Exaco Thermoquick 110 Gallon Wibo Recycled Plastic Compost Bin

I have used this composter all summer and it has held up ok, however, the lid does not want to stay closed.During assembly, it took forever to get the clips that hold the sides together to snap into place and stay put.The doors around the bottom should fit better - you have to make sure you slide them down through both slots to secure them.

Bigger than I thought, so i have a lot of veg peels, leaves, shredded paper to contribute! But it was easy to assemble and I think it is going to work very well.

Excellent purchase. Well-made and easy to assemble. It is working well.

This is getting returned. Granted, it's my first composting bin, but it is poorly constructed and has several flaws. As gardencat mentioned, the bin does not hold together well. It arrived with one of the "slide gates" (which for some reason are on every side which would only be handy if you had about 5 feet of clearance on each side to get to it with a shovel), was detached. It took quite a bit of effort and forcing it to get it back into place. Note that the "slide gates" are designed to detach when opened; they don't slide open and back into place, instead they slide about 1.5 inches up and then detach, and must be carefully (or forcefully and cursingly) forced back into place. As this was an annoying chore with the bin empty because they don't fit well, I'm sure it would be much more unpleasant with the bin full of compost. This was not enough to dissuade me from giving it a try so I put my first small bucket of compost in and closed the lid. There wasn't enough compost to touch the sides, much less put pressure on them, but closing the lid put enough stress on the thing to cause that ill-fitting slide gate to pop right off. After 3 minutes or so, I gave up trying to replace it and decided I would return it, clean up the compost and start over with a different bin. I had to clean the compost off of the dirt because there is no bottom piece. The fact that it didn't have a bottom also meant that I wasn't able to put the bin in a convenient location in my backyard, where I have gravel and paving stones. Instead I had to find a large square dirt area that I could level and then place it on. Is this normal for compost bins? I also found assembly frustrating because the sides didn't fit together well and needed to be forced, as well as half of the corner clips and the clamping sleeves. Save yourself the frustration and get a different composter!

I've been composting for close to a decade, and decided to trade in my old pair of bins (Earth Machine) for a couple that I thought would be a little better looking in my garden. Assembly was fairly quick and easy (about 10 minutes each, and I did it by myself.) I transferred existing compost-in-the-making from my old bins to the new bins, and I thought I was good to go.The first, relatively minor, inconvenience is that the lids do not stay up on their own, as advertised. So, when loading more than a handful, you'd need to find a way to prop the lid open. I called customer service at Exaco (the manufacturer) and the agent confirmed that the lid does not stay up on its own (despite the fact that it is advertised as such.)The much more important issue is that the bin cannot withstand turning of the compost. I'd barely put my tool in the bin to turn the compost (which I try to do a few times a week in order to have finished compost after a couple of months) when the side panels of the bin split apart. The top of the bin stayed together, since there are clips holding the top in place, but the bottoms splayed open. At first I thought maybe I'd gotten a defective bin, or assembled it incorrectly, but when I went to turn the contents of the second bin, the same thing happened.When I called customer service, I was told that the bin was "not designed to withstand rough turning..." uhm, rough turning? I was using a garden fork, which I'd used with my previous plastic bins for many years. The customer service agent told me I could drill holes in the panels and zip tie them together. General composting generally involves turning of compost. If a bin can't withstand turning, there should be a clear notation that bins are designed for passive - not active - composting.

Well, I've had one for 5 or 6 years. I've tried a few cheaper bins since and they just haven't held up as well. I guess having an engineering background I saw during assembly I needed to drill and wire tie 4 or 5 places down the 4 sides. I also wired tied a bottom I cut out of chicken wire. This bin is still a ticken while the others are sick at best. Having a near open bottom on soil has drawn all the local worms. Lets just say I have great compost. You do need to add water fairly regularly.

Works really well for us however I wish the lid had a latch. Ensure that you do not put non organic produce in there or you will contaminate all of your compost with pesticide per their instructions.