Looking at buying a piece of property to move my stump dump/mulch yard. The property use to have a sawmill on it. There is about 5000 yards of 20+ year old saw dust piled up on it. The top 4" has turned to top soil, but the rest still looks like it did when it came off the saw blade. Any ideas of uses for the material. I could mix it in with the mulch...but looking for some other ideas...
is it clean enough that farmers or horse people could use it for bedding? you might be able to sell some of it, not for much or maybe just get rid of it for free?
Its rather wet, and has some wood scraps mixed in. Who knows whats under that pile!!!
Some sawdust can be deadly!
Easy, that's topsoil. Scrape the top off that's already decomposed and sell it. Take the remaining and let it start to decompose, if their are any bodies buried in it compost those too. Seriously, that pile of sawdust could be an asset. The species of wood, nitrogen levels and other chemical properties of the saw dust will dictate what you can do with it. It will take a while for it to decompose but if you have the space and time it's worth looking into. Topsoil is an asset and a money maker. The projects I work on most often require topsoil to be imported and we are always looking for the material.
Top soil brings good money here...$500 for 15 ton load. I was really excited when I first saw the pile and realized what it was. I kicked off the first couple inches and it looked like some really good topsoil... Then I took a shovel to it and all I found was just saw dust under the crust. I don't know much about composting. I talked to a guy that took wood chips and leaves an made some killer topsoil. It was a 3 year process.
amazing what you find on google http://www.break.com/video/coolest-use-of-sawdust-ever-601794
Awesome! That solution is a lot more fun than composting, pays less but a lot more fun.:tong
Get a pellet mill and make wood pellets?
No market for pellets here. There are some large pellet mills starting up, but they are exporting everything.
Sitting in a pile for 20 years probably means it's not going to be useful for anything but compost. Too wet and moldy for bedding, probably not suitable to sell to the pellet mills. Not much good in mulch either. To compost it, it needs nitrogen, lots of nitrogen. Find a custom farm applicator (local Cenex, or farm co-op?) and knife in anhydrous at ten time the highest corn rate. The knifing will let enough air into the surface and it will kick start the composting. After a week, scrape the active surface into windrows, and if there's enough nitrogen it will get hot and be compost by spring. More economically, scrape deeper to dilute the nitrogen and it will compost by next fall. Maybe make a quick windrow and the rest to finish slower?
what do I need to do to get it to decompose? Is it a mater of just turning it every 6 months?
Just saw your reply delmer. Thank you. What if there is a bunch of wood mixed in with it?
The wood chunks will decompose much slower, so you'll probably have to screen the compost if you want top dollar finished compost. Windrowing and turning it every so often will make it compost faster, but with enough N and time, you won't have to turn it a second time. You'll have to figure out if this makes sense, but I know it will work one way or another.
Holy frigging crap! $500 of topsoil here would be about 30 yards which is around 60 tons. The sawdust off my firewood processor is used for horse bedding. I just happen to have my stuff on a friend's horse farm. I use his land, he gets free sawdust and firewood. They have around 30 horses. Provided it's not completely nasty I bet some folks could use it for horse or cow bedding. I don't see it as being sellable though. Around here you can buy 10 yards of nice clean sawdust for $50. What do you do with the mulch and ground up stumps? Mix it in?
It's about the same price here. $300 -500 per 20 ton load depending on the quality and it it's screened or not. With the absence of large grading jobs due to the economy, the smaller infill projects that are going on lack sufficient topsoil for landscaping. It's been tough finding it at reasonable prices.