Could we be done?

[sumdumguy]

So what percentage of your bins could you run fans on at once? I have had aeration for years, but only use it for cooling grain. Move 1 fan around and cool 1 bin at a time. Does not cut it for natural air drying. Been talking for the power company and the bigger the power service, the bigger the monthly service charge. Ranges from $250 to 600/ month for the power service even if no electricity is used. Add in the electricity cost to the monthly fees and natural air drying is not free.

Trying to figure out if I need power available for 1/3 or 1/2 or 2/3, etc of my bins at once. I assume that if you start harvest at 17-20% moisture in crop that is just barely mature that the crop keeps needing air bins as you harvest. Slightly different than if you are harvesting grain that was fully cured and dry but got a rain shower and now tough. Usually the rained on crop will turn dry a day later (talking a normal harvest situation for the southern prairies).

Too late to really help for this year, but the thread talks about "could we be done" and I know in my case that I could be much closer to being done if I had a better natural air drying system.

We used to use and still have two flat-bottom perforated floor set-ups, they worked ok but now the rest of the bins are hoppers with verticle rockets to push the air up the middle. I think that and oversizing the fan has really made a difference during our harvest this year, for sure. We wouldn’t have been going without the air but saying that, pretty well everyone (but not all) around us is done too. We have two yards where we were aerating pretty well every day in August. In 4-5 days uncured durum would come down from 16-17% down to dry in 3-4 days. Our neighbour, a stellar example used to say good aeration easily replaces one Class 8 combine and manpower.

[MBgrower]

all bins full floor aeartion and fan mounted on each, moving fans around was a pain in the ass. had to increase electrical serviced over the years, but now i can run more fans (5, 7, and 10 hps) at once than i need to.

[poorboy]

all bins full floor aeartion and fan mounted on each, moving fans around was a pain in the ass. had to increase electrical serviced over the years, but now i can run more fans (5, 7, and 10 hps) at once than i need to.

So what % of your bins do you think you would need to have fans running on at the same time? I am thinking that 25% of my grain storage to have fans running at once would be good, as that would give me 1 week for each bin and hopefully be done in 4 weeks. Just not sure if it is realistic or not. Trying to decide how big a power service to get a quote on or if I should just buy a few big gensets and run them for 1-2 weeks per year and get a smaller power service put into the yard. Running 25% of my fans at once is a much different power requirement than trying to run 50% of my bins at the same time.

Are 2 smaller fans better than 1 big fan on some bins, so that I could be natural air drying 2 bins at once with 5 hp fans instead of 1 bin with a 10 hp for example. Would still need a few bins with big fans for grain that comes off later in the year when more airflow is necessary?

I do agree that having a fan permanetly mounted on each bin would be very nice and that is my goal.