Cavaleiro Farm: Jean Pain Compost Bioenergy System. 2016 Carrot Cache Innovation Submission
Channel: Urban Crops
Date: 2016-12-01

A Jean Paine pile with our own twist. With no underground water lines from wells, last winter was a challenge to have water for livestock. We wanted to use a JP wood chip pile to keep water from freezing so we did some design to integrate the concept for our farm.

We placed it beside our poultry barn for access plus we figured we could use the extra heat to improve our incubation success rate. We also thought why not bury water tanks under the pile? So we ended up doing some landscaping. Graded the area two feet down, buried water tanks and then the pile was built on top of that.

Approximately 15 feet wide and 20 feet long as a windrow. We layered 500 foot of 1inch poly in layers as we built the pile. At 7 foot tall when finished, it is bigger than JP original pile plus the one done by Mother Earth magazine.

For us it just cost some diesel, poly pipe and 12 hrs of labor.  The wood chips were free from a tree cutting company in the city. Should provide 4 months of 140 degree Fahrenheit  water.