Re: [compost_tea] Soaker Hose Air Diffuser

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 11:15:57 -0500

Thank you for clarifying what brewers use old tire materials. I didn't know soker hose was made from that material. Sorry, I don't know everything. :-)

The danger of using old tire materials in a tea brewer probably comes as microorganisms in the tea brew attack and begin to chew up the petroleum materials.

Yes, there are herds of microbes that attack petroleum products. In a compost pile, at the right heat and temperatures, microbes will chew old tires up in a couple months, to the point you can't find anything left of the tire, except maybe the steel-belts.

The break-down products of petroleum products are initially pretty toxic. The first step or two in the decomposition process takes a complex, often toxic material, breaks it down by removing phenolic units, or releasing heavy metals, chlorines, bromines, carboxyl groups, or carbonyl groups, etc. Those can be not-great news to other organisms in the vicinity.

The remaining undecomposed material, as well as the first step breakdown materials will be further decomposed in a compost pile, resulting in long-chain fatty acids, organic acids, more phenols, terpenes, as well as production of some simple sugars, carbohydrates and amino acids. With more time, more of the toxics will be metabolized to the simpler materials, which are used by bacteria and fungi to make more biomass, and the toxicity of the breakdown products becomes less and less. But that is in a compost pile.

In a 24 hour tea, the first time you use the soaker hose made of old tires, probably not enough time for any significant break-down or metabolism of the tire material has occurred. In the second tea, however, if the microbes have been active and chewing on the hose material, you could have some breakdown and release of toxic material.

By the time you have done three to five brews, the microbial population in the soaker hose material has really gotten going, and the bio-film is pretty hefty by then. You have some toxics being produced and possibly being released in to the tea brew.

We've seen that compost tea made with machines that use soaker hose material make barely decent tea after five to six uses, even if the first tea made was great. I attributed this to the development of bio-films, and therefore production of anaerobic materials. Maybe release of toxic material from the tire materials is another component of why the tea quality rapidly goes from great to good to not-good at all.

The answer? You can't clean out soaker hose well-enough by soaking in bleach, or hydrogen peroxide to get rid of the bio-film inside the little pores and passageways in the soaker hose. The bio-film is the layers of microbes that are chrewing away on the soaker hose material.

You need to replace the old soaker hose with new materials every five to ten brews, depending on how good you were at cleaning the soaker hose between tea brews to begin with. The better you clean, the longer the tea stays fine. Just depends on how much grow you allow in the soaker hose between runs.

But the fact that soaker hose is made from old tires was something that had not crossed my mind. Thank you for bringing out that new information. It explains why the teas in soaker-hose brewers can so rapidly go from great to not-great wihtin just a few brews.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Tue Nov 04 2003 - 12:45:07 EST

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