MORTLACH, Sask. – When Philip Simrose used to empty the bins on his farm near Mortlach, Sask., he was frustrated with the inconvenience of the flat-bottomed floors.
He installed in-floor unload augers in some bins, but had to pour extra concrete to get enough clearance. Hopper bottoms would be great, but they can be pricey. So he designed his own unload system.
“What we have in most of our bins right now is the sweep that runs around inside, with a horizontal auger that takes the grain out,” he says.
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“To install them, you have to put them up fairly high and you have to put in quite a bit of concrete. Plus you have the expense of another motor and another auger. This takes the place of that. It eliminates that auger.”
The Simrose Grain Bin Unloading System is a series of plastic tubes that are buried in the ground before the concrete bin floor is poured. Metal slides cover two inlets in the bin and can be operated from outside.
“When you’re ready to unload the bin, you take your regular wheeled auger, slide it underneath your bin and it goes down at about a 23-degree angle,” he said.
“The auger isn’t sticking way up in the air when you load. Then you open up a centre slide and the grain comes down into sort of a pit underneath. It runs down the tube forward at a 40-degree angle to the auger and the auger takes it up into the truck.”
When the operator needs to get in the door, he can open up the second slide, which allows the grain to runs backward to the base of the auger and back into the truck.
“The grain clears away from the door, then you can go in, set your sweep in the centre and it works its way around,” he said.
“It simplifies things quite a bit. You have one less auger to deal with. We move the horizontal auger from bin to bin, but with this you don’t need to. You slide your auger into the bin, open up the slide and away you go.”
The tubes that drop from the bin to the auger are 12 inches in diameter. Simrose said they should be able to handle 7,000 to 8,000 bushels an hour. The tube that the auger slides into is 16 inches in diameter, so it can accommodate large, high-capacity augers.
“The other thing for cleanout, I’ve got a little hopper you slide into the pipe before you put your auger in, then slide your auger inside that. Any grain left over should go into that. You pull it out and dump that in a pail.”
Simrose said the easiest way to install his setup is to dig it into the ground before pouring cement.
“There are people that are planning to cut their concrete, dig it out, install it and pour the concrete back in the small area, but I don’t advise that. It would be a big job, I think,” he said.
“I don’t have anyone that’s done it yet, but I’m pretty sure it could be put under a steel-floored bin, too.”
Simrose said the tubes telescope in and out and while they’re now set to handle 18-30 foot diameter bins, he’s changing some of the moulds.
“I’ve had a lot of people asking about 15- or 16-foot diameter bins. So we’re going to change them to accommodate those as well. I originally thought if you’ve got a 16-foot diameter bin, put it up on a hopper cone. But the price of steel now, they’ve gone up in price so much that people are looking at this.”
Water is a big concern with grain pits, but Simrose said that doesn’t have to be a problem with his system.
“When you set the pipes in, you’ve got to telescope them in and out. I normally seal them with polyurethane, which should provide a good enough seal for water getting in from outside. Some people have talked about getting them plastic welded and that can be done, as well,” he said.
“Our soils drain pretty good underneath. If they’re up on a hill there shouldn’t be a problem. The other thing is that if you do get water in, you can get it out pretty easy with a shop vac. We had quite a bit of rain while we were installing one. All the water from on the concrete pad ran down into it, so we had about 25 gallons of water in it. I shop vac’d it out and it took about 10 minutes.”
Once installed, a tight-fitting lid on the outside inlet is designed to keep water out.
The inserts are rotary moulded in Humboldt, Sask., out of plastic, while the slides and covers are made of steel. He said the entire setup costs $700-$800, about half the price of a hopper bottom, per bushel.
“It might go up a little if I get a distributor,” he said.
“Right now I’m selling them direct. Hopefully by January, I’ll have as many orders as I can take, then I’ll get a batch rotary moulded. I’ll have some extras next year, but I can’t have a huge supply on hand.”
He said the system also saves money on concrete and forms.
“With the horizontal unloading augers, you have to get them up a little bit. They can’t be down too low or you can’t get a hopper under them. On those, you’ve got concrete about 2.5 feet up. This one, I put six inches of concrete down and thicken the edge to about 15 inches. So it saves quite a bit in concrete, as well as forming.”
He said the system also has a lower profile than a hopper bottom or an under-floor unloading auger.
“With this, you can fit a 10-inch auger in, so you can unload the bin fairly quickly. And there’s no bottleneck. The U-tube unloaders are fast, but some of the other in-floor unloading augers can slow you down quite a bit.”
