Shipping Container for Olive Mill

[rox]

OK rox, here is an outside the box suggestion.

I know you aren't allowed to process olives in your existing garage, but can you store them and heat them in the garage? We think so and probably will do this although prolly not 100% legal. Rain is our issue here, we need to keep the olives out of the rain.

If you can do that, the way I would set this up would be to put a warming station in the garage.

Then I would get a 20 foot container. You say the equipment can be installed in a 5.6 meter length, which is 18.67 feet. The equipment can all be installed inside the container. And I don't really think you want to do anything in that container other than process olives. From reading the literature on it, and looking at the drawings, it appears that this mill is pretty self contained. You dump olives in one end and pump olive oil, dirty process water, and depleted olive paste out at various locations. That is it, that is why I made the flow chart.

Set the mill in the container up close to your garage. It is going to be 50ft from the garage, that is why I went out and took site pics to post, to show the site. Get a some wagons which can be used to haul pre-weighed olive crates to the input end of the mill. We already have a wagon very similar to what you show jsut smaller, I think it holdds 4 crates 2 on the botttom and then stacked 2 on top. It has the tires that go over gravel. Dump the olives into the hopper and go back for more. I don't know what your olive oil carts look like, but you either need to get ones with wheels big enough to roll on your gravel, or put them on wagons with big wheels.

Here is the kind of wagon I am thinking of - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices I have exactly this one and it will easily carry hundreds of pounds of material over my gravel driveway. I have also seen ones with wire mesh sides, but don't have a link to them.

You will probably need more than one, but they are inexpensive. You can either pull them by hand, or use some kind of tractor or vehicle to tow them. If you can use your neighbors mini-excavator with forks that would be ideal. Instead of wagons, put the boxes and oil containers on pallets and fork them around.


You don't have to bring the wagons into the container. Dump the olives into the hopper by hand and pump or drain (depends on how the centrifuge works) the oil out into oil carts already on the wagons.

This eliminates dragging anything heavy over the floor and opens up the possibility of concrete, vinyl, or fiberglass over the floor. The press itself is still gonna be pretty heavy.

When you say that tile floors are acceptable do you mean ceramic tile or vinyl tile? Are vinyl floors like those used in kitchens (similar to rolls of linoleum) acceptable? I don't think we can have vinyl. See in my next post the attached file item # 6. Looks like the flooring has to be fireproof.

If you can put seamless vinyl from a roll on the floor that is vastly easier than concrete, as Jake says. But to have that material last any length of time you have to keep all the olive crate dragging, oil cart moving, etc out of the container.

There is a second reason to eliminate olive crates and oil carts from the part of the container with the machinery--they won't fit. The pinch point is the centrifuge. If you place it the way shown on the schematic, it is 1.94 meters wide and the inside of the container is only 2.33 meters. This means you can have 18.5 cm (7 1/4") of room on each side. You might think you can do better by turning the centrifuge sideways, but the 1.70 meter length there does not include the space for that nice big, fat olive paste hose that I see in the flow chart picture. That is an excellent term, pinch point. We will eliminate the tub that receives the oil off of the centrifuge that will give us a bit more space. But you are right we are going to have a pinch point which is why we will go with the 40 ft container. I want to have room on one side for crates on the intake side, think rain, and 60 liter drums of pressed oil on the output side. We need ingress and egress on both sides of the pinch point. This is going to be inconveinent but workable. It is not ideal but there is room in the container for the press. It'll fit. But a 20ft one Dave I think is just to small. We also need to add a floor scale as shown on the flow chart you need to weigh first the olives then the finished oi, 20 ft would be to small. Although I might sotre olives pre press in our existing garage I don't think customers are going to want their drums of oil in the garage, I'll need to keep it inside the container, just for estetiques. They will drop off olives one day and pick up olive oil the next day. The price differrence between the 20ft and 40ft was not that bad and we have the site space so unless you come up with another compelling idea I'm pretty sure it is going to be 40ft.

No matter how you slice it, access to the container will be from each end, and there will be a nearly complete blockade as far as moving or dragging anything past the centrifuge. This is a very good reason to make the container as short as possible.


How many operators does the mill require? I don't mean people loading olives, or removing oil and waste products, just people babysitting the machine itself. My sense is that you only need one person to start it up, watch it run and maybe make adjustments from time to time. And, once it is running that is only a part time job. If this is correct, I would design the operation so that this person was the only person who went into the container. The people feeding the machine and taking away product don't need to go in there. Mainly it will be one person but frequently 2 people.

