need to rent grain bin jacks in Bloomington, Illinois.

[STROIL]

I need to find a source from which I can rent manual grain bin jacks in (or near) Bloomington, Illinois. Need them for a few days beginning memorial day. If anyone knows where I could rent them, you'd be doing me a GIGANTIC favor if you could tell me where.

THanks,

Steve

 

[Leejohn]

What are grain bin jacks? How are they used?

 

[STROIL]

There are various types of grain bin jacks, but the simplest answer is that they are jacks used to either assemble or disassemble a corrugated grain bin. Grain bins are assembled and disassembled from the bottom up (not the top down, which might be more intuitive, but is completely wrong). For disassembly, the jacks lift the entire bin by the second ring up from ground level, so that the ground level ring can be removed. Then the bin is lowered, the jacks are moved up to the second ring again, the bin is jacked up again, and the ground level ring is removed. Repeat until the ring right under the roof is at ground level, then you can safely remove the pie-shaped roof panels.

 

[Leejohn]

Interesting, I'll like to see that done or help do it. How many jacks does it take? Are they something like a farm jack? After you get going on it post some pictures.

 

[Smallplot]

Might contact Brock (brockgrain.com) they bought out Butler Bin Division in 90s. They may be able to point you in the right direction.

Another contact would be Growmark there in Bloomington. They may be able to point you in the right direction.

 

[Depmandog]

Lifting Gear Hire Corporation. tel:800-878-7305

Don't know if they will have what you need, but it would not surprise me either. They have all sorts of specialized lifting gear, and they rent.

Hope this helps.

 

[blueriver]

Many years ago I used a digger derrick rig from the phone company with a 30 foot boom, 12 ton lift capacity .... I used a solid 2" shaft and a 16" tire and wheel ... dropped the cable from the rig thru the top hole and on the inside ran the cable thru the center of the wheel around the shaft and raised it to the top hole ... once the bottom ring was free'd from the slab we lifted it. Could take them apart or move them.

 

[STROIL]

yes, there are two ways to disassemble a grain bin.

1. lift it from the top with a crane or a boom truck (neither of which do I have access to or money for)

2. With grain bin jacks.

Thanks very much for the tips for the jack sources. I will follow up on them tomorrow.

 

[rtimgray]

Off-topic but a little on-topic -

When I was about 14, my dad bought a grain bin about 30 miles away. We rented 6 grain bin jacks that were basically A-frams with a third hinged leg so it made a tetrahedron (sp) when standing up. The A-frames had a hand-crank winch that went through a pulley at the top and had a bolt on plate at the bottom (to be bolted onto the grain bin). We placed them at 60 degrees all around the bin and would use all six to raise it, then switch three at a time as we lowered/raised each ring.

The only real excitement came when we were re-assembling it and a couple of the cables broke and the bin tilted. We were lucky that we had a combine right next to the gin and it wedged up against it and we were able to replace the cable and right the bin.

Good luck with your project and take care.