D6—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, November 8,1980 Automatic air inlets: do they SALISBURY, Md. - Ever since cost conscious poultrymen started cutting energy use in broiler houses in the early 1970’5, air inlets have been a weak link in efficient house management. Growers have added in sulation to reduce winter heat loss. They have built tighter houses to reduce infiltration. They control the ventilation with great precision because over ventilation wastes fuel. But until a couple of years ago, they still had to manually adjust the vent openings in the sides of houses. It’s just not physically possible for an operator to hand-adjust all these openings often enough to accommodate every change in the weather. As a result, half of the time they’re open too far. And in houses ventilated by fans activated by time clock, they’re open much too long. On a 10 minute fan cycle - two minutes on, eight minutes off the vents remain open during the off period, letting a lot of heat escape. The excessive flow of cold air through these vents can easily be stopped by in stalling an automatic air inlet controller. This opens the inlets when fans start, closes them when fans stop, and halts air leakage in between. The control mechanism also senses air pressure and opens inlets just enough for constant air velocity based the number of fans going in the house. This constant velocity pay for broilers? gives more uniform air distribution and tem peratures through the house. But most of all it saves fuel by closing when not needed. It costs about $l7OO to install an automatic air inlet system in a 20,000 bird house. The question is, at that price, will it pay to use one? To answer this question, University of Delaware extension agricultural engineer Ernest Walpole and Norman Collins, a resear cher m energy management at the Delaware Agricultural Experiment Station, predicted the amount of air infiltration that occurs under different management practices in different types of broiler houses, using" actual wmter weather data collected on an hourly basis at the Salisbury airport. They used this information to determine how much fuel and electricity were needed to maintain optimum growing conditions inside each type of house. Their calculations were based on energy costs, electricity and fuel, and building costs amortized over a 20 year period at an estimated an nual inflation rate of 10 percent. They’ve come up with a dollar and cents value for the use of automatic air inlets under each condition and feel they’re now able to tell growers whether or not it will pay to install them. Their figures show that the amount of benefits depends on the type of house, type of fans used, and whether or not these are controlled by tune clocks In the study they com pared whole house brooding with tune clock ventilation, end room brooding in three sections with tune clock ventilation, and end room brooding in two sections with variable speed fans, all with both manual and automatic air inlets. They found that with whole house brooding and ven tilation by tune clock, in stalling automatic inlets would save about $BO,OOO in 20 years. “At today’s cost,” says Walpole, “it saves you $ll per thousand birds to go to automatic inlets in this type of house. This gives you a savings of about $l3OO the first year - almost enough to pay back the cost of in stalling the system ” "ESHLAND" DEALER Northern Balto. Co. ESHLAND: Wood- Coal Boilers, fireplace in serts, free standing stoves, hot air furnaces Savings for Cash & Customer Pick-up DAYSPRING ENTERPRISES Donald H Hoover Your Inquiry Welcomed 301-357-4320 903 Bernoudy Rd White Hall. MO 21161 The major savmgs is in fuel. Electricity costs remain almost constant for all types of housing com pared. Automatic air inlets in a house with end brooding and time clock ventilation will save you about $58,000 over a fertilizer tanks Livestock manure is valuable. So it makes sense to keep as much of that value in the ground as possible. A Calumet 2 or 4-shank soil injector does just that. Teamed with a Calumet liquid manure spreader, the injector puts manure as deep as 12 inches This can help retain four times the nitrogen that’s lost with surface application, as well as reduce odors and runoff. See the full line of Calumet spreaders from 1625 to 4500 gallons, and Calumet 2 and 4-shank soil injectors at— UT IMi ..aat&ass The Calumet Company, Inc. CALUMET &NESSETH DISTRIBUTOR F. ERNEST SNOOK RD 3 - Box 84, Mlfflinburg, Pa. 17844 - Phone: 717-966-2736 20 year period, with a fuel savings of about $8.20 per flock, or roughly $l,OOO a year. With end room brooding and variable speed fans you only save about $2400 over 20 years with automatic air inlets. This represents an annual fuel savmgs of about $125. Though the total savmgs is lower, the system will still pay for itself over a 20 year period, points out Walpole. This study was part of an on-going energy con servation, energy-use analysis of broiler growout Switch to a Calumet liQuid manure spreader with soil injector operations which Collins and Walpole began back in 1974. Almost every year since then the engineers have come out with some data which has practical benefit for poultrymen. In the past they’ve recommended minimum winter ventdation rates, provided information on economic amounts of insulation, recommended end brooding, energy ef ficient fans, and effective broiler house width. Purpose of this joint research and extension project is to find out where growers can save energy and reduce production costs. USED TANK V 2250 CLAY $ 2BOO
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