ot silo

ok i have no idea where this goes but has anyone ever taken a silo down. this neighbor wants it to fall cause he wants the staves for fill right where it fall . would it work to get two long cables and pull it down, its 80 ft  or will we have to knock out some of the staves with a sledg hammer .

ya i kno  he wants to scrapall the steel

If its a large diamater you have to open a wedge like when you fall a tree, a neighbor had a 20 footer just crush one row of blocks and still stand but tipping they got someone with a large track hoe to knock it down after that because they didnt know how stable it was after that.

I know some guys that took one town with a some friendly target practice. I think the .50cal ended up bringing it down.

We just had a silo torn down last week. It was sort of an odd one, built out of fiberglass, and was about a third full of old hay silage. They pulled it down with their truck with a cable hooked to the top of the silo. They cut away part of the wall about three feet up from the bottom on the side facing the direction they wanted it to fall.

of the silo's that I have witnessed come down, they have all been stave type. I have never seen a Harvestore or Sealstore dropped, only taken down sheet by sheet. one important thing to keep in mind, stave silos never 'fall over' they will 'fall down'. a 80 ft silo will not lay out 80 ft from it's stand point, once it starts to tip it will go a certain degree off center then straight down it comes

Lars, I didn't think that either. The one I pulled layed right out and slid some of the staves in my direction. Maybe I pulled too hard?

I've been in the in the silo building industry for more than 45 years so have seen more than a few come down. There are many different ways to take them down. The most dangerous is a old rotten silo. If it is a stave silo be sure all the hoops are on and tight before you start to knock out staves with a sledge. I had a friend take down 436 silos (mostly poured concrete) with an air hammer before old age caught up with him. He would decide which way it would fall and them mark out 90 degrees each way. He would than take out a wedge working each way from the centerline. The bigger the diameter, the higher the wedge had to be. We would set up a soda can and he would hit it with the silo every time. His biggest one was a 24' x 80'. I know of lots of horror storys of silo demolition gone wrong. Be carefull and use common sense!!!! When we are building an 80' x 132' grain silo with 230 tons of rebar, I think of the guy who will take it down a 100 years from now. I wish I'd be there to see it!!!

The only thing I have noticed watching many of these videos and a few in person, is that when they start to fall, the base will kick back a little, so if it is right up against a shed, look out, or if you think that is where you are going to hide while it falls, good luck.

I find this to be a very intertesting thread.  The silage method seems very simple but it wouldn't work of course with suspended ring drive top unloader.  In our case the tripod that the unloader hangs from sits on the top of the silo itself.

This silo is way to rotted to fill it has 2ft of old hay they never emptied  it does not have a roof on it or unloader.