Grain bin in county will be world’s largest

A grain bin currently being built by J & D Construction of Montevideo, MN at the Guardian Energy ethanol plant near Janesville will have a capacity of 2.3 million bushels, making it the world’s largest–outsizing each of two 2.2 million bushel bins in Mason City, Iowa.

 

J & D salesman Daylen Mitlyng shares that work on the bin began in May with the 10-foot-tall concrete foundation. Work on the roof and walls began in June with project completion expected within the next few weeks. Mitlyng says the bin is 165 feet in diameter and will be 158 feet tall, dwarfing a 1 million bushel bin that stands next to it. It will have 31 rows of corrugated metal sheets, each 3 feet tall. Its outer circumference is about 500 feet.

 

He explains standard practice when building a bin is to assemble the cone-shaped roof–the structurally most challenging part of the project–on the ground, then lift it a little at a time and gradually build the cylindrical walls beneath it.

 

 About 25 workers at once, located mostly inside but also outside the walls, have been bringing in and distributing the needed supplies for each layer and using impact wrenches for hours at a stretch to fasten the metal sheets in place. He says the company had to acquire about 425,000 bolts for the construction project.

 

He points out the work can continue in most kinds of weather, but sometimes shuts down for winds of 15 miles per hour or more since when the giant roof is standing above the rest of the structure on jacks, it takes surprisingly little air movement to “turn it into a giant sail.”

 

When the walls and roof are complete, the next step will be adding the various equipment needed to deposit and remove grain, and to keep it dry while in storage. The roof has been engineered, Mitlyng says, to hold up to 150,000 pounds of equipment. A typical farm bin, he offers for comparison, is built to support about 20,000 pounds.