Silage Clamp Design Considerations.

A well designed silage clamp is essential to enable you to maximise your forage resource. The design process needs to cover two areas. Firstly the clamp must meet the practical and regulatory requirement. Secondly a well designed clamp is key to the efficiency of the silage process, a poorly designed silage clamp can lead to huge losses of the vital forage feedstock.

SSAFO Regulations

In the UK the SSAFO regs (Silage Slurry & Agricultural Fuel Oil Regulations) are the minimum legal requirements for a silage clamp design. These rules are designed to protect the environment from a potentially dangerous leakage of silage effluent. We are here to assist you through these regulations and ensure you stay the right side of the law. As with any regulations, there is a certain degree of interpretation needed when designing silage clamp to meet the SSAFO rules.

We have experience in complex problem solution including negotiations with regulatory bodies to get novel solutions accepted. We cover some of the key areas of design consideration in the blog section of this website, but for site specific advice or solutions, please contact us.

Cost per Tonne Stored

Complying with SSAFO regulations is only part of the job, any design also needs to meet the basic practical requirements. Having the correct capacity for each cut or crop with a layout to meet the feed out requirements are all key details. Obviously the design will also be a huge influence on the overall cost of the build. We are able to provide costed analysis of different layouts, heights and wall types to ensure the design produces the lowest cost per tonne stored as possible.

Clamp Design is Key to Minimising Clamp Losses

Sizing, siting and dimensioning of a clamp will go a long way to meeting the practical requirements, but the detail of the design will have a massive effect on the efficiency of the storage. Some in clamp loss of feed value is inevitable but there are huge variations between the best and the worst performing clamps. It’s easy to think the solution to this problem is down to operation and practices during filling and feeding out, but don’t overlook the importance of good design at the outset.

During an on farm appraisal where clamp losses were highlighted as potential cost savings, it was calculated that the pay back for a dividing wall in an existing clamp would be less than 3 years. This despite the increased cost of a retrofit division wall over a wall constructed at the time of building. We are able to provide costed alternatives that can minimise in clamp losses for new build and existing clamps.

All aspects of the detailed design need to be reviewed and considered before the earth is broken. We are here to make sure that you optimise the floor falls