Best way to clean up 50' dia. grain pile.

[Hopperbin]

What are people using to clean up 50 dia. bin rings. Myself thought the regular 8 inch sweep was working pretty good but after cleaning up the 24th ring the sweep flighting sections are beyond repair. Nothing but repairs. Also must be getting older because seems to take more out of me these days pushing the shovel. Not sure if the super sweep will be better. I like to keep plastic under especially the last few years the ground was so wet that there would be too much spoilage. I hear the super will chew up the ground and plastic. But that is just what I hear. Any experiences shared would be appreciated.

[cris]

we used rings for a while, but found if you got rain, the water sat on the edge of the tarp eventually got int the ring and had spoilage. We quit using rings and just piled it and used a blade on a tractor with a 2½" hose screwed on the bottom to keep from digging dirt. Worked O.K.
Bought a grain bagger this year and it works very well. We split an extractor with a neighbor and it works just as well. I always hated shoveling snow off the pile.

[Hopperbin]

Tarps are getting more expensive and they seem to get damaged a little every year, birds, deer, wind, etc. don't really want to figure or say what I think I spend on the damn things. But I have reallized that putting a plastic tarp under then is money well spent, especially here.
Last couple year 6 inchers and this year just plain wet ground moisture coming back up out of the ground. Last year, bugs. Did I mention I am dreaming about hopper bins, I am hoping next year I can fix that problem, but you know how it goes, we farmer always think of next year.

[Hopperbin]

Did you get to use the extractor yet? How does it work when you have snow drifts over the bag, is that much of a problem?

[cris]

I cleaned up 10 bags and we had fairly heavy snow around them, not much on them although. Some places no snow on the very top of the bag and some places a couple inches. most all the bags had snow chest deep up the sides. we pushed the snow away and as the snow piled up a bit along the edge of the blade it would drag the snow down off the sides of the bag. I nipped one bag with an axle stub, but it didn't turn out to be as bad as I had expected. overall it is easy to bag, easy to unload and reasonably fast. One man can load his own truck but it is busy.

[cris]

Just as a side note: I would rather fill bags than small hoppers. The bag can be filled right in the field with the cart. The combines never wait when we are bagging. Nothing better than trying to change bins at midnight every second load putting a 13" spout in a 15" hole!!!

[Muttley]

Check out a good larger grain vac. Not only for piles but also for those bags. You of course can then use it for your other bins. You will find if you have spoiled grain a grain vac can clean up around the spoilage much better than a auger. Check the new Ultima 6 Conveyair grain vacs out in Brandon next week at the trade show.

P.S.- Sounds like a advertisement doesn't it. I sell and repair grain vacs for a living!!

[Hopperbin]

The bag system has some good points.
My fields are scattered about so that would require moving more machinery from field to field. But I suppose one could run the grain cart a couple miles and make it back.
I used the grain vac, I have the Kongskilde, for the last few inches on this last bin ring. Seemed to work a little easier, never touched the shovel. Actually saved the plastic by not cleaning up with the bin sweep and was much easier on the sweep also so maybe I can make it last longer.
I heard of someone using a snow blower with the sweep, that would be dusty and must protect the snow blower engine from dust, they do not use filters. I have thinking that one could modify the snow blower to auger out the side, I think that would make things much easier yet.
Ultra Cart builds a stand on driver that one can use on a grain vac. Wondering weather that machine could be adapted to push grain into the sweep.
Oh and I also need to work alone as I have no help filling or cleaning up.