Sometimes the compost takes a couple of days to return to the higher temps - that's if there are enough remaining raw greens to enable it to do this.

You've not 'broken' your compost. It sounds like it's quite healthy. Most of my compost piles reach 140F, then start toning down. Nothing wrong with that. You'll have great stuff I'm sure!

Should I not have turned it? It had been a few weeks, and I was curious to see how it was doing in the center. Should I have waited until the temperature started falling?

I just turned one of my compost piles - leaves and grass clippings. It 'went out', the temperature dropped from about 90 to about 40. I just put some fresh grass clippings in the middle of it to see if it will restart. Otherwise, I'll have to wait for spring to see it finish.

It is probably best to wait until the temp starts falling before you turn it but then again, I don't turn my compost at all. Too much work.

Turning compost disrupts the bacterial activity, the digestion process, which will cause the heat generated by that bacterial acivity to drop. When it rises once again, and how much, depends on how active the bacteria can be, ie. the food available for them to digest. If your Nitrogen is in sufficient quantity along with the Carbon and the moisture level is just about right they should get to work in a day or two and the temperature will increase to show that, but if conditions are not conducive to that work, too low Nitrogen levels, not enough moisture or maybe too much moisture which will replace the air they also need to work, there will be no rise in temperature.

Luckily, you can't break your compost. You can do things that might slow, speed, or perhaps make it stink but most of those are pretty adjustable and even if you do screw up, the compost will eventually happen with or without you.

I like those situations where you can't really screw up cause even if you do, things will eventually work out anyway. It's kinda like a bad hair cut, it will eventually grow out.

After a day and a half of low activity, my new pile is back up to 110F degrees in one spot, and 80F in another. Vapor is rising out of the chicken wire vents (visible in the 27F degree air).

The other two piles are in the 135-140F range.

You might want to give your pile a jolt of Nitrogen in one form or another.

Well, my pile is now 105F. I wonder if I should have left it alone, or if the aeration was good for it.

Aside from grass clippings, what is the best way to give it a jolt of nitrogen?

Probably urine. The pile is now about 120, so it is going in the right direction.

I second the vote for urine. Actually urine gets my first vote before grass clippings since I have to steal those.

I know urine works to heat up a leaf pile since we got one up to over 150 F one summer with three of us peeing in it for a month.

My pile is completely cold. The only thing added to it in the past month was leaves and some pumpkin, I think. I turned it - nothing. I figure I need some N. How much urine are we talking about?

rutgers1 - If you mean N other than left-overs, food scraps, garden scraps, used coffee grounds, then I've heard of: alfalfa pellets (have to buy), bloodmeal (have to buy), beer (have to buy).

Does it have enough moisture? Is it big enough?

How big is the pile? Does it really need to be re-heated or might it be getting close to ready to use?

If you can get a couple of people to devote most of their urine to the compost pile for a few weeks you should be able to get a cubic yard of leaves to start heating up a bit. Make sure to pull aside some of the pile, pour in the urine, then re-cover or you may have some odors.

Most of our urine makes it into the compost by way of a bucket of sawdust (or sawdust toilet.)

Here is a link that might be useful: The Humanure Handbook

The urine output of a normal, healthy human being should not contain enough protein (Nitrogen) to be of much, if any, benefit in a compost pile. If a person is eating a good, healthy, balanced diet and the kidneys are functioning properly there will not be that much protein. If there is a lot of protein in the urine that person is either eating a diet too high in protein or is having kidney failure.
While adding human urine is not going to harm the compost it is not the magic elixar some seem to think and it most likely the water that does more good than any protein in the urine.

Actually kimmsr,
There are studies out there that say a person's own urine has enough N value to grow enough grain for that person for the year. I have done experiments using diluted urine as fertilizer and over the several months of the trial, the urine fed plants seemed to do just as well as the Miracle Grow fed plants. Human urine left to sit for too long and the urea in it turns to ammonia (you know that ammonia smell you always talk about being the indicator that nitrogen is escaping into the air?)

Urine is a good source of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and other minor and trace minerals even in a healthy person. The amount by volume will vary and the exact makeup will be dependant on diet.

Urine definitely has enough nitrogen to heat up a leaf pile even after it has been collected in a bucket of sawdust. I can't agree with it being the moisture alone since I wouldn't expect a pile of leaves (about 50 gallons worth) to reach 160 F just from adding some moisture. Three people using chamber pots with shredded paper or sawdust and emptying them into this leaf pile contained in a hardware cloth ring 3' high and about 2 1/2 foot accross. Mostly the previous years maple and basswood leaves along with some brown pine needles. after about 3 weeks the pile was almost up to 160 F. I was one of the three people that summer and you can't tell me that there is no appreciable Nitrogen in Urine.

Yes, a really high amount of protein in urine indicates a health issue (like perhaps blood in the urine) but even healthy urine still has enough Nitrogen in it to burn your plants if you don't use it sparingly or dilute it. Salts can also be an issue in urine just as they are an issue in chemical fertilizers.

Oh, and anyone who complains that using urine in the compost or as a fertilizers poses a environmental risk, needs to think about the alternatives. That being, to put the urine in a bowl of clean water and then flush it to either a septic system that then leaches those nutrients back into the ground water systems or to flush it away to a sewage treatment plant which eventually needs to deal with the sludge either by landfilling or spreading somewhere. Using your own urine on the surface where plants and microbes can access the nutrients before they leach away seems a better option to me.

There are a couple links to info about using urine as a fertilizer though it can be hard to decide what to believe on the internet.

http://www.wecf.de/cms/articles/2005/09/maize_urine.php

http://www.springerlink.com/content/km386u8967256354/

If dog urine has enough protien to kill grass, I'd think human urine would have enough to heat up a compost pile.

Human urine, if concentrated in one spot like a dogs, would also kill grass. It is a combination of the products in the urine not just the protein that kills the grass.

Kimmser, I always thought it was nitrogen burn that killed the grass when a dog pees. What else contributes?

I think I'd rather spring for the alfalfa meal/pellets. I hate to "entertain" the neighbors or the cops........LOL

I dump on more coffee grinds and water them into the pile. It seems to get things cooking again.

Cheers,
Michelle