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Sharon, ND | Looking to buy a grain dryer this winter. The main reason is I am going to increase corn acres from 350 to 550 or more. My question to you guys is what do you feel is the way to go Automatic Batch, Continous Flow. What brands do you feel have the best support. Would like to do around 500 to 800 bushels an hour. Thanks for any input |
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| The best type is continuous flow. The best brand is Super B or FarmFans, we have both. Once you get these set they pretty much run themselves. Still need to be monitored closely
Signed JD 4450 |
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Martinsville, Ohio | You COULD buy them pretty cheap here, most cost in moving and setting up.
With the ethanol demand, that may change...
Looking at the same thing CornKing.... |
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Eastern Iowa | A 800 bu. per hour dryer would dry 19,000 bushels a day, can you combine that much in a day? As the corn drys down latter in the year it may dry almost double that much in a day. I bought a Supurb last year, the cost difference between the smallest dryer they make (around 300 bu per hour) and the next size up that is rated around 400 per hour cost over $10,000 more. I think the key is to have enough wet storage to be able to dry corn 24 hours a day while you are only combining 12 hour a day or so. A continous flow dryer needs to have a steady flow of wet corn availible to keep a consistant output moisture. If the dryer runs out of wet corn before you start filling the next day you need to go through a procedure to get the corn up to temp. before you can turn it over to continous flow. It seemed to me that in this case undersized may be better than oversized. The money saved can be used for a wet storage bin. |
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SCPA | I have a Farm Fans CF/AB 190 rated at 190 bph with a removal of 10 points, OK get real, I do not want to see 26% corn coming in. IF you can manage to stagger plantings so that your harvest is at 20% or less that dryer will easy do 400 bph unloading hot and cooling in a bin. Running by myself even with an R50 in good corn, the dryer can get ahead. I only have 2,000 bushels of wet storage capacity so filling up and then starting is my normal proceedure. |
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Sharon, ND | Guys this is my setup I can usually harvest 15000 to 16000 bushels in a day if I can keep it away from the combine. My curent system is dump corn into air bins at 20 to 21 moisture, freeze it in the fall/winter and than turn them on in the spring to dry it down. I works good when I get to the elevator in the spring the moisture usually comes in around 14.5 to 15%. My problem is now I am going to start growing more corn and I dont have the space so I would like to have dry corn that I could haul to the elevator. I currently have a 10,000 bushel hopper bin, and in the process of probably building 2 to 3 30,000 bushel bins. Let me know what you guys think we have only been growing corn for 5 years and you guys in the corn belt have been for a lifetime so you probably know the do's and don't. Thanks |
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Alton, Ia | 350 acres, your current crop, at say 180 bpa, = 63,000 bu, at 15-16,000 per day, you are done in 4 days. Why are you in such a rush to combine at 21 percent? Let it field dry, even to 18 is a big savings. Even when you go to 550 acres, in 6 days you're done. Is there something else really fun you get to do after combining is over?
I am a big believer in in bin systems. Neco, Shivvers, etc. Cost a lot less, just as efficient, plus you get a storage bin. But to do 16,000 bpd may be above that. We do 350 acres through ours with no problem, but we do take around 2 weeks to get it done.
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Near-north Ontario, French River | I have to agree with Oliver on this one, IMHO you dont need a 800buh system for the number of acres you are looking at. I dont know what kind of yields you are getting but just for sh$ts and giggles lets say you average 200bu/a. over your proposed 550 acres. That potentially gives you 110,000 bu of corn each fall. Im going to assume you forward contract or at the very least sell some of your crop each fall in some manner. If it were me i would consider going to an inbin system, such as the shivers or neco, and go with maybe two 20,000bu bins, one of which would contain the shivers/neco type system. This would give you a total of 40,000bu of ADDITIONAL storage. You say you are air drying now so unless your current bins are very small and in need of major repair I dont see a need to spend beaucoup bucks building a large grain set up for 550 acres of corn. If you are harvesting 16000bu/day , assuming a 12 day , you are harvesting 1333bu/hr on average. In a perfect world where money is no object it would be nice to be able to dry 670bu/bu., but why? Cut your harvest rate, perhaps only work 8 hr LOL, and your drying capacity only needs to be 445bu/hr to keep up. I think the savings would be substantial, and you could us the money in the future to expand your bins etc. We are like Oliver,in a normal year we put 350-500acres of corn through our drier, albiet its usually 25-28% moisture. We take our time and only run 6 hrs a day on average and still get done in good time. Lot less stress then running 12 hr days, when theres no real need unless you have other work commitments etc. |
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| Ithink if I had to do it over again i would go with a in bin system I have a farm fans and 2000 bu wet bin and leg setup |
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Northern Indiana | I have had a superB for 10 years. I would buy am=nother in a heartbeat if I were in the market. Simple, effecent dryer.
