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WC Wisconsin | Anyone have experience using this style of top unloader in a Harvestore?
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Columbia co. Wi | Jamesway "Big Jim" or the newer quantum? Built a 20x80 Rochester in '81 with that unloader. Loved it! Haven't used for about 4 yrs now so would sell for parts. It will pack the feed in real well and it feeds out real fast. You don't need to change doors and you don't need to crawl up there to check on it much either. The trick is to not plug the hole when filling. If you build a silo for this , make the manway larger than 1 door. |
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West Chazy, New York | Not in a Harvestore, but many years in a poured concrete silo. There are some companies that do good conversions, and I have heard that they work quite well. Everyone plugs the hole; you will too. On the old style, where there was just a small passage for the conveyor to fit through the bottom, unplugging was a bad job that took all day. Lots of extensions for the drill auger, tools lost in the loose silage, and the worst part was if you dropped the auger and couldn't pull it back up. It would usually break a few slats on the conveyor if it didn't stall it entirely. The new style, where a tunnel is built large enough for a man to get in and open the hole from underneath makes it a much better system. I have even seen them with a tunnel big enough for a silage cart to fit in, and a few farms had tunnel bases that the mixer wagon could be backed in under the silo (that's getting a little extreme in my opinion).
They work best with fairly moist feed. In fact, if the silage is too dry it tends to flake off of the hole sides and can plug up from just the lose material falling in. Maintenance wise they are pretty simple. Just grease at the top and the bottom, and replace the suspension cables about every eight or ten years. Check the chipper adjustment every year and make sure the wheels that run on the silo wall turn freely. They do such a good job distributing that they will allow you to put about 15 to 20 percent more feed in the silo compared to using a spout distributor. |
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NW Illinois Stephenson county | I have a Quantum in a 20'x90' harv. I use it for hay. Feed out is as fast as your conveyers can take it away. Filling is a nerve racking experience. You need to watch the amp meter to see if it doesn't raise quick enough or after several years the auger bearing wore and it started to catch the bolt heads on the harv so you can stop it or the overload on the motor trips you need to go up and reset it and air temp is 95 and the motor is sizzling hot and you need to wait for it to cool down all the while loads are coming in to be unloaded every 10 minutes. All this adds to the paranoia. You almost have to be at the blower because no one else wants to avoid problems like you do! Hole plugged several times over the years. The longer and dryer the haylage becomes, the worse it is. If I couldn't get it unplugged myself, it would cost one to two thousand to get it unplugged.The worst time it cost $6,000.00 to unplug. If you plug hole or have electrical problems, you are done filling until it gets fixed. So for me it is a love/hate relationship. Jamesway no longer manufactures this unloader. A circuit board shorted out and it cost $750.00 plus waiting 6 months to be manufactured, luckily I was able to limp by having reduced functions and being done filling for the year. |
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| Grew up around a BIG JIM in a stave...............It worked ok, but I think the dealer who put it in years ago didn't know a whole lot about what he was doing, it never put the feed out automatically(Lower) like it should have, we'd lower it with the switch until the load meter showed a decent load, which worked, but definitely wasn't using it to its capacity. Also, agree on it being slow filling..................With all that said, neighbor also had one in a poured concrete silo, and it would take feed as fast as you could blow it up the pipe, and it also unloaded very well. |
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Silo Unloaders
