Pivot Irrigation System

[Yunkman]

Hi guys/gals. Now I have to admit that scrapping is contagious and I'm almost too old to do this, but:
I was asked to remove a storm damaged pivot irrigation system from a field this winter and the guy asked
me what it might weigh. Does anyone know an approximate? It's 1330 ft long including wheels, cables, etc. No engine or pump.



Just dawned on me that it might include that heavy...heavy copper electric line running full length.
I have the equipment to remove this thing. Ground is froze and easy access.
Just found this site today. I'm going to enjoy this forum.
Thanks

[etack]

Welcome,

Find the manufacture and look at the specs on weight. Almost all farm supply stores have the weight of the equipment on the site for freight charge purposes.

Eric

[Yunkman]

Thanks Eric.......I did look at a website but I'll pursue it a little further. Too 'antsy' here I guess. Ha

[newattitude]

I had to look up what those were,never saw one on any of the farms by me before. Thats pretty cool

[Yunkman]

No wonder you haven't seen any in Ohio, cuz you get RAIN there....LOL
Holt County, Nebraska has the largest collection of pivot irrigation systems in the world besides Israel.
Just GoogleEarth Holt County and look at it. Amazing...!!

[newattitude]

^^Now I understand the ''circle'' of crops.

[Yunkman]

Yes, it's flat Nebraska Sandhills country with the Ogalala Aquifer underneath. We're in the deepest part of the aquifer and irrigation has become a boom in Nebr over the past 40 years. Much native grass has been plowed.....even some marginal stuff that should have been left. But Dollar is the King. "Pivots" wear out and get blown over in windstorms. Good for the scrapper but I've never done one yet.

[Ironhunter]

May wanna get a little bill of sale from the owner, quite a few of those around here have had the copper on them "harvested" and all the yards are on notice to watch for it coming in.. Just an fyi.

[sawmilleng]

Egads!! I could use some of that in my fields!! Too bad you are so far away!

This being farmer stuff, you have goods that a lot of farmers can use to repair their own equipment with.

I'm not that familiar with pivot irrigation systems but it seems to me that you might be able to sell a lot of the good parts for more than scrap. Each wheel/drive set can probably be resold as long as they are not badly bunged up, but even the wheel assembly and drive gearbox with motor probably can be resold. I think Patriot76 does a lot of farm scrapping and hopefully he will chime in here as to whether you can expect to sell this stuff for more than scrap.

I'm guessing that the aluminum pipe is probably toast because it would have taken the brunt of the storm. But the sprinkler heads might have some resale value as well, unless they are a very specialized type. Are the wheel/drive frames made from aluminum or are they just steel? Also, there should be an electronic control box somewhere that controls all the drive wheels...probably resaleable if not too old.

Finally, be cautious about the "heavy cable" that you say runs the length of the system. In this case, the large diameter may just mean that it has many smaller conductors in one cable. If that is the case, the copper value is not as high.

Sorry, I've been a little off-topic on this. The weight of the whole system can be found as etack suggested, above. You can also estimate the pipe weight by knowing the outside and inside diameter of the pipe (and you already have posted the length!)

ALUMINUM Pipe weight= 0.9 x Length(ft) x (OD x OD - ID x ID)
where OD and ID are pipe outside diameter and inside diameter, in inches.
When you do the calc, multiply the OD's and ID's, then do the subtraction before you multiply it by the length.

FYI, aluminum is about 165 lbs per cubic foot.

Hope this helps!
Jon.

[Pnutfarmer]

I can help a little with this. The cable that runs the wheel motors is usually a 11 wire #2 copper wire encased in an outer sheath. Whatever you do, don't burn it off. That's what the guys did that stole mine so they couldn't sell it. There is about $200 worth of copper in that cable. Replacement cost is just upward of $3500.00. Unfortunate that I have to know that. The gearboxes and motors could be sold, but they are very specific use, so you have to find someone with the same type pivot that needs parts. Good news, if it is an old top sprinkler system, the sprinklers are all brass. On the rubber tire systems, the tires are semi truck tires that are recapped with tractor tread. If you know someone who wants to go muddin' on their big rig, you're in the boat. I'm not sure what the weight is for the system, but the pipe is thin wall and not extremely heavy. It has a good chance of being steel instead of aluminum. The A frames are thick angle, but watch out if you're going to torch it, most of them are galvanized. These are made to be towable. If you pull one pin out of the wheel (easy to tell which one) it will disengage from the driveline. Then you can jack it up, push down on a tab and spin it around 90 degrees. With that done, disconnect from the top of the next tower and you can hitch it to your truck and tow it away tower by tower. I've towed complete systems this way, but only from one field to another across dirt roads or field borders.

Good luck, let me know if you have any questions.

[Yunkman]

Wow...good info you guys. "Bill of Sale" / never thought of that altho my local yard trusts me. They don't require car titles either.
Sawmilleng, you mentioned reselling parts and I'll look into that although there are hundreds of salvage systems cropping up every year around here as they are replaced with new ones. I've just never entered that market before.
Pnutfarmer, I do burn copper wire to make it #2 with smaller stuff. Does this big irrigation wire sell better unburned?
It is a Valley system, steel pipe. BTW, I cut the ferrous ends off of 4 and 6 inch aluminum pipe with a recip saw before I got smart and took my chainsaw to it. That was a slick way and surprisingly, I could still cut wood with the chain after 120 cuts on the pipe. LOL !! Thanks again. I'll report back later. It'll be awhile before I can get to that job.