Unfortunatluy they sold out to the same company that bought Brock. Bill Beard is no longer directly involved,But most of there employees are there. |
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NE SD | Still a good dryer. We bought one. This will be its 3rd year. It is an excellent machine and with the Quantum controller it will absolutely run itself. It paid for itself the first year we had it. Not only in drying costs but while guys were either waiting for their in-bin systems or only being able to dump from 8-10:00AM in town, we were combining. |
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Berrien County Michigan | We have a Farm Fans and love it. Our current drier is 5 years old and is already lacking capacity. We have 5k bushel wet bin and our goal is to shell 60 acres a day. With our old combine it would take us all day to do that and now we can do it in 8 hours. You can never have to big of a drier! I'd buy a Farm Fans again in a heart beat, i believe a GSI drier is basically the same thing. |
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Somerville, Indiana | we have an AS1000 SuperB...batch dryer, wait for it to load and wait for it to unload...I have paid a lot of attention to other dryers in the last several of my years...Had a hard time waiting to load and unload while continuous dryers ground out a steady stream of hot corn, not having to spend 17 minutes loading and 15 minutes unloading, that comes to 32 minutes that could be drying for every 388 bushels [which the dryer holds]...My dryer never caught on fire...I noticed those that did, all that I noticed were continuous flow...'Notice' that I said 'noticed', batch dryer fires could have slipped right past this old man's attention...But I got to thinkin', no necessarily good, but notice again, that continuous flow dryers, for the most part, have a 'gear' system that slowly turns the corn loose to the unloading auger...If a couple Sycamore leaves were to get in the right place at the wrong time = smoked dryer and contents, same way with high moisture corn...Operator needs to be sure the product is moving equal at all times, cause once part of the product slows or grinds to a hault, it overdrys that portion...That is the main and simple reason why the batch dryers have it on the continuous flow as I see it...We dump hot into cooling bins, always have since we got the dryer...Product always comes out within a couple tenths of the rest of the bin because the dryer can only make a 388 bushel mistake at one time.
Not pushing or bragging about either system, they both have their good points...as far as capacity, the continuous flow naturally has it on the batch dryer...Just pointing out what I 'noticed'. |
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Renville Minnesota | You want a continous flow dryer, brand should be the one with not necesarily close, but fast efficient service (call 24 hours). If you want to dry 500-800 bu per hour, youll need a big dryer to heat and cool, not so big to heat blow through and cool in bin. Our Delux dryer does 850 hr heat / cool then to the leg. We use to cool in bins, but built bigger bins and are happy with the system so far. Only problem is in wetter corn it slows the harvest. Now with 17-18 % corn we can dry to 14.5-15 moisture around 40,000 in 24 hours. Remember all "rated" dryers depend on outside air temp and humidity. I believe dryers that heat upstairs and cool downstairs use less fuel basically because its pulling the heat out of the corn down stairs. Just some thoughts and opinions. Have fun shopping..........Be prepaired to spend big bucks, but reap the rewards down the road!!! |
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| Do you have a the single level 30' or something else? We put in a 30' refurbished Delux this summer and started it for the first time today. So far we're happy, but only have one leg so the dyer dumps in a holding tank while unloading wet corn ---- we're worried that we'll need a bigger surge tank for dyring <20% corn.
What kind of capacity do you actually get out of the thing on say a 50 degree day going from 20-15%? |
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Sac & Story county IA | I mostly agree with your observations of continuous dryers. One bigger thing is on a continuous is that if the wind is wrong, the cob dust and leaves will blow near the fan and be sucked inside. If there gets to be a pile in the heat chamber and a piece of leaf going by the flame and into the pile catches fire, the thing starts to burn. Also, on the metering rolls, if sticks and leaves build up on a cross brace, the flow is interupted. On my old one you could see the rolls working and knock the stuff loose. On this one you can't see. But that fire on the inside is what gets most of them that I have seen. Supposed to stop and check inside every day. probably only take 10 minutes but I haven't done it much in 20 some years of running the thing. |
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| We had a batch that you had to be there to switch and now we've got a dryer, CF/AB 270 that can run automatic batch or continus flow.
As far as quality of product coming out we feel like the CF process gets us a little more even product without sacrificing speed. If you run it on auto batch and make it clean out every batch that would be similar in quality, but you lose a lot of speed. If you run it on auto batch and let it fill while the old batch is going out so the burner can stay on the entire time you end up with corn a little dryer at the start of the batch and a little wetter at the end just before it shuts down the unload to finish drying the new batch.
With it in CF mode the moisture coming out is more even across the board. The down side is the leg is running the whole time. On the other side if you're running AB and come in to unload sometimes you can get part of a truck unloaded between batches and not interupt the dryer as much as you would if you had to shut it down when you first started to unload. If the dryer is not keeping up that is what we will do to try and get as much out of it as possible.
I think the biggest problem with fires is not keeping things clean and having clean grain. Around here most of the fires come from elevators running milo through with a bunch of trash in it. |
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Renville Minnesota | Its dang near right on the book. Will take pics and start new thread when were done with it..........Hopefully monday "Knockin on wood"!!!!!! |
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| I have heard many good things about a mixed flow dryer such as the Grain Handler or a Neco. They are supposed to be approx. 30% more efficent and they also have the best grain quality because of the even heating of all the kernels. They also don't have screens so you don't have to clean them to maintain efficency. I do not have one of these but it will be my next dryer. Check out the Grain handler website for all the studies that show the advantages of the mixed flow design. www.grainhandler.com |
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Grain Dryers
