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Dads looking to expand his manure storeage and is seriously considering a blue Slurrystore with Houle agitation. Thoughts and experiencs wanted.
cons, expensive. Pros, no pump set up, excellent agitation, and a smaller footprint to collect less rain. You will have to take the side off to clean it out every 10 years or so, not too bad. unbolt some sheets and run a skidloader in it.
We just used a crane and lifted it over, shuttle bucket to lift it out. Once they get some age on them the bolts start to decay, and the edge of the sheets will too. Plus any scratch in the glass will become a hole very quickly.
cons, expensive. Pros, no pump set up, excellent agitation, and a smaller footprint to collect less rain. You will have to take the side off to clean it out every 10 years or so, not too bad. unbolt some sheets and run a skidloader in it. How would it be a smaller footprint than an in-ground cement tank? You can go deeper than 8' with in ground tanks. Pumping the blue tank would be a HUGE con. Agitation on a circular in ground tank is no problem with a good pump.
They are expensive. Ours at work has the pump down in a pit so you spend a day hauling water before you can start agitating. They make what they call a Z pipe that puts the pump at ground level, that would be better. Anothe rproblem related to the pump being in the pit is putting bearings(or more) in the pump just about yearly. Ours is three rings tall but they make them way higher. Even freshly rebuilt our pump in the barn has trouble with the head pressure when the tank is over 2/3 full. Ours is needing some love but it was builtr in the 70s so?
Check out fsrc tanks out of Ohio. Seem to be cheaper than slurry store and are steel not glass lined.
Keeping the water pumped out of the hole so you could pour concrete, in the OP's area, might be a fearsome task. In Tillamook, all above ground round concrete now. I think I'd stick with concrete over the steel.
Right now our water table is 3 ft down so we are unable to go deep. A concrete pit 10 ft deep with a roof is very close to the same price as a Slurrystore which is big enough to accommodate the rainfall. We are planning on going 28ft tall so % rainfall is minimized. The agitation pump is not going to be attached to a panel. The pump intake is going to have a pipe go under the footer and up thru the floor with a top nozzle and a bottom nozzle for agitation.
We put in a rectangular in-ground tank, hit water at 4 feet deep in one corner, it took all of a 100hp diesel pump to keep it sucked down to the floor level. Several above ground concrete tanks built at neighbors of the farm in Tilly. Last few were done by a contractor who has a very good system down, only takes a few days to set the forms and pour. Doesn't matter if you go tall n skinny or short n wide, 8 feet of rain takes up the same volume.
Less footprint because they are taller. Most concrete pits, above or in ground are only 12 foot. So the diameter of the pit is much greater, capturing much more rain. This alone can amount to a lot. Our slurrystore was installed in 1994, it was a used structure when we got it, so its over 30 years old. It still looks new. A few years ago we added on to it going higher, increasing my capacity by double. Which is another nice feature. They will agitate easier, the center agitation is nice. Plus they are round so the liquid will circle, unlike a rectangular or square lagoon. I don't understand the pump in the pit and the S pipe and hauling water the first day?? You need to agitate the pit, at least ours, for at least 4-8 hours before you start pumping. Full bottom agitation for several hours, turning the center agitator every 30-60 mins. Then you need to send a man up top using full agitation to the top to break up the crust. Once the crust is broken into several sections the gun is pointed to the wall to created a circular stirring motion. The solids will not start circling right away, you need to let the gun shoot manure to the side under full pressure for awhile. Depending on the thickness of the crust, 30 mins, to a few hours. Once it get turning good, open the bottom agitator back up, and turn the bottom agitator every 30 mins or so. It will now stir up on its own. You may need to go back up top and check it later, sometimes a large chunk will continue to circle around but not get hit by the top agitator. Once we get it stirred up, I idle the tractor down and will only stir it a couple hours each morning and maybe an hour or 2 in the afternoon. One huge drawback to a slurrystore versus an in ground pit is you must pump the manure up to the pit. This is another pump and pit to deal with. If the layout of the farm allowed an in ground pit to be push directly into, or to flow to by gravity, I would lean towards a in ground pit. If you have to pump the manure anyway, I would lean toward a slurrystore.
What size is your pit?
Because of high water table on our farm we put up a Slurrystore.It ended up being cheaper than concrete when we figured in the big ramps on concrete as we bed with sand.We take off a couple of sheets once a year to get the sand out. You might want to check out the Houle agitation system to be
It was 81x20. Now it's about 81x34
Thanks guys for all the responses. Ill keep you posted on what happens.
We used one for 21 years and it worked very well. Ours'was a 62 x 19. Bedded with sawdust or chopped rye straw. We would soak the top crust a few times the week before we were going to haul, and this helped get the crust to break up. We placed a flapper style check valve on the inlet pipe, to keep the tank from flowing back into our barn. There is an outfit nearby that I believe still markets stainless steel structures. They were out of Menomonie, Wisconsin.
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