A load (literally) off my mind

[Brad_S.]

My shop location used to be a fur farm and I've spent years cleaning up the debris left from the old operation. There are 6 grain silos 10' in diameter by 40' high slowly rotting away which the insurance company grimaces at every time they see them. I found a guy who makes plastic lumber ( >:() from ground up reclaimed plastic who would take them off my hands. After 2 years of promising to be there next week, he finally came through. Thought you might enjoy the show as well.

Here is the second silo being moved. First they cut all the braces, torched the top off, and in this photo, they are feeding the cable down trough the silo. A large truck tire and rim, larger than the bottom opening, are then attached to the cable and tensioned. Notice the trailer with the gantry in the raised position in the lower left.


The silo is then lifted and swung out to the rear of the waiting trailer. The tower is then attached to the gantry. They told me they can usually just back up to a grain bin, hook on, lower it down and drive off, but because of the long stilts on these, they needed the crane assist.


The gantry and crane lower the silo as a team. Because these towers were taller than the trailer, they had to let the stilts scooch along the road as it was being lowered to slide it back on the trailer.


Once down, they just had to secure it.


Here's my favorite image. GONE. 8) 8) 8) 8) Whole process took about 30 minutes.

[Corley5]

 8) 8) 8) 8)

[Tom]

That's interesting. 

Somehow, I figured those things were more substantial than that and was expecting to hear about dynamite and implosions and running for the hills and stuf like that. :D :D

That's cool!   Just picked them up and hauled them off. :D :D

[Stump Jumper]

great show  8)

[UNCLEBUCK]

That is slick !  By the size and height of your buildings it looks like you could have lumbertown usa or something going on there. How many building you get peppered around there? I see a office upstairs  ???

[Brad_S.]

UncleBuck,

It's hard to quantify how many buildings there are because they all interconnect. What you see here are new windows to replace the rusted and broken steel windows. This area was the mixing room, where two large mixers blended the cereal with cooked eggs, fish, ground road kill and whatever else and created a slop that was feed to the mink. The walls are still crusted with goop and has a distinctive, unappealing odor, so the visible portion of this particular building is unoccupied at the moment. I plan on sandblasting it off as I don't want to re-wet the stuff!

New York State has a site where you can view anywhere in the state from satellite imagery. (And they hassle railfans for taking photos of trains, saying they're a security danger! : Here are the buildings in my complex, as well as a portion of the sheds I am tearing down. The long shadows in the road are from the silo towers.

[slowzuki]

I cut the legs and helped topple my buddies silo last fall, unfortunatly we found out it was half full of old musty grain

I don't know what he did with it, it was pretty big to just tuck out of the way.

[UNCLEBUCK]

I was following your thread about cleaning up all the metal cages and stuff. What you going to do with the land where all the mink lived? I bet that is high powered soil . I think you would have the victory garden of all gardens on that dirt.  That is a huge complex ! I still see "Lumbertwon U.S.A." written all over it !  ;D

[Quartlow]

One of our local mills moves grain bins on a regular basis. They built a trailer special for the job.
They just back up to the grain bin. set the out riggers down just a couple inches off the ground  and then the whole bed stands straight up in the air. Back it tight against the silo, set the out riggers and strap it to the trailer.  Torch off the mounting bolts and then  the trailer then lifts the silo straight up about 8 inches and then they just lay it down and drive away.

[Ed_K]

 We had a fiberglass silo split with 900 ton of silage corn in it, the corn took down a concrete silo next to it. After the clean up everyone was glad to see them gone  ;D. I alway got stuck leveling the silage inside the silos  >:(.