Holding Bin Has An Underground Hopper

Holding Bin Has An Underground Hopper GRAIN HANDLING Miscellaneous 28-4-34 Arvin De Cook needed a wet corn holding bin to feed his grain dryer. He built his own 4,800-bu. bin out of two 18-ft. bins that were given to him by a neighbor. Instead of putting the bin up on a hopper bottom, he set the bin on a concrete cone buried underground. "I put the entire bin up for less than $1,000," says De Cook, of Sully, Iowa. "A new above-ground hopper bottom bin of comparable capacity would have cost $10,000 or more. What's more, with an underground cone, the bin stands only 25 ft. tall so I didn't need a new auger to reach the top of it. "To build a conventional hopper bottom bin, I would have needed a concrete foundation to set the legs on anyway. So I asked myself, why not dig a hole, make a concrete cone, and set it underground?" A circular concrete footing was poured first and the bin's bottom ring was anchored to it. The footing extends about 2 ft. above ground. A 12-in. dia. plastic aeration tube runs around the perimeter of the footing. Dirt was removed from the center to form a cone-shaped hole. Then an unloading auger was inserted through the bottom ring of the bin and into the bottom of the hole. Concrete was then poured over the auger tube to form a 40-degree sloped cone. The unloading auger carries grain to an elevator leg that feeds the dryer. A series of 4-in. dia. aeration tubes hang down over the sloped sides of the cone. The tubes hook into the 12-in. dia. aeration tube. The bin's roof and seven more rings were put together and attached to the bottom ring. "I built it several years ago and it has been trouble-free," says De Cook. "Sometimes during harvest I'll fill it 25 or 30 times. One advantage of the design is that it maximizes storage space. When you use a bin with a flat floor, the corn empties out until it will no longer flow down into the center of the bin. But there's still about 1,500 bu. along the bin walls. You can keep refilling the bin and add more grain on top of that 1,500 bu. But if you only have a small 4,800-bu. bin like mine, you're losing about one third of the bin's capacity. Because of the underground cone, my bin empties out completely. And because the hopper is made of concrete, it'll never rust. "An underground cone like mine might not be practical on a large bin, because the hopper would have to be much bigger. But it works great with a small holding bin," notes De Cook. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Arvin De Cook, 9658 Hwy. F 62 E, Sully, Iowa 50251 (ph 641 594-3438).

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