Car Wheel Manure Pit Agitator

Car Wheel Manure Pit Agitator MANURE HANDLING Equipment 18-2-18 1 An Ohio hog producer made his own manure pit agitator out of an old 15-in. car wheel cut like a"propeller". The car wheel propeller mounts below an old 3-pt. post hole auger. "It cost only $200 to build and works as good as any commercial manure pit agitator I've ever seen," says Robert Yeazel, of Eaton. Yeazel used a cutting torch to make four equally spaced, 3-in. deep cuts at a 45 degree angle on the wheel rim and then bent the heated metal outward over the hub to make"paddles". He reinforced the paddles by welding in triangle-shaped pieces of 1/ 4-in. thick steel between the back side of the paddles and the rim. The paddle wheel mounts at the end of a 4-ft. long shaft that's welded to the bottom of the posthole auger. The wheel bolts to a hub with a 6-in. stub shaft that's welded to the shaft on the post auger. "It has tremendous stirring action and runs smooth and quiet," says Yeazel, who operates a hog farrowing and nursery operation. "The wheel runs steady like a fly-wheel. I had tried bolting a pair of flat steel blades onto the end of the shaft, but there was no way I could balance them and vibration shook the bolts loose. The car wheel doesn't rock back and forth at all, although I use blocks to steady the 3-pt. hitch. "Our 80,000-gal. manure pit is 12 ft. wide, 100 ft. long, and 8 ft. deep and has four door openings on top. When we start agitating there's usually about 18 to 24 in. of solid manure at the bottom of the pit. The agitator reaches to within 6 to 8 in. of the bottom. It has the manure ready to pump in one to three hours. The auger flighting breaks up the top crust, if any." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Robert Yeazel, 1495 Wolverton Rd., Eaton, Ohio 45320 (ph 513 456-3094).

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