Caitlyn Lewis asked 5 years ago
Hey! Thank you for all the work you are doing. I am potentially interested in your building plans which I’m so happy you have done but I wanted to know if you have had anyone use them for commercial size processing? I’m curious how much they cost to make and if you use a liner on the inside to prevent wood rot? I am looking at 1000+ pounds of food scraps a week and looking for a good solution that won’t break our nonprofit bank. Thank you.
wormadmin Staff answered 5 years ago
Hi Caitlyn,
Thanks for your enquiry.
Well, that really depends on everyones definition of “commercial”.
Personally I use the 2 x 10 square foot and 1 x 15 square foot beasts to provide VC for sale.
Yes, you could use a liner if you wanted to, like plastic corflute (like they make political/real estate signs out of) – or acrylic, like perspex for instance – or even a pond liner.
I dont have a price to make them, as everyone buys materials differently – and is often in a different COUNTRY to me – eg do you buy everything from a one stop shop that will cut it up for you, would be the dearest way to go.
Buying materials from several stores to get discounts and cutting it all up yourself would be much cheaper.
If you EMAIL me I can provide the cutting list of the 10 sqft units, and you can price them if you like.
Wow, 1000lbs of scraps a week – would take about 500 – 1000 lbs of worms to eat…….let that sink in – how will you pay for the worms to start up something like that? And if you put them all in one system while you learn and kill them all – that will be a huge expense.
If you were to look at a bigger CFT later, I would recommend making a smaller one (or several) first.
The advantage to that is that you can learn on the smaller one/s, kill worms if you happen to make mistakes – and understand the work it would take to then scale UP to bigger CFTs and the 1000 lbs a week of food.
Worm farming is like all other forms of farming – it takes consistent hard work and dedication to raise worms successfully.
I would say that 1000 lbs a week of food waste, add to that the 500 odd lbs of carbon youd have to add to balance it (and looking after the worms, harvesting the system etc) and it would EASILY be a full time Job for at least 1 if not 2 or more people.
You may also like to look at my ebook on the WEDGE system.
I designed a system for a commercial client based on the WEDGE.
The system I designed for them is a 60+ foot long wedge “face” (system width is about 12 feet) – which can handle at maximum population, 200 gallons of food waste, balanced with 60 gallons of carbon, with a worm population of 200 lbs of worms.
The WEDGE would be an easier/more of a low cost start to something like youre talking about.
If I were you, I would build a pilot (smaller) CFT and a pilot WEDGE and see what you have the best result with, to expand later.
Here is that one:
https://thewormman.com.au/the-wedge-system/
Thanks for asking your question, and good luck with your project 🙂
regards
Brian
[email protected]