They Said His Steaming Manure Pile Was Disgusting — Until It Heated His Cabin to 70° for Six Months

A Wisconsin Immigrant Heated His Home With Manure—and Changed Winter Survival Forever

Price County, Wis. — In the brutal winter of 1887, when temperatures plunged to nearly 40 degrees below zero and families across northern Wisconsin woke every two hours to feed roaring wood stoves, one small log cabin near Phillips remained quietly warm.

No smoke poured from its chimney. No axes rang out in the darkness. Inside, the temperature held steady at a comfortable 65 to 70 degrees.

The heat did not come from fire. It came from a steaming mound of manure.

The idea sounded absurd, even offensive, to Anders Svenson’s neighbors. A Swedish immigrant and former estate worker, Svenson had piled nearly 20 tons of horse manure, hay, and wood chips directly against the north wall of his cabin. Buried deep inside the mound were coils of copper pipe, connected to a water tank inside his home.

Locals laughed. Some worried about rot, rats, or madness. Others whispered that isolation had finally broken the immigrant’s mind.

They were all wrong.

By the time winter reached its cruelest peak, Svenson’s unconventional system proved not only effective but revolutionary—quietly outperforming every wood stove in Price County.

An Old Idea, Forgotten in America

Svenson arrived in Wisconsin in 1882 as part of a large wave of Swedish immigrants seeking land and independence. He brought with him knowledge common on Scandinavian estates but virtually unknown in the American frontier: compost heating.

For centuries, European farmers had understood that decomposing organic matter generates enormous heat. In Sweden, large compost mounds were used to warm greenhouses through winters that could freeze plants solid in hours.

The science is simple. As microorganisms break down organic material, they release heat. In small piles, that heat escapes quickly. But in large, well-constructed mounds, the material insulates itself, allowing core temperatures to rise above 130 degrees Fahrenheit and remain there for months.

Svenson had helped build and maintain such systems for five winters in Sweden. He knew the math. A compost pile weighing about 20 tons could generate the equivalent heat of a small wood stove—continuously—for up to six months.

What stunned him upon arriving in Wisconsin was not the cold, but the waste.

Lumber camps discarded mountains of wood chips and sawdust. Farms produced endless piles of manure. The raw materials for compost heating were everywhere, unused.

“The Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Heard”

In 1886, Svenson purchased 40 acres east of Phillips and began building his cabin. He paid particular attention to the north wall—the side hit hardest by winter winds.

Against that wall, he planned his compost mound.

His nearest neighbor, Friedrich Hoffman, was blunt. “You want to pile manure against your house?” he asked. “Twenty tons of it?”

Svenson’s wife, Britta, was equally horrified. The mound would sit just feet from their bedroom wall. The smell, she feared, would be unbearable. Their children would be shunned at school. Church gossip was guaranteed.

Svenson acknowledged the first two weeks would be unpleasant. After that, he promised, the odor would fade as high-temperature, aerobic decomposition took over.

He was right.

By mid-October, the stench of raw manure had softened into something earthy and inoffensive. Steam rose gently from the mound on cold mornings. Inside the cabin, the copper pipes grew warm. Then hot.

By early November, the indoor thermometer read 68 degrees—without a single log burned for heat.

A Winter That Tested Everything

January 1887 brought one of the coldest spells in Wisconsin history. Temperatures fell from mild to catastrophic in days, bottoming out at minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

Across Price County, chimneys cracked. Woodpiles vanished. Families burned furniture to stay alive. Men split firewood by lantern light at 3 a.m., frost freezing into their beards.

At Svenson’s cabin, life continued almost normally.

The compost mound’s core remained above 130 degrees. Hot water circulated through the copper pipes into an iron tank inside the cabin, radiating steady, even warmth. The system required no pump, powered only by natural convection: hot water rising, cooler water returning to be reheated.

The cabin temperature never dropped below 63 degrees.

When Hoffman finally visited, exhausted and skeptical, he needed only one touch of the copper pipe to be convinced. It was hot—undeniably so.

Inside, the warmth felt different from a stove. There were no cold corners, no scorched air near a firebox. Just consistent, gentle heat.

“My family burned six cords of wood in eight days,” Hoffman said quietly. “You burned nothing.”

From Ridicule to Replication

Word spread quickly. Families displaced by failed heating systems took refuge in the Svenson cabin. Farmers came to inspect the mound. Notebooks appeared. Questions followed.

Svenson shared everything.

He explained the mixture—one part manure to two parts hay and wood chips. The importance of moisture. The placement of pipes. The sealing of the cabin wall with tar and oil cloth to prevent rot.

“Knowledge hoarded heats one cabin,” he told his wife. “Knowledge shared heats a county.”

By spring, Hoffman and others were building their own systems. Within years, compost heating spread across northern Wisconsin and into neighboring states. Agricultural journals published diagrams. Extension services took notice.

The wall everyone feared would rot? When the original cabin was dismantled in 1951, the timber behind decades of compost mounds was found dry and sound.

A Lesson Buried in Plain Sight

Today, the principle behind Svenson’s system lives on in modern biomass heating, commercial compost facilities, and greenhouse operations worldwide. The technology has evolved, but the insight remains unchanged: organic waste is stored thermal energy.

Svenson died in 1923, having lived 37 winters warmed by decomposition. He never patented his idea. Never charged for it. He simply slept through the night while others fed fires in the dark.

In a note later found in the family Bible, Britta Svenson wrote: “He said the manure would heat our home. I said he’d lost his mind. The manure heated our home for 37 winters. The neighbors burned forests. We burned nothing.”

More than a century later, as modern societies search for sustainable energy solutions, the answer Anders Svenson found in 1886 still steams quietly beneath our feet—waiting, as it always has, to be used.