A Collapsible Floor

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30965, 22 January 1966, Page 8

A Collapsible Floor

Mr Alan Hampton, who has a 370-acre property at Barrhill, has dried about 500 bushels of short-rotation ryegrass this harvest Last week-end the seed was safely in plywood boxes ready to be sent to the seed store. Harvested a week earlier at about 30 per cent moisture content it had gone into the plywood boxes at about 13 or 14 per cent moisture. Mr Hampton did his drying in a 30ft by 20ft corrugatediron covered building with concrete floor and sliding doors that he took over when he acquired an extra 90 acres of land about three years ago. The drying chamber was formed by cutting the shed in half with a partition of 24 gauge galvanised iron sheets on a framework of 4 by 2in timber. The other three walls of the compartment were very economically lined with sheets of timber from old tractor packing cases. A type of collapsible grating flooring has been used in the shed at the suggestion of Mr C. J. Crosbie, farm machinery instructor of the Department of Agriculture in Christchurch. Two grating 'floor sections each about 7ft by 18ft sin have been made, using 4in by 2in runners and 2in by lin battens. These are hinged to the wall on each side at a height of 33in and before the seed goes into the shed the two sections are drawn up level by means of four 3/Bin wire ropes joined to the floor sections by scissor attachments. The flooring is covered with hessian to receive the seed—up to 800 bushels. Seed Transfer The seed flows from a small opening in the back of a tip truck into the hopper on an Bin 27ft long portable auger and it is angered up to the roof and drops into the shed: from a porthole in the roof. Mr Hampton has had a fan built by Mr J. R. Leonard, an engineer, of Lauriston. Driven off the power take-off of a tractor it has an impeller27in in diameter. It has two leads and Mr Hampton hopes to be able to use the two halves of the shed for drying in the future—he has almost; completed lining the other half.

When the drying is complete the floor sections are lowered again and they lap

on to a metal trough running along the centre of the floor which contains a s}in auger for moving the seed out of the shed. To make contact with the metal trough the floor sections have a 2in by l/Bin angle iron edge. The 51in auger is linked to the portable auger by a universal joint and the portable auger again elevates the seed which is dropped into a plywood box held up on a buck lift on the back of a tractor. The loading out of the 500 bushels into the plywood boxes was completed in two or three hours. Use Of Fan Mr Hampton used his fan for 25 hours to dry down his seed. At first ordinary atmospheric air was used but at the time it was found that this was only cooling the seed and not drying it. After about five hours the tractor driving the fan was enclosed in a little shelter made of sacking and canvas and on a day when the outside temperature was 65 degrees it was found that at the end of the lead from the fan the temperature going in under the seed was 75 degrees using the heat being developed by the tractor. That day drying started at 11 am. when the moisture content of the seed was 18 per cent and by 2.30 p.m. it was down to 13 per cent. The moisture content of the seed was being constantly checked and Mr C. M. Harvey, who was working with Mr Hampton, was kept busy doing tests which take about a half hour. Mr Hampton said that the seed put into the shed represented the product of the harvesting of about a third of 17 acres. Between the harvesting of this part of the crop on a Sunday and the following Thursday when it was possible to start harvesting again after an interruption due to the weather, he estimated that 130 or 140 bushels of seed had been lost through the action of the weather. The aim using drying, he said, was to harvest, the seed about three days after cutting the grass—as soon as the moisture content fell to 30 per cent or less—instead of waiting nine or 10 days. Since the foregoing was i written still another 1000 bushels of seed —Italian rye-1 grass—has been put through: Mr Hampton’s drier for a brother. Mr J. M. Hampton. Harvesting of this crop began I last Monday afternoon only'

48. hours after cutting. The first batch of seed went into the drier at 23 per cent moisture. The seed was handled in two lots of 500 bushels each, and the emptying of one batch out of the drier and its replacement by another went off smoothly in exactly five minutes under two hours. By 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday all of the seed had been dried down to 14 per cent moisture or slightly lower.

Mr Hampton puts the cost of setting up to dry seed on his property at about £3OO.

These facilities will be used for drying wheat if necesssary and for temporary storage of wheat if it is not possible to get railway trucks for the movement of the grain. Mr Hampton is now in his third season of bulk handling. In the past he has sent all of his wheat off directly to the mill but this yeai- he has installed a 41 ton corrugated iron circular silo to take part of his harvest. He has. some 255 acres of crop to harvest, including 80 acres of wheat, 20 acres of barley, 30 acres of peas, 15 acres of oats, 40 acres of grass and 70 acres of white clover. All is being handled in bulk except the clover and oats. The Algerian oats off 14 to 15 acres yielded a tidy 105 bushels to the acre.