4) Location to common travel places - places of worship etc. These are places which we'll travel to-and-fro very often as well.
5) Location to parents home, for taking care of kids in future, for visiting, for helping each other's family.

Storey Height

Every floor height makes a difference to the price of the apartment. For us, we took the 16th storey and as such, we paid an additional 16k (1k per floor) to the overall price.

The higher the floor, the more windy it gets, as such, to save electricity in reducing the use of air-conditioning, we decided to get the top-most available floor.

Some of our friends commented that highest floor may incur more heat from the building's roof. I am not sure if it's the same throughout Singapore and all varieties of apartments. For us and some of my friends at Punggol, it seems to make no difference at all.

What will definitely help is to stay right below the water tank as the structure will help to prevent a direct sun in the afternoon.


Direction To The Sun

This is important to know as the wall or the surface of the house that gets the evening sun will DEFINITELY retain the heat of the day throughout the night. As such, you'll need to be prepared to spend a little more money in time to come for the cooling of the house. If it's your master-bed room, then air-conditioning fee will definitely be higher than usual.


I can't remember of any other important considerations, but I'll edit and update this post every time I remember something.