Fire Hose Great For Covering Bunker Silo

Fire Hose Great For Covering Bunker Silo CROP STORAGE Silos (50) 17-5-13 After he got tired of the yearly chore of putting tires on the plastic covering on his bunker silo, Kent Keller, Kinderhook, N.Y., bought 21/2-in. dia. fire hose and placed it around the outer edges of the bunker, then filled it with water to give it weight. Keller got several 50-ft. lengths of wornout fire hose for free from his local fire department and hooked them together. He places both hose ends at the top of the 120-ft. long, 45-ft. wide bunker. He sticks a garden hose inside one end of the hose to fill it. After the hose is full, he kinks off each end. To drain the water he simply uncouples two of the hoses at the bottom of the bunker silo. "It lets us remove the cover much quicker than we could with tires and provides a better seal for better feed quality without any air spaces," says Keller, who runs a dairy operation. "The weight of the water inside the hose provides a continuous seal all the wav around. We add lengths of hose as we fill the bunker. We put up about three or four cuttings of new silage every year and remove the cover every time we add a cutting. We had been using tires to hold the cover down, but it was a lot of work to put them on and take them off. It takes only about 15 minutes to put the hose in place and fill it." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Kent Keller, Rt. 1, Box 446, Kinderhook, N.Y. 12106 (ph 518 758-7572).

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