It comes with sawdust pellets and baking soda, useful for keeping the balance of brown and green and minimizing any smell that might be generated. It also comes with a replacement air filter, which is great. However, given that the air filters last 3-4 years, we now have a filter we have to keep track of for years.

To get things started, though, you have to get a couple of cups of soil from outside. This puts the bacteria in place that help the compost to actually decompose.

We did everything as we were supposed to. The first mixing cycle, though, is where the first thing went wrong: it jammed leading to a red blinking light. A quick check of the manual showed that we could just hit the single button to get it to try to mix again. The manual also recommended just waiting 24 hours and trying again as things may soften up. We did this and it worked brilliantly. Until it jammed again. This time, I must have accidentally pressed the button twice because after it mixed it dropped everything to the lower chamber. Well, the first week wasn’t done yet so I had to transfer that back to the top chamber.

I was surprised, though, at how little it smelled and how broken down and dry it was. It seems the composter is working great! Although, since it was dry, we decided to start adding stuff a couple of days early. This jammed the mixer again, but we’re getting used to just waiting overnight and hitting the button. That seems to work great.

Power use is fairly minimal. It seems to use just 16 watts of power most of the time. I haven’t caught it will running the mixer motor but it sounds like the fan goes off for this. We’ve been running it for a week now and it’s used just about 2 kWh of power, which comes in at only about 12-14 watts. So, if we just assume an average of 15 watts and 16 cents per kWh we can see that it will cost just about $1.75 a month to operate.

The machine is relatively quiet and is supposed to get quieter. While mixing, there can definitely be some startling thumps when the house is quiet. Smell has not been an issue, but keep your head back when opening the top. The heat create a rush of steam that doesn’t smell so great when it slaps you across the face. However, if noise or even minor smell is a problem, it can be placed in a cabinet, in your garage, or even outside year round.

I was surprised that most of the machine was made of Styrofoam. That’s decidedly not a green item. The bottom bucket is like a rectangular plant pot and is made of plastic. It contains a small catch for liquids, but very little liquid has ended up in ours so far. This bucket feels like it’s scraping the sides as it’s removed and inserted. Given that the sides are Styrofoam, I’m concerned about the longevity. Given the price of this, I would have hoped for a more solid construction – or at least a plastic shell to help protect the outer surfaces. The machine is light, however, which is nice.

We’re happy we have it because we aren’t able to put compost outside during about half the year when snow is on the ground. This machine also speeds up the compost process, which should give us some nice compost for planting outside this coming spring. (You’re warned not to use the compost inside unless you let it cure for 5-6 months first.) In addition, we can now compost some items we couldn’t before. For instance, we can compost meat because of the heat that’s used and there is little danger of attracting pests to it.

The automatic composter is expensive, though. I also question its durability and longevity, which is not a good thing at this price. We would recommend it, though, if you want to keep composting year round or want to speed up the composting process. We’d also be happy to offer a coupon code for $30 off an automatic composter when ordered directly from naturemill.com. Just email us or leave a comment with a valid email and we’ll send it to you.