[Mechanic688]

Pnutfarmer, I do burn copper wire to make it #2 with smaller stuff. Does this big irrigation wire sell better unburned?

We really don't condone burning wire for a couple of reasons. First off, I have COPD and I and your neighbors would like to breathe later on in life. It releases tons of contaminates into the air.
Last, burning wire is usually against the law which is why a lot of yards will no longer buy it.

Not being an a$$, just the facts,,,

[sawmilleng]

Cool idea, using a chainsaw for light aluminum... betcha that was noisy work!!

I'm curious...is there an electronic control box for the center pivot? I would like to know how each pair of wheels is controlled to move just the right amount to keep the line straight. Obviously, the wheels furthest from the center have to move a lot more than the wheels closer to the center. And is the control smart enough to compensate if a set of wheels starts to slip (say, in a low spot that is muddier than the rest of the field) when other wheels have better traction?

Jon.

[jbanc6]

Are you any where near valentine

[Yunkman]

Yes, the control box is huge and dangerous. Many an experienced tech have lost their lives there. The box is designed to move the outer wheels at a faster rate than the inner ones as you suggested. As for slipping in the mud or flat tires that drag a tower down, then a safety switch that detects the tower is out of line will shut it down. The one I ran years ago for a neighbor would stop moving but the water would keep flowing. Had to babysit the thing constantly.

As for chainsawing aluminum, the ear muffs are a must. I grabbed those my wife uses with the lawnmower.

Valentine is 130 miles west of me. We're out in the boonies here.

[Pnutfarmer]

Yunkman....Like Mechanic said, most places have outlawed buying burned copper wire. I've found that most of what I get still brings in close to the same money with the insulation on if you do a breakdown of weights times prices. I'm not sure of a market for the wire as reusable except for replacing someone's wire that was stolen.

Yes, chainsawing aluminum is great. I used one to cut an all aluminum freezer coil out of a chicken plant. I cut it into 300 lb blocks so we could dolly it out. Like yours, amazingly, it didn't dull the blade too much. MUST dress appropriately though, flying AL chips are not fun.

Sawmilleng.... The Valley system has a percent timer in the control box that controls the end tower's run time as a percentage of running per minute. You use this timer to regulate the amount of water you want per acre. Like Yunkman said, they have a dual switch that starts the next set when it gets to a certain angle out of line then can stop it when it gets further out of line. Also like he said, lots of babysitting because it can't tell if it has stopped and will flood everything. We have one that we've had to put dual wheels and tracks on one tower that crosses a low place.

The control boxes on mine are 480 volt and wet most of the time so they are dangerous. I always touch them with the back of my hand just in case something is shorted and putting power to the case. The logic there is the electricity will contract your muscles and throw your arm away. If you had grabbed it normally to open it, your hand would grip it hard and you couldn't let go.

[sawmilleng]

Hi, Pnutfarmer and Yunkman,

Thanks for your responses to my questions. Yes, I guess that 480V 3 phase can be pretty dangerous out where it is dripping wet. But you must need that kind of power to run the wheels...gads, tracks no less when the going gets tough! That's pretty cool. The method of keeping them all in line seems pretty simplistic but I guess it (mostly) works. Are the newer systems any more sophisticated? I was kind of thinking of some sort of variable speed drives on each wheel so all of them could run at the same time--with the outer ones running the fastest. But maybe that's too complicated.

I graduated from all hand lines in my hay fields this year by adding a single, well-used, wheel move (not center pivot!) for my biggest field. So I'm still 'way down on the food chain when it comes to sophisticated irrigation. But I find it a fascinating subject. It does something relaxing for the soul after moving a sprinkler line and seeing it spring to action with the sun on the spray. For me it's an escape from the cares of the world for a few minutes.

Good luck on getting the scrapping job, Yunkman.

Jon.

[Pnutfarmer]

Sawmilleng.....as far as I know the "out of line" switches are the most reliable. There could be more sophisticated ones out there. I did hear of a system that uses water turbines to make its own electricity, but haven't seen it. Is your new rig a cable tow or hard hose reel with one big nozzle or the lateral with multiple sprinklers? I've used, and moved, the first two plenty of times. I also love seeing the spray coming out of the irrigations. I can get multiple rainbows sometimes.

[Yunkman]

Got a call from the owner tonight. He wants me to come get the copper next week and then will choose between me and his brother in law as to who gets the rest of the pivot. Owner wants to keep the tires/wheels and the sprinklers. The pivot head is damaged.

[Pnutfarmer]

That's a start. When you pull the copper, all you have to do is clip it at each tower box. Even better, you can pop the box lid off with one snap and cut or screwdriver the wires inside to max out the wire. Then you may be able to yank on the wire and pull it free from the bands that hold it to the main pipe. They are not very big and that would beat tightrope walking the braces to cut them. Also, check the pivot above the control panel. Some of them have a series of brass circular plates to conduct the electricity out to the rest of the system. If the main pivot has wheels, it probably doesn't have these. If it is on skids, it's stationary and just the pipe turns and needs these conductor plates.