Dead Space

Last year we helped clean out an old wood pellet storage room. If you've seen a wood pellet stove for home use, you know that the pellets are sold in 50 pound bags that are easy to handle. But for an operation the size of a fish hatchery, things were done on a much larger scale!

Wood pellets were used for heating the hatchery building back during the energy crisis of the 1970's. They were delivered by a tanker truck and transferred into a large steel silo outside of the hatchery.  From that silo they were fed by auger into this large inside storage room.  From the storage room they were fed into the hatchery boiler system to heat the buildings and the water used in the hatchery. 

Pellet fuel hasn’t been used at the hatchery for many years but the large storage room was still full of old pellets. The only way to get them out was to break open a cinder block wall and use a tractor to scoop out the old pellets. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the thousands of pounds of pellets still in the room.

I helped vacuum and sweep the remaining pellets from the floor and the dust that clung to the walls.

Mark and the head of maintenance (Craig) took turns using a gasoline powered concrete saw to finish taking out the front wall.

The concrete saw is lying in the bottom of the lift.

The person using the saw would be lifted up then slowly lowered as the saw cut down the wall.

A sledge hammer came in handy!

After the wall was cut out we spent a lot of time cleaning out all the concrete blocks, dust, and debris.

When we came back this year it was nice to see all our hard work being put to good use.  It's a great area to keep all the mowing equipment in one place.

Look how nice and straight that side wall is!

The old pellet area is now being used to store mowers, snow blowers, and other equipment that always seemed to be in the way out in the main shop. It is great to see this previously "dead" space back in use.