Castles in the Sky

New Grain-Bin System Takes Planning, Forethought

Jim Patrico
By  Jim Patrico , Progressive Farmer Senior Editor
The Nabers built a new bin site centrally located to their farm. (Progressive Farmer photo by Jim Patrico)

Loran Naber is a down-to-earth Nebraska farmer, not the sort of man prone to flights of fancy or daydreams. But when he describes the recent process of building a new grain-bin system, his words are a little dreamy: "It's kind of like building castles in the sky. We didn't know where we were going, but we had some ideas."

Eventually, those ideas turned into a rock solid grain-storage system, which Naber hopes will make life easier and farming more efficient for the next generation. The process of getting from dream to reality took several years and a lot of planning.

PLANNING AHEAD

When Loran says "we," he includes his sons Kory, 40, and Bryce, 38. Together, they farm about 2,500 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa, and run a 100-cow herd near Albion. Kory is the livestock expert of the family; Bryce is a mechanical whiz and cropping guru; and Loran, at 72, says he "mostly runs errands." That's his way of saying he's thinking about retiring. Before stepping aside, he wants his sons to be well prepared for that eventuality. Building a grain-storage system that is centralized and efficient, the Nabers reasoned, is one way Kory and Bryce can get by with less manpower.

SINGLE SITE

Prior to 2007, the Nabers' grain-storage system consisted of small bins and temporary dryers scattered across the countryside, as were their fields. But that year, they decided to centralize operations and put up two 50,000-bushel bins in "a bare corner" of land about a mile from town. They understood that building larger bins was only part of the solution, so they enlisted a partner to help give form to their ideas and create a facility geared for future growth. They previously had done business with GSI dealer Petersen Ag Systems, in Norfolk, Neb., and asked the company to get involved in the planning.

"We started talking 'what ifs,'" says Henry Aschoff, president and general manager of Petersen. "They wanted to dump a semi and use a leg to fill up [multiple] bins. As we began to help them design a dryer setup, we kept that in mind."

Today, the Nabers' "castle in the sky" sits gleaming by the side of the road just west of town. It consists of four 50,000-bushel GSI bins (one of which can double as a wet holding tank), a 27,000-bushel wet holding tank, a grain dryer with a capacity of 520 bushels per hour (BPH) dropping moisture content 10 points, two bucket elevator grain legs with 5,000 BPH capacity each, a dump pit that keeps the harvest moving and an overhead tank for loading trucks on the way to market.

Significantly, the grain-storage system is expandable. "We wanted to leave room for future expansion," Bryce says, "even though we didn't know when that would happen."

PART OF A TREND

The Nabers aren't unique these days in building bigger, better bin sites. USDA reports since 2002 that on-farm grain-storage capacity has increased 19%. Between 2012 and 2013 alone, capacity increased 1.2 billion bushels. That puts total on-farm storage capacity at about 13 billion bushels.

Reasons for the expansion are clear. High commodity prices during the early 2000s meant farmers had money to invest in infrastructure; and on-farm storage is a good way to hold grain when searching for market opportunities.

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While commodity prices have slipped recently, having the flexibility to roll with the market still makes sense.

In the Nabers' case, new bins have also meant new efficiencies. "Before we had this [new setup], we had a lot of little bins all over," Bryce says. "If we caught a wet year, we'd put 2 feet of grain in this bin and start the fan, and move to the next bin, put in 2 feet of corn and move to the next bin. We just kept moving around. Now, we go start a field, we combine the whole field, and we haul it to the bin site and dry the corn. We handle it."

Things move faster at the site itself, Loran says: "Now I can come in with a truckload of wet corn, start everything running, crank my front trap [on the semi] open, pull it ahead, empty my back trap, and it's usually just starting to peak if I'm fast. ... The dryer's running while you're combining, and the combine never has to stop."

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

Speed was high on the Nabers' wish list when they sat down to talk with Aschoff. But they wanted to take their time building the system. In 2007, the first two 50,000-bushel bins went up. In 2008, conversations were about drying and more storage. In 2009, the dryer and wet storage tank showed up as did a third 50,000-bushel bin, which is designated as a switch-hitter: It can be used for storage or as a wet grain holding tank, depending on need.

In 2010, growth came in the form of a fourth 50,000-bushel bin. The next year, things progressed even further. A 750-bushel dump pit was installed; twin grain legs rose 120 feet into the air; and a return drag system began retrieving grain from all four bins. After the 2011 harvest, a 3,000-bushel overhead bin was set to fill up to three trucks bound for market. It fills and shuts off automatically, saving the need for someone to work manual controls.

As a result of all the construction, other labor needs have decreased, too. "It [the whole system] saves so much manpower," Bryce says. For example, the dump pit and drag system cut turn-around time for a semi unloading corn or soybeans to only three to four minutes.

NOT FINISHED YET

When they designed the dryer system, the Nabers and Aschoff poured enough concrete to allow stacking up to two more dryers or installing a tower dryer. Currently, an auger feeds the dryer from the wet grain holding tank. A larger dryer system might require a short grain leg to feed it.

A 70,000-bushel bin might also be in the future. They left space for it on the northwest side of the existing bins, and when they designed the grain leg system, they installed a distributer system with the capacity to run a line to another bin.

"It's our job to look out for their future," Aschoff says. "It's still their decision, but we try to get them to say where they want to be in five or 10 years. We don't want to throttle them back."

That is exactly Loran Naber's sentiment: "When you have two young guys getting started, you hope you can expand and not build something that will be a limiting factor."

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

When designing a complex grain-storage facility, decisions and compromises are in order. Here are some decisions the Naber family mulled over with Henry Aschoff, president and general manager of Petersen Ag Systems.

-- Buried lines. It cost several hundred dollars, but Loran Naber was determined that the power lines to the site be buried. "I wasn't going to have an auger get tangled with electric lines," he says.

-- Size of grain legs. The Nabers had to decide the size of their two grain legs based on projected use and capacity. They might have chosen different sized legs but decided on twin legs of 5,000 bushels each. They wanted matching legs, Bryce says, in the event of an equipment problem. If something happens to one leg, it will take only a minimum amount of work to keep the dump pit going with the other leg.

The downside of that decision is that the current configuration is oversized for the work it does and costs more than if the Nabers had chosen to make one of the legs smaller.

-- Control room. To spread costs over time, the Nabers elected to postpone building a control room. Although in theory everything in the current system can be monitored and adjusted remotely from one location, they temporarily chose to walk to control boxes at each component of the system. It will be nice one day to handle everything from the comfort of a separate building, Bryce Naber says, especially during the cold winters.

It that same vein, the Nabers installed all the wires and sensors for GSI's WatchDog system. WatchDog works with the GSI Vision dryer control system to allow remote monitoring of various dryer functions, such as moisture, temperature and dryer status. It's an Internet web-based system, so it will work with laptops, tablets and smartphones. The Nabers are planning to install an Internet connection via DSL soon.

-- Fuel source. Propane makes sense for the Nabers now as the fuel choice for the system's dryers. A natural gas line a mile or more away is a potential future source, but extending the line is cost-prohibitive now.

-- Location. Something always slips through the cracks. If the Nabers had thought about it, they would have moved the whole system a few feet farther from the road. As it is, the bins are too close to allow a tree windbreak. In windy Nebraska, that would have been a good idea.

Jim Patrico can be reached at jim.patrico@dtn.com

Follow Jim Patrico on Twitter @jimpatrico

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Jim Patrico