The Van Zante Family: Going UP... Amanda's View

Fair warning: lots of pictures ahead of building a silo.

But before I show pictures, I have to give so much credit to the four men who put this silo up. Pouring concrete is not an easy job to begin with, even on the ground, but to do it on a six inch platform and eighty feet up in the air is just crazy. They are seriously some of the hardest working men I've ever met. They climbed the silo in the morning, pouring up to three loads of concrete a day, battling cold, rain and ridiculous wind gusts of up to 50 mph (the weather just didn't cooperate at all the first week) and didn't come down until the end of the day when the job was done. I don't think anyone can really appreciate just how hard these men worked unless they've done the work themselves. My hat goes off to them.

A look coming down the road. Exciting to see the truck back up and things starting to take shape!

Setting up the forms and what I call the tripod. I'm sure there's a name for it and I'm not right calling it that, but it has three arms on it, so it makes sense to me to call it a tripod.

The form sits on the ground or otherwise the last form that was poured (which I'll point out in a later picture). It's the dark ring you can barely make out between the pickup and the company truck. It's actually two steel rings: a larger one that forms the outside ring and a smaller one that forms the inside of the ring. Between the two rings is a six inch space that the rerod is woven together an then concrete is poured into. Once the concrete cures (concrete does not dry, folks), the forms is removed, inside and out, and moved up onto the last form that was poured (again, I'll point out in a later picture) and the process is started all over again.

Now, the tripod - that spider looking thing you see in the middle of the picture. I'll be honest, I don't know much about the tripod. But to the best of my understanding, it's the muscles of the job. The tripod sets up in the middle of the silo, using legs pressed against the form to hold itself up and is moved up with the silo as the silo gets higher. The arms that extend up and over provide the lifting support, holds the forms, brings up the bucket of concrete (you'll see later), raises and lowers the forms as they're being built, holds the cart that carries the concrete around the whole circumference of the silo and I think it's what the guys attach their safety ropes to, too. I'm sure I got a detail a little off and missed a whole lot, but we'll be safe to say that the tripod is the heart of the build.

The concrete truck backs up to the silo and unloads into a bucket (that you'll see in a few pictures). Here you can see the silo is getting taller, from one form to now three. The forms are four feet high, so here the silo is twelve feet.

Here's a first picture of the bucket used to lift concrete up to the top of the form being poured. There is a man standing in the middle of the silo with an orange hat on. To the right of that you can see the bucket. The bucket is filled with concrete, about the amount that fits in a wheelbarrow, and hydraulically sent up to the top of the form being poured via a cable. You'll see more of this in future pictures. See how the tripod arms are being used to bring up the bucket?

The bucket of concrete is poured into a cart that travels around the rim of the silo. See the guy in the orange hat again? He is on a cart that he can control to stop and go. It actually travels around the rim of the silo. As he moves around, he can dump the concrete from the cart into the forms. It takes less than a minute for his cart to empty and then he zooms back over to the bucket, refills and does it over and over again until the load of concrete is poured and the form is filled.

Meanwhile, as the cart runner is pouring concrete, the other two men are walking the rim of the form tamping and vibrating the concrete to have it pack just right. You can barely see the man in the orange hat on the far side dumping while the man in the blue hat is in the foreground tamping. There's also someone else on the left of the silo here, which is unusual. Almost all the time, three, if not all four, were up on top of the silo working. While pouring the concrete, the fourth man stands by the concrete mixer running the bucket up and down.

A cool picture of the truck, tripod and the men working. You can also make out the three forms here, meaning it's twelve feet. This is a good picture to explain how they move the forms up since you can easily see all three forms. The forms are connected to each other with buckles. They buckle around the circumference to make it a tight ring and then they are buckled to the form below it to make the connection tight. Once the concrete in the bottom form cures, which takes several hours, the outside ring of the form is unbuckled to make it loose. Then, using the hydraulics of the tripod, the form is lifted up and put into place. After the outside ring is placed, the men put the rerod into place within the forms. Once the rerod is placed, the inside ring of the form is brought up and put into place. Once that's done, they're ready for another pour. They move the forms up and over each other, time after time, until all nineteen forms were poured. Sounds simple enough, but it's a lot of muscle work to get it all done.

Another picture of the concrete going from the bucket to the cart. You can see the cart our buddy in the orange hat is standing on. That cart has the ability to go completely around the circumference to pour.

The guys reach out, grab the bucket and then dumps.

We're getting there! Looks like seven forms have been poured here. Twenty-eight feet in the air. They poured either two or three forms a day. It really depended on the weather and the concrete company getting the mix here.

Looks like nine forms here, thirty-six feet. Could you walk the six-inch rim, pouring concrete thirty-six feet up in the air? And notice the gray sky.

A few days later, and we have fifteen forms poured. The silo is at sixty feet now! This picture is a great one to point out the chute. You can see the vertical "tunnel" on the side of the silo. This is the chute and serves two purposes once the silo is in use. The first is that this is where the silage will fall out as it's being fed. The silo unloader (which will be another post) pushes silage from the top of the silage inside the silo out a door. (I'll show a door in a later picture.) The silage falls down the chute, whether it's all seventy-six feet high or just five, onto a conveyor that carries the silage to the bunks for the cattle to eat. The second use of the chute is that it acts as an inside access to the doors and a ladder that goes to the top of the silo so that maintenance can be continued.

Pretty neat picture of the chute.

There is also an outside ladder formed into the concrete as it is being poured. When the silo is finished, there will be a safety cage around this ladder, in case one would fall while climbing it. But for now, the fellas just climb it with no cage.

There's part of the cage that will go around the ladder. It has a "wall" in case someone were to fall backward and also has two (or three?) platforms that can be kicked into place as the climber goes up to catch them in case they were to fall down the ladder. Better to fall twenty feet onto a platform than eighty feet onto the ground!

Here's the hydraulic machine that sent the bucket up and down. The buck is there on the bottom left of the picture.

Here's the bucket that's filled and raised full of concrete.

This is a picture taken from the ground looking up into the chute. The day I took this picture was so windy, it was miserable. I literally ducked my head, stuck my hand into the chute and took a blind picture. I think it turned out pretty cool. The light at the end of the tunnel is at seventy-two feet if I remember right.

Thumbs up from Caleb. The date is wrong on this picture, as it is on many of them. It should be April 12, the day of the last pour. The nineteenth form was poured on this morning, making the silo height a total of seventy-six feet before the dome (roof) is placed.

A thing of beauty. The thing that makes a cattle farmer's heart go pitter-patter.

Caleb and Sarah watching the last load being poured. We got to the yard pretty early just to be sure we wouldn't miss it!

Caleb and Sarah again. They just sat there on the mound and just watched. At this point, the top of the form is at seventy-six feet.

It's hard to make out, Paul, the head honcho, is there at the truck filling the bucket to be sent up. He's looking up, so I'm sure the bucket is in the air at this point.