I decided to make a short and quick film on what the inside of a harvestore looks like. Become a bro ► bit.ly/XYVvDd Facebook ► on. YpS8oH Donate ► bit.ly/DonatetoHFW How Farms Work Store ► bit.ly/HFWStore
So curious, my dad worked for ao smith when I was little, some reason, we had a bag that went inside the silos...we would blow them up and play on it...we called it the hot dog. It was about 5' tall maybe 24' long when blown up, (guestimate) and it was curved like a hot dog. It was a blast to play on it....dad always told me what its purpose was, I didn't really comprehend it when I was little. I'm glad for the internet, I can't ask him about it now that I would understand exactly what it did, as he is no longer with us. Thanks for the video!
Thanks for the video! 40 years ago when I was in college, I used to build Harvestores. I think that we built 60 of them that summer. It was a great job, working dawn to dusk, with only rainy days off. No time to spend money! We worked on commission, so the more we finished, the more money we made. In the late 70's and early 80's there was a big push to get big or get out of farming. Lots of new barns with milking parlors. I think we had 7 on the crew, two inside pushing bolts and applying two lines of sealer (above and below each row of bolts), two with air wrenches and two with hand torque wrenches. O may be dead wrong, but I think it was 150 ft/lb of torque they were set at... as for the sealer, it was in caulking tubes and applied with a caulking gun. I think it was called A.O. Smith Sealer#79... if it got on your clothes, it was there for good! We wore playtex gloves and used baby powder to keep from blackening anything we touched. When we got to the farm site, there was a "tub" a concrete foundation with a short ring of glass covered steel, and pallets with the blue glass fused to steel sheets, bags of bolts washers & nuts. The BIG ones had over 10,000 bolts. The first thing we did was measure the tub ring for consistency, to make sure it was aligned and circular. I think that we had one that we refused to build on because of the contractor's bad job with the tub. We then put up the scaffolding, which was +/- 4' off the ground, depending on the site. We would then put the screw jacks PTO/wench inside the tub and mount them to the floor and fasten the first ring together, making sure the Flag and nameplates were facing the direction that the farmer wanted, then we would build the roof, the white steel panels. After the roof was complete we would jack it up and put in the next 5' high ring, until it was complete. The top rings were the thinnest steel and the bottom the heaviest, so each skid had the pannels in order. The panels were moved up to the scaffolding with an electric winch. The wench motor was in the center of the tub and the cable went up the center and was guided on a dolly, with rolled on top of the roof, Each row of bolts were pushed out from inside and a washer and a nut screwed on, then tightened with the air wrenches and torqued with the wrench, then the sealer that was flattened out by the tightening was smoothed over like caulk, with our platex glove covered fingers, so there were no gaps, inside or outside the structure. I think that before the bags were installed, we would pressure test the Harvestore by pumping air in and one man on a dolly would spray soapy water over all the seams to see if there were any leaks and if there were they were sealed. Thanks for the chance to test my memory! BTW, I was born on a farm but from 6 years old, lived in town. I helped out now and then with farm work, was in the FFA, but it just was not the time to START farming in the mid 70's. I ended up being a golf course greenskeeper for 10 years, screwed up my back and now I've been a university librarian for 20+ years.
I never had one of these. I had the classic Madison staves. It was dirty and difficult to climb up and drop the doors as you used the feed but they were a lot cheaper! The standard line after building a blue tube was "I Owe Smith". See if anyone gets that joke!
But you have a big silo with us in Poland there are large but not as high as t fit in it? A lot of you have acres and how old are you if you know you are in the same household are big welcome to our videos, P Greetings from MrZgredy of Polish
Can you describe the details more precis of the airbags or post a new video on that? In scandinavia we often use top mounted fill/unloaders with a fan sucking the material out in a pipe on top, and most often the silos are filled with silage. Thanks for your videos! Im tired of all vidoes showing demolitions of these and you seems to be the only one taking this seriously!