Now, if you need ventilation anyway, just keep the original swinging doors on the container and open both ends wide for ventilation. The only reason to consider heating the container at all is if you have to go in there to repair the equipment. Especially since that is how all of the other mills do it. rox, you can buy a lot of snow bunny suits for the price of the heaters and electricity you will need to heat that container. Especially with both ends open. We do need lighting, we do need windows, it will be to dark without windows. Also the cargo door end will be facing north and we get very very strong northern winds called the Mistral. When we have wind, which is frequeently,
I'll want to open the East/West windows for ventilation.

The other thing to think about is that the picture on the MillFlowChart shows what I would call a skid-mounted olive oil press. Now, I know you aren't planning to buy this, but is something like that legal for use in France? The reason I ask is that I don't see the bowl shaped floor and channel running down the middle. You can see the regs in my next post. They are going to want the whole container floor to be sloped.

If the skid mounted unit is legal, you might want to consider the extra cost of the skid mount vs. the cost of a floor with channel. How wide is that metal platform?

I bet you it would be possible to slide that skid lengthwise into a container and never have to worry about the floor.

Dave again, thank you for thinking of this, for spending your time thinking and then posting your ideas.

 

[rox]

Attached are the regulations in French of course. Just use Google translate
Language Tools to translate.

The floor must be fireproof and sloped. The walls msut be fireproof well you know resist fire for a certain period. There are other regulations much longer but this is a subset for olive mills, well I guess sunflower mills also. Mills that produce vegetable oils.

 

[MarkV]

Rox I did not read all of the regulations but I'll be very surprised if the bubble wrap insulation would be fireproof or hold up to pressure washing.

MarkV

 

[jinman]

Rox, I read all those requirements using Google Translator and they are exactly as you say. I certainly understand your challenges. I'll have more later, but here is a product I think you should consider. This product is strong enough to be used on the inside of auto carwash walls. It would meet all your code requirements and also be easy to maintain and clean.

Duro-therm Panels

I'm also thinking of other ideas like fold-down doors on the side of the container that allow access as ramps and also provide more open area inside. If you had a fold-down door you could add a canvas canopy (fold-out) above and maybe curtain walls. You could enter or exit the container by these ramped enclosures. Raising and lowering the ramps could be accomplished with ropes, pulleys, and counterweights for ease of operation (not drawn). They would also improve your ventilation tremendously.

 

[Egon]

Rox:

The container dilemma and redesign!

So far I've heard whatever is used has to have fireproof floors and walls and not be considered a permanent structure. It is also understood that the container idea is fixed!

So, assuming the container is so designed to be supported on the four corners and has a metal floor lined with plywood and no idea of the walls other than metal on the outside.

Locate the site. Install a piling for each corner. Cut out the floor area for the press and pour a cement foundation for it. Skin the floor using concrete and put the proper slopes and drains on it. [Not very hard to do and the container should be able to support this with no problem.. Just use ordinary high strength concrete with no rebar or wire mesh for cost purposes. Cut out the doors and other access points as required and use the cutouts for fabricating the new doors. Have the doors open out wards so they do not constrict inside space. Build dirt ramps for the access doors. Cheap.
Install several ventilating fans high up one at each end. Bathroom fan would work.Install one pressurizing fan at floor level in the center of the container. Again bathroom fan. If the walls require fireproofing use a stucco or cement slap on and trowel smooth product. Don't worry about insulation.

Getting services in should be no problem as torches work on metal quite well.

Keep it as simple as possible and all will work out!

 

[radioman]

I just found this thread- I was wondering why not put two shipping containers with doors open point to each other 20 ft apart? pour a small concrete pad say, 8 by 20. put up a 12 by 20 shed over the concrete pad with a roll up doo ryou wanted and build a wooden floor on the open space for the toilet/sink area? This way when you are done in 3 years from now and you have a biuld a nice building somewhere you wanted, move the shipping containers somewhere for storage or remove it, you have a 12 by 20 building for other purposes? just cover up the ends. This would keep the costs down I would think.

 

[EddieWalker]

Hi Rox,

The 40ft Sea Container really does seem like the best fit for what you need. To make it work, the biggest issue seems to be the drainage of the floor. Figure that out, and the rest is pretty basic.

One of the problems that I’m having is how to slope the floor to get to the drain. Then installing the drain has me a bit perplexed. At first, I thought you would have to center the drain on the floor, which would mean cutting a hole in the floor and tunneling under the container to get to that location to install your pipes. I’ve realized that this isn’t the best way to do this.

I think Jim mentioned side drains, but I didn’t get it at first. Now I think I do. I would put in three drains. I would cut holes into the side of the container on the side where the sewer lines have to run. Those holes would be similar to the cartoon mouse holes that you always saw when watching Tom and Jerry, or some other cartoon. I would then create a catch basin at the bottom of that hole in the wall where the water will run down and into the drain. You’d have to work out a way to seal it up from the elements, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The idea is that the water will run into the hole in the wall, and then down into your drain line.

