Diego’s follow-ups on bioreactor videos are always going to be a treat- he runs great experiments and no-turn composting is my kind of composting.
I’m not a big fan of staging a compost pile off the ground- I get the pest concerns and minimizing amibitious roots from stealing nutrients, but I don’t worry about the airflow since this is a long term effort of at least a year or more.
I’d rather let the pile be in contact with the ground to maximize the incoming soil biology to help work on the contents and deal with the stringy roots later.
Not surprisingly, horse manure made great finished compost and was loaded with worms. I’m always happy to see an explosion of worms in my piles- it’s a good indicator that my pile is working just fine and I’ll have crumbly sticky compost later.
The bioreactor is basically just a larger version of a Geobin compost bin– down the line when I have a bigger yard, I will certainly be upgrading to this size for my composting efforts.