A lot of opinionated people

[D2Cat]

Was on a forum where there was a discussion about silos. One guy was wondering how to (or if he could) patch a large hole in silo where several staves had been knocked out. It turned into an "oil" discussion! Most saying no way, won't work, too dangerous, tear it down.....

So I told them about my project, and once again they told me I was stupid, crazy, lucky and on and on. Then I told them I had contacted two different companies and talked to the owners who built silos and repaired them and asked them about my idea. They both told me they had done what I was asking about and did it in larger silos then I had. They said I could remove several of the rods and a tornado wouldn't take it down. Still a lot of naysayers. So I posted a picture.

I put the steel door in so I could store my Ditchwitch 2300 in there and lock it up to prevent thieves even knowing it was there. I painted the steel doors to match the concrete and people would walk by and never notice the doors. I used a grader blade for the threshold, angle iron for the sides and a channel from a truck frame for the header. I had a picture of the guy who helped me knock out the concrete standing on the inside like he was in jail, before we cut the rods but that was way back when i didn't have much of a camera and never put the pictures on a hard drive.

 

[Runs With Scissors]

Looks good to me, but I don't know anything about them.

My thinking would be, the strength of that steel door frame should be fine.

Now, to really blow their minds, I would engineer an "elevator system" to maximize my storage area.

 

[Yooper]

Subject of tornadoes came up one day and someone asked if anybody had ever seen a silo or water tower taken down by one. Nobody in the group could come up with anything. I remember an F5 destroying a town in southern Wisconsin back in the eighties (Barneveld) and the only thing left standing was the water tower.

 

[NCL4701]

Apparently this guy didn’t check with the internet experts before turning his concrete silo into a vacation rental.

https://www.ksn.com/news/state-regional/get-away-from-it-all-at-a-two-bedroom-silo-vacation-rental-in-chase-county/

I’ve seen quite a few corrugated steel grain bins converted to storage sheds or living quarters. Concrete or tile silos, not so much.

 

[woodman55]

Subject of tornadoes came up one day and someone asked if anybody had ever seen a silo or water tower taken down by one. Nobody in the group could come up with anything. I remember an F5 destroying a town in southern Wisconsin back in the eighties (Barneveld) and the only thing left standing was the water tower.

I watch a lot of farming u-tube channels. In the mid west EMPTY silos get blown in/over almost every year during tornados and hurricanes. They are the tin shell type, so when empty there is not much weight to them. The full ones do fine, as the contents keep them from buckling in.

 

[woodman55]

It's pretty slick how the new tin shell ones are assembled. They assemble the roof first on the silo base, them raise it up with a set of synchronized specialized jacks. They then install the first ring of panels, raise the roof and first ring of the wall up and repeat, until the silo is up to full height. Each time connecting the jacks to the ring of panels they just installed.

 

[jaxs]

Starting when I was about 5 years old each time ,we drove past a large silo dad would tell me a man once died inside it. At about 8 years old I asked what killed him, smothered , no water or what? Dad told me the man walked himself to death. Shortly after I asked if he lost his way out or why he didn't stop before he died. "Hunting a corner to take a dump in."

 

[torch]

Many years ago I responded to a fire in a steel silo. It was constructed of thick (3\8" IIRC) plates rivetted together like a ship's hull and used to store sawdust -- fuel to heat greenhouses, about 1/2 full. It turned out the initial fire triggered a dust explosion which blew out many of the rivets and lifted the roof so it was sitting cockeyed on top.

But it never fell over.