This will allow you to slope the floor from side to side. A one inch slope over the 8ft width of the floor is now pretty simple to do with mortar or whatever is available there. I would contact your tile guy and ask them what they use when they do a shower floor. With three drain lines, you could easily have a barrier along the low portion of the wall that would resemble a big base board, which would help channel the water to the drains. With water on the floors, you will need some sort of waterproof baseboard all around the walls anyway. Maybe what you end up using for insulation will also provide a water proof barrier to direct the water to the drain lines?

With any drain line going into a septic tank or sewage line, there has to be a way to block the sewage gasses from coming back up that pipe. Traps are used to hold water in the lines and block those gasses from coming through. Be sure to include them in your drain lines, or it will be very nasty in there. With the drains being outside of the container, it would be allot easier, faster and cheaper to install them. You could also run your vent lines right up the side of the container. Again, it would be so simple this way that there really isn’t any other way to do it.

The more I think about it, the better it sounds. I’m actually changing my mind on the container approach and thinking that it just might be the best way to go. I don’t even think you should consider it a three year, temporary solution. You could easily add on to the container, or buy another and connect them if and when you need more space. I would build and plan for it to be a permanent part of your operation. Adding a nice roof and covering it in rock to pretty it up would be allot cheaper than building another building.

Eddie

 

[CurlyDave]

Jinman:

Could you post the translation? For some reason I can't get the translation tools to work.

Rox:

A big question I haven't seen covered before. What is the capacity of this mill? How many kilos of olives per hour does it process. How many liters of oil per hour come out?

* * * * * *

The reason I am suggesting a shorter container is not for cost. It is because doing any kind of work inside this container is going to cramped and miserable. I am trying to get everything that doesn't have to be inside the container out of it.

The press itself is still gonna be pretty heavy.

The press is stationary. How heavy it is doesn't matter. The durability requirements of the floor depend on what is being moved over the floor constantly. Vinyl flooring is fireproof. You may have to look hard for a vendor, and it will be expensive per square foot, but it can be found. When all the costs of concrete are considered, it may well be less than concrete.

We do need lighting, we do need windows, it will be to dark without windows. Also the cargo door end will be facing north and we get very very strong northern winds called the Mistral. When we have wind, which is frequeently,
I'll want to open the East/West windows for ventilation.

I hadn't gotten that far yet. You need artificial lighting. When you run 24/7 the windows will not let in any light at night. You can have all the windows you want for ventillation.

From the way you describe practices in other mills, I really believe heating and sufficient ventilation are incompatible in the process area. Now in the incoming olive storage area, the weighting area, and the finished oil storage area you need much less ventilation and heating those areas might be possible, or even necessary.

Are the unprocessed olives considered flamable? Is it legal to store them in the garage?

How about the finished oil drums? What are the temperature requirements for storage? Do you have a picture of one of these oil drums? I think you called them "carts" before. I am having a hard time visualizing this. You said 60 liters. I have seen 15-gallon metal drums, do they look like those. Wheels? Dimensions?

We also need to add a floor scale as shown on the flow chart you need to weigh first the olives then the finished oi, 20 ft would be to small. Although I might sotre olives pre press in our existing garage I don't think customers are going to want their drums of oil in the garage, I'll need to keep it inside the container, just for estetiques

Why couldn't the floor scale be in the garage? It needs to be level, and the container floor has to be sloped.

What is the practice with the drums? When you take you olives to the mill do you also take empty drums to hold the finished oil? Where are they stored at the mill? Both empty storage and after they are filled.

 

[jake98]

Seems like the cost of setting this kind of machinery up and then doing it all over again would be more than the difference of doing the final building first. How about putting in the concrete pad with the drainage and power, and throwing a tarp over the machine untill you can get the building around it? Gotta be a better way than to waste all the installation labor and supplies.

 

[rox]

I just found this thread- I was wondering why not put two shipping containers with doors open point to each other 20 ft apart? pour a small concrete pad say, 8 by 20. put up a 12 by 20 shed over the concrete pad with a roll up doo ryou wanted and build a wooden floor on the open space for the toilet/sink area? This way when you are done in 3 years from now and you have a biuld a nice building somewhere you wanted, move the shipping containers somewhere for storage or remove it, you have a 12 by 20 building for other purposes? just cover up the ends. This would keep the costs down I would think.

Many thanks for looking at our project and contributing. I hope you continue to participate as we need as many opinions as possible. The reason we would not do as you have suggested is becasue the 20ft containers cost 2,900 Euros BEFORE the 19.6% tax and the 40 ft container costs 3,600 Euros before 19.6% Tax.