How to Clean Your Burn Barrel
72One Scoop at a Time
Why would anyone need to know how to clean a burn barrel? Isn't it obvious?
Apparently not. On my burn barrel page, one reader asked how we handled the buildup in the barrel over time. Today, I did some of that...hence this hub..
Two days after the last bag of trash was tossed into the barrel for burning, things had cooled enough. Time to clean out the barrel, get it ready for the next batch.
1. The first step is to separate the burned tin cans from the actual ashes. One shovelful at a time, the remaining debris inside the barrel is brought to the top of the barrel, the tin cans are picked out one by one, and the remaining ash is dumped into a five gallon bucket.
Wearing gloves for this is recommended. Even good leather can go from buckskin to gray in a hurry, but that's a lot easier to deal with than scrubbing ground-in ash from your skin later--not to mention the broken glass and sharp tin safety factors.
My wife, Pam, is quite impressed with the high temperatures attained inside this particular barrel design. In many cases, even lightweight metal (such as a cat food can) comes out partially burned away.
Maybe some cans are even totally burned away, but how would you ever know for sure?
2. Once the barrel is empty, it's time to crush the burned cans. I do this with the butt end of a spud bar. At first, it was mildly frustrating every time the round end of the bar would get stuck in a can, but then realization dawned: Why not leave the stuck can on the bar and just keep on crunching? It worked beautifully, even after a second can got stuck over the first can that was stuck over the bar--the photos will explain.
How much remaining debris after burning 62 bags of trash? (We had around ten months worth of trash on hand when we first set up the barrel.) Not bad at all: A plastic tote about two thirds full of burned cans plus ten gallons of ashes.
Before burning: Somewhere around 300 cubic feet of household trash (which had been temporarily stored in a shed).
After burning: Approximately eight cubic feet of ashes and cans.
3. Button things up--that is, clamp the smoke-top lid back on top of the empty barrel and put the tools away--and it's time to call it a day, right?
Not quite. Pam couldn't resist a clean burn barrel, so she asked me to burn some more trash from that still sizeable pile in the storage shed. It helps her emotionally, tossing stuff in there, watching it burn....
Hey. We don't have a soothing mountain stream out here in the desert. If fire snaps her out of a bout of depression, then....
Thirty-two more bags later, she was feeling fine.
Now I have to figure out how to clean out ten thousand mouse turds from a shed that once held all those bags of trash...(*sigh*).
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Heck, Will, the camera gets most of the credit on these burn barrel Hubs--how can one avoid seeing the possibilities in a tin can burned to a frazzle or a few Indian smoke signals rolling out of the barrel, or...:)
Looking forward to installment three, with the suspicion that mouse turds will burn also.
The mouse turds that have made it to the burn barrel do, yes, seem to burn just fine.
Installment three...interesting you should mention that...but unless I can put a Will Starr twist on it, it won't be any fun, so....
Interesting! How long does it take the trash to burn? And what about the fumes?
The fumes probably take off into the sky, burn holes in the ozone, and bring down the wrath of the liberal left!
Okay, seriously? Our closest neighbor is a good quarter mile distant. Unless you're standing with your head directly over the burn barrel, the fumes aren't even a factor for us personally. Plus, while huge wildfires do tend to send towers of smoke well up into the sky, our "stuff" (when we can see smoke) tends to stay relatively close to the ground--and as it cools, drops TO the ground on most days.
How long does it take to burn? Depends. Four bags of household trash will be pretty well burned down in a matter of twenty minutes or so. I did "push it" one day, burned for something like six straight hours, ended up burning 60 bags of trash.
But there's a little continuing burn in the condensed pile that continues overnight with the big (60 bag) burns. It's actually more efficient to burn just a few bags at a time, at least with this particular barrel.
Good info . i liked it very much.
Thanks.
We had a burn barrel and just scattered the clean ashes in the woods. The poison ivy didn't grow back there. It helped keep our son who was badly allergic to poison ivy from the break outs. The stuff that wasn't clean, we bagged up and took to the landfill once a month. Of course, we had a utility trailer.
We also have a utility trailer. Our GMC pickup truck is down at the moment, however.
WillStarr Level 8 Commenter 13 months ago
Only a sheer genius can turn an old fasioned burn barrel into an interesting topic...twice!