converting an old silo to a drying kiln??

pigman · February 16, 2004, 08:14:09 PM

Norm_F, About 25 years ago I helped my brother take down a silo one stave at a time. We started at the top and removed the staves and let them down with ropes. 8) At that time I was younger and dumber ;). Now I am older and just dumb.

Climbing around on the top of a 40ft silo has to be more dangerous than knocking it down with hammers. :-/
I have had army training with explosives and it will work like it was explained above, but unless someone has experience I don't recomend playing around with the stuff.
I recomend getting a hammer with a handle longer than the silo is tall and pound away. ;) Of course swinging a hammer with a 40ft handle might be a little difficult ;D
Bob the silo dismantler

LKasdorf · February 17, 2004, 08:19:12 AM

Uh, getting back to the topic that I started...

If I get the farm- I won't take the silo down. It is such a cool structure, that I'll do something far more interesting with it than turn it into rubble...

I think a drying kiln is probably a non starter because of the difficulty of standing up big lumber.

Probably a more reasonable thing to do is to fashion many floors for storage and a way to get to them. Then at the top, I can imagine a nice sightseeing lookout perch (with a really good railing!) and some sort of roof that wouldn't look too weird.

I do like the idea of making a huge kaleidescope! I'd love to see pics of that.

Norm · February 17, 2004, 10:32:56 AM

Sorry Lynn, Patty drew a circle on the wall in the corner and told me to put my nose on it until I learn to quit hijacking other peoples threads. :'(

Den Socling · February 17, 2004, 04:49:49 PM

I have been thinking that this tread had gone wrong. :D
I wanted to say that a silo would make an interesting control room and office. One of our customers has one of those spiral steel stairs that goes to a second floor where the steam valves for their conventional kilns are located. This keeps the control room downstairs cool.

Norm,
Isn't your nose supposed to be in that circle?? :D

PatrickG · February 17, 2004, 04:55:31 PM

As regards earliler comments regarding the use of the silo as an observatory. Not very good for that although the round top sorta looks like an observatory. Observatories rotate their big dome roof and have low heat retention. A masonry silo would have a lot of convection currents running up the sides that would stir up the air and make high powered views real wavy.

Maybe you could put in a spiral stairway and put an observation platform on top. What a place to be on a starry summer evening!

One use of a silo like that would be as a natural exhaust fan. Solar heating would warm its enclosed air. Open a "window" at the top with an awning to prevent rain entry and connect a duct from the bottom of the tower to an all weather enclosed drying shed for a good exhaust fan action. It would pull a considerable air flow from the time it began to warm up in the morning untill it cooled back down to ambient temperature at night.

:P Pat :P