Wooden Silo Salvage: An Overlooked Rural Resource

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When you've finished, hook the free end of the cable to the truck and undo any anchor bolts at the base of the silo. One person should then stand at a safe distance to document the climax with a camera, while the other drives slowly forward to (first) take the slack out of the cable and (second) then continue on in first gear until the whole vertical wooden tank is horizontal. Usually a couple of boards break and release the tension, allowing the rest to collapse in a heap.

All that remains is to sort the staves, pile them onto the truck, and haul them away. The unloaded wood should be stickered with lath every 3 or 4 inches for ventilation and to avoid warping.

The boards of one silo make two full loads for my 3/4-ton Chevy pickup, with a third run needed to collect the doors, roof, hoops, and whatnot Unless you have a vehicle—probably a 1-1/2-ton flatbed truck with racks—that can haul everything in one trip, you'll be wise to restrict your salvage operations to within a 50-mile radius of your own building site.

OK, what do you have to show for a minimal investment plus one day's effort? First of all, 750 to 1,000 square feet of 2 X 5 tongue-and groove boards . . . and possibly an additional 200 feet of 5-foot-long trapezodial 5/8-inch roof sections. Then there are a dozen funky silo doors, which can be taken apart or used as is for a very rustic ladder to a loft area. (Any leftover iron steps make good towel racks or safety bars for a shower.) And don't forget all those hoops of 1/2- to 3/4-inch metal. If you have a cutting torch, you can slice off the threaded ends to make 40 anchor bolts of any desired length and divide the remaining 300-odd feet into convenient sizes to serve as reinforcing rod. That's quite a pile of building materials . . . especially when you consider that you got it all with no tedious nail-pulling or the hauling of loads of scrap to the dump.

If you live in silo country, you're fortunate indeed. Those sturdy old wooden tanks-which have outlived their day as storage units-are a valuable rural resource and a real blessing to the homesteader in a time of soaring lumber costs.

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