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Central Minnesota | What you want to do all depends on your dryer size, future expansion, and electrical. It doesn't take much to outgrow an air system. Where as a leg, you can go to a 3000bph leg, and you won't outgrow it nearly as fast. Especially on years where you are drying 17-18% corn. A dryer thats advertised to do 12-1300 bph at 5points will dry a whole lot more of your 17-18% corn than that. Then youll outgrow that 5" air system, or the air system will be your "bottle neck" in the whole equation. Plus, your air system will be running at 70-90% amperage load. Where if you were using a dry leg, it will run at 20-40% amperage load. And if your single phase or 3 phase also makes a difference. Air systems have a higher hp requirement than legs do. Thats another thing to think about too. Alot will depend on your electrical situation. And things depend on what height legs you would need, and how fast you want to unload a semi. Your wet leg should be shorter than your dry leg, It only needs to reach high enough to dump into your "wet bin" and dryer. But depends on how tall both of them are. But you'll want a bigger capacity for a wet leg than a dry leg. So with a bigger capacity, you'll need more hp on top of that. It's going to take either a pretty big leg, or big pit to unload a semi in a hurry. Alot depends on how fast you need that truck back to the field. Alot of guys are digging their own pits, and dropping a 13" auger into that. Which will unload your semi of 1000 bu of corn in less than 10 minutes.
Will an air system be cheaper? Yes.. Unless your looking to buy used equipment. You can find used legs fairly reasonable. But is it really worth buying used? I don't know. Is an air system easier to expand with? Yes.... But it all depends on how your bins are set up, and what you want to do in the future. Kind of a loaded question. Hope some of this helps. | |
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Grain bin setups...
