Cleaning flat bottom bins is a time-consuming and dirty job, but producers are grateful for any storage capacity at hand when a big crop is harvested.
Haukaas has designed a bin floor pit that retrofits flat bottom bins with its bin sweep system, allowing the bins to be operated more efficiently.
Beric Haukaas, sales and marketing representative at Haukaas Manufacturing, said it’s an economical solution to flat bottom storage and an alternative to hopper bottom bins.
“You simply remove a centre portion of the floor and install the floor pit,” Haukaas said.
“There is a permanently mounted bin sweep left inside the bin that you would dump grain over top of.”
Producers who are emptying a bin insert an auger through the door and into the Haukaas pit once the grain level is low enough. They then attach an orbital motor to the sweep to finish the job.
“What we do on our farm is let the sweep go around the bin once, and we stop it,” Haukaas said.
Read Also
Research looks to control flea beetles with RNAi
A Vancouver agri-tech company wants to give canola growers another weapon in the never-ending battle against flea beetles.
“Then we take a shovel and we scrape the grain away from the side of the wall, about two feet.”
The sweep is then engaged a second time, and operators follow it with a broom, sweeping leftover grain into the pit.
He said only a pail of grain needs to be removed from the pit once the sweep’s second pass is completed.
“Roughly on a 19 foot diameter bin floor, we can successfully clean it out ready for next season in about 25 minutes.”
For more information, visit www.haukaas.com.
