That looks like a good choice!

I used to have a double wooden bin that contained a pile, but roots grew up from the bottom, so when it fell apart, I tried something different. Now I have this one. I don't remember why I chose it over the one you are looking at.

We are a family of two with a sort of big yard, and I use them mostly for kitchen waste, and for browns I use saved leaves.

I could use something bigger, but it works fine. Probably would be better if I did better, but I spill a bit when I fill it, so I'm glad it's over soil, and not on my deck.

Found pics I took for my parents of contents when I was complaining about the Lifetime not holding heat, not mixing evenly when tumbled, and slowing down the flow of stuff in stuff out. Taken on a very frosty day, so all the edges of the tumblers are really cold.

This was in February where temps here range from 75f-45f highs and 49f-28f lows.

Lifetime (I don't use shiny coated paperboard anymore in the tumblers because those unsightly blue colored flakes, and barely decomposed white masses appear to be coated in a plastic substance). Didn't have to bother waiting for steam to clear. Zero steam. Left door shut until pics to hold in the center heat.:

One side of the Jora tumbler. Same basic mix of stuff, same time in tumblers, same date of initial starting fill (notice you can barely see the red or white fragments of the problematic coated paperboard materials in the Jora). At first you couldn't see anything in the camera due to the remaining steam. This pic was after leaving the door open for about an hour (or so says my email to parents).:

^^That's some great looking compost.

I was going to suggest to the OP that for more info on operating/managing tumblers, just search the forum for 'tumbler' and you'll find all kinds of threads. Many people advise against tumblers in favor of piles/bins, but in your case you don't have any choice and that boat has left the dock. There is a lot of good info here from people who have used them.

Good luck, happy composting and let us know how it's going!

I have used the expensive Jora tumbler that Rysanna has, and I can vouch for all her comments. I have also used the 37 gallon plastic one that one you are considering. I got mine for $20 on Craigs List, and it lasted about three years - gradually falling apart. But it was tucked into a corner of my community garden plot so I didn't really care, until it was cracked and no longer being held together.

But let me break this down, starting with the advantages / disadvantages of tumblers in general, and the same for each of the models.

Compost Tumblers

Tumblers have advantages.

• They keep the decomposing food away from rats and raccoons. (This is a big plus if you live in the city. Dumping scraps in a pile creates Rat Heaven and the consequences will be borne by your neighbors and their pets. )
• When used optimally, they speed decomposition. (But the requirements for optimal decomposition may not jive with schedule with which you produce scraps. More on that later.)
• They look tidy compared with your average compost pile. If your yard is in view of the neighbors, this may be important.

They also have disadvantages.

• While expensive models give you every advantage above, cheaper ones don't. See the discussion on models below.
• On average, they don't hold that much. Of course, they come in different sizes. But you need a volume of about a square meter to even get the composting process going. Most of the inexpensive models are much smaller than that - and remember if it has two bins, each bin is it's own volume of compost. This means that only the very large models have the mass to heat up.
• Of course, the next question is do you produce enough material to fill a large compost tumbler - and how quickly?

Let's examine that last point in more detail. There are two different reasons for composting.

1. You want to process your daily food and garden scraps into something useful. In other words, the process needs to match the input you have on hand - that is the measure of success.
2. You want to produce your own compost for your gardening needs so you don't have to buy it at the garden center. Here, success is defined by the output - having the compost ready in sufficient quantity when you need it.

You sound like you fall in to the first category. In other words, you don't want to have to be scrambling around to procure extra greens and browns so you can fill your garden with X amount of compost in the spring. You want your composting process to match the way you produce raw material for the bin. You want to be an ecologically responsible consumer, and the compost you get at the end of the process is just a nice bonus.

Here is what you need to understand with that approach - that is not the optimal way to produce compost. So, claims of garden-ready compost in a couple of months will not be your experience. The optimal way to produce compost is to add all the greens and browns at once, and they should amount to at least a meter square in volume. (More is better.) Then lock them away and tumble occasionally until it is done. Empty the bin, and then repeat. On that schedule, you will get 3 or four bins of compost per year. (Remember, if it is double sided, each side counts as a bin.) If your bin is smaller than one meter square, then it will take longer - twice as long or more.

And here is the big "but" - but that is not the way you produce scraps in your daily life. You produce a little at a time, and then you will add it to the bin. At that rate, maybe it takes you a month to fill up your one square meter bin. You close the bin, and at that point the composting clock begins. If you have a double-sided tumbler, then you start filling the other side.

And here we come to the composting tumbler workflow problem - if it takes you a month to fill a bin, and then it takes two to three months to produce compost, you will have two months when the composting bin is unavailable for scraps because it is "cooking". The process is not successful because, remember, your main goal is to deal with your constant flow of scraps. In order to deal with your workflow, you would need four bins - one collecting that month's scraps and three cooking compost.

What often happens is that people keep throwing their scraps into the composting bin without ever closing the door and letting it process. And then they wonder why the compost is never "done".

So, what have we learned? You need to know how much raw material you produce a month and buy 4x that capacity in tumbler volume. That might be four separate tumblers or two big dual-bin tumblers. Now let's see how two different products stack up to the job.

Small 37 Gallon Dual-Bin Plastic Tumbler (less than $100 new)

Advantages:

• It's affordable
• It's small so it's easy to fill quickly
• It's not that hard to put together

Disadvantages:

• It's too small to get very hot - if it was a single bin it might be almost big enough. But divided in two it will take three to four months in the summer to cook a batch of compost.
• It is useless in the cold months. Composting will be suspended until the temp go over 50 degrees.
• If exposed to the elements, it will stay intact for about two to three years. Then you will see cracks, leaks, doors may no longer close properly, nuts and bolts will rust and weaken. Five years is the most you can expect to get out of this. You can extend it's life by emptying it in the fall and bringing it in to the garage until spring, if you live in a cold climate.

Jora Composter Tumbler JK270 (less than $500)

Advantages

• All metal exterior with a foam plastic insulated interior. Stand, turning mechanism, and latches are all higher quality.
• Each bin is about the size of the entire 37 gallon plastic tumbler.
• Should last for ten years easily - more if given some protection from the elements.
• Can compost into the fall and early spring - though it will slow down when temps go to freezing.

Disadvantages

• Expensive! How many bags of compost could you buy at the garden center for the price of this thing? Makes you really question why you are doing this at all.
• About twice the size of the black plastic tumbler.
• A challenge to assemble - give yourself a whole afternoon and have a helper.

I should mention that the JK270 model is just barely big enough to get compost cooking. To really do the job you would want the next highest model, the 106 gallon JK400 that costs about $900. That will do hot composting all year round no problem. But, the question then becomes do you produce enough scraps to fill the thing? But maybe instead of two JK270s you could get by with one JK400? In that sense - it's a bargain?

Conclusion

If you live in the city or a suburb with strict home owner's restrictions, a compost tumbler may the only viable option. However, if you want tumbler composting to meet your scrap output and produce timely compost (so you can empty the bin and start over again) you either need a whole lot of cheap tumblers, or one or two big expensive ones. Otherwise, they simply won't be successful for you.

There is one more alternative - one that works inside the house or basement and won't require home owner association approval - worm bins. They are easy to keep and maintain and respond well to gradual adding food scraps. They are messy to extract the compost, though. Just something else to consider.

Also running about 6 different sized indoor worm bins, which get heavily used when all tumbler sides are either at the beginning of the closed door cycle, or the end and haven't been dumped out yet. Definitely depends on why you are trying to produce all your own compost, if you are and what is available around you.

These are something like suburban houses thrown onto scraped and back-filled acre or so lots. Meaning a bunch of metal, hard plastic construction waste, concrete, blacktop debris, other more natural trash with a bit of really nice red clay mixed in. Married into this place, wouldn't have been something I'd even consider. At least two neighbors can see our yard from their homes. Both front and back are visible from the dirt road running through this neighborhood. Went with tumblers mostly after moving here.

There are three questionable but at least not complete trash deliverable products available around me here. By 'around' I mean one is ordered from the closest state to the north. No truck, and limited physical ability means I'm sort of restricted by what I can order to my home, or have loaded in a trunk from a garden center. One product isn't technically compost. Mostly sand. Kinda sad how excited I was to smell just normal soil smells, and have only tiny amounts of plastic to deal with from that product. Always comes with a thick layer of lively American cockroaches and fire ants. They tell you those roaches only glide downwards, but I think being disturbed shows they can fly slightly upwards too.

All three commercial products have a variety of pests, plastic and/or weedy problems they come with even if you don't count how expensive they are. It worked out long term to be less expensive and less work overall to just do it myself as much as possible. If I lived elsewhere it would be reasonable to hire in someone with soil or even livestock waste. However, here having enough trouble getting general services as it is. Not interested in dealing with more disasters from hoping a 'soil' like substance wasn't a nightmare. I mean, based on services, we worried about toxic waste dumping mixed with something that looked soil-ish and so on. Not even kidding.

Notes on rats. Once lived near a neighbor where it was still a good 5 min walk to get there. They shoved their trash in burn barrels waiting for a time they choose to burn it. (Common practice in many rural areas, not a good option imo, but an open compost draws evacuating rodents too.) Anyhow, they eventually got rats that fled the low valley from a flood, and took up residence in the trash. We felt the effects for years after, all of us on that side of the mountain.

Cleaner maybe, and less ugly than city rats, but none the less RATS. It's not just a close living situation problem. Every time they burned their trash, the rats tried to establish elsewhere. They were trying to chew holes in the metal bins we kept livestock feed in, ate root crops, tried to find an unobtrusive location in the semi-open compost systems, hung out in the chicken coop when the chickens weren't in, etc. (Our chickens would kill them in a flash if they ever saw any.)

Rats are the reason I gained an interest in compost tumblers. Haha Bears weren't even as bad as rats. Had no idea they were such determined things. Nothing like seeing a steadily abraded metal bin holding feed over the years. To think the metal bins were actually to keep bears out of it.

If you are just trying to dispose of household scraps in a different way from a landfill, and can not use a visible/identifiable compost outdoors, nothing is more effective for the money invested than a few worm bins. Indoors or out. I wouldn't bother with any tumbler at all if that was my motivation. Cheap plastic or scrap wood worm bins can be difficult to eventually harvest if you have physical limitations. There are more expensive 'flow through' ones that are not. Even those don't usually cost as much over the same amount of years as a good quality/sized tumbler.