Tips for turning bins with a grain vac

Richard Elenko, who farms north of Biggar, Sask., phoned to correct a point I made in my page 1 article on grain vacs in the January 25 issue. I wrote that you could use a grain vac to condition a bin of canola, sucking from the bottom and putting grain back on top of the same bin. Richard says that procedure will turn over the core of the bin, but it won’t condition grain along the sides. He says the physics of grain bin unloading is that the top grain comes out first. Within minutes, you’ll be cycling the same grain over and over again. He confirmed this again this fall when he put 300 bushels of just-dried canola into the top of a 4,000-bushel bin, then asked his hired man to take out a load to see if the rest of the bin was conditioned and in good shape. “Within five minutes, the canola coming out the bottom was the warm stuff that we’d just put in the top,” Richard says. 

Richard says the grain vac is a great tool for conditioning canola, but the best plan is to take from one bin and dump into a separate bin. Thank you very much for the call Richard. If anyone has other grain vac tips to share, please email me.