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bud16415

Fixer Upper
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Over the weekend we went over near Akron as my girl’s father bought two drying grain bins at a farm sale and wanted to take them apart and haul them back. These bins are 30 foot across and about 30 foot to the cap at the top. Made out of curved corrugated panels and held together with about 4000 screws each I would guess. I know we had (2) 5 gallon pails of bolts and nuts when done. The farmer had 3 of them and moved one to join in with his new storage bins by moving it with a crane about 500 yards picking it up and swinging it around and then moving the crane a dozen times. Ours were not so easy.

Six of us started Saturday morning at first light and worked till sunset and then drove back the 2 two hours because there was a golf tourney in Akron and no rooms to be found. Got home and slept about 5 hours and headed back. Did I mention I might have stayed and slept in truck but it rained almost the whole weekend and with the mud the thought of a shower and warm bed was worth the drive.

These are the only thing I ever worked on where you take them apart from the bottom up and build them from the top down. The pictures will show the jacks we used (3) were rented and we built (4) more out of boat winches and scrap laying around at home. You lift the whole thing and take off one ring at a time, then lower it move the hooks up and do it again.

Most of us were past the age that should be thinking of doing this stuff but we got r done.

Not looking forward to the puzzle of reassembly.

Last photo shows the new bins with me standing in front for scale the bin on the right was the one he moved and the same size as the ones we took down.

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Yep there wasn’t much standing around and no beer tops popping off. I’m a desk jockey and I’m always amazed at what happens when you crank these farmers up. Honestly if we had to take those down at work there would be a month of planning, 2 months of design work, then safety would get involved and tell us it’s a confined space and we need an access tunnel from below and tell us to start over. When the plan finally came together the union would tell the guys only 10 bolts per hour then you have to take a break. To get the project done we would have to authorize overtime payments after a few weeks. And come in costing 3 times what a new one would cost.

We sent the girls to town to get (105) 4 ½” cut off disks an air hammer, gas for the compressor and 4 large pizzas. I don’t think we used over 40 of those disks but should have made it 6 large pizzas.

Neal
The old farmer selling them came over and told me we should take those concrete pad also, laughing. I told him I was thinking about it as I don’t want to build the forms to pour new ones. To get the auger and Heater/ blower to work right I guess the base should be about 18” above grade. That looks like a lot of concrete to me.
 
I don’t know much about concrete, but these bins were put in in 1976 and the floor inside is perforated steel setting on rough sawed wood planks the planks are held up with concrete blocks just sitting on top of that round slab. Those blocks have been dried and heated god knows how many times and look perfect but they are super brittle now. Almost like glass and if you hit two of them together they break like glass.

I don’t know if they should be used over or not? And if anyone got a hold of these blocks they could kill themselves building out of them.
 
Still sore two days later. The farmers came back and have been bailing hay for two days.

Gives corn flakes a whole new meaning.


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