I bought a few grain bins for a little project.
The first bin we took down with same jacks the farm erected them with in 1960. Problem we didn't foresee is it was common practice back then to seal the base of the bins with about 3" of concrete. We got the bottom sheets out in good shape, but the remaining step in the concrete makes setting the bin down to reset the jacks are real SOB. We decided to use a different method for the other two bins.
I read about using a tire on a wheel to lift bins from the roof. Seemed like just the ticket. There is the minor detail of how you hook a crane to a truck wheel though. Seemed simple at first, but when it came to actually welding a chain or bent steel rod to an old steel wheel I didn't feel real safe about that. It also happens that any wheel/tires I had floating about junky enough to weld onto the wheel didn't look safe enough to risk anyone's life.
I've saved most of the lifting eyes from machines I have scrapped and never really use the bigger ones. Grabbed a 2 ton ring that just fit through an 8 lug wheel center and whipped this up. Welded it together as I don't have a lathe that threads metric or a metric tap that size.
Craning the bins is the way to go. We were able to pick and rotate to a clear area. The first bin took about 8 hours to disassemble with jacks and we were too beat to pick up all the hardware. With the crane we did 2 bins in 6 hours including cleaning up all the complete site. We used magnets to pick up the dropped bolts and nuts.
The first bin we took down with same jacks the farm erected them with in 1960. Problem we didn't foresee is it was common practice back then to seal the base of the bins with about 3" of concrete. We got the bottom sheets out in good shape, but the remaining step in the concrete makes setting the bin down to reset the jacks are real SOB. We decided to use a different method for the other two bins.
I read about using a tire on a wheel to lift bins from the roof. Seemed like just the ticket. There is the minor detail of how you hook a crane to a truck wheel though. Seemed simple at first, but when it came to actually welding a chain or bent steel rod to an old steel wheel I didn't feel real safe about that. It also happens that any wheel/tires I had floating about junky enough to weld onto the wheel didn't look safe enough to risk anyone's life.
I've saved most of the lifting eyes from machines I have scrapped and never really use the bigger ones. Grabbed a 2 ton ring that just fit through an 8 lug wheel center and whipped this up. Welded it together as I don't have a lathe that threads metric or a metric tap that size.
Craning the bins is the way to go. We were able to pick and rotate to a clear area. The first bin took about 8 hours to disassemble with jacks and we were too beat to pick up all the hardware. With the crane we did 2 bins in 6 hours including cleaning up all the complete site. We used magnets to pick up the dropped bolts and nuts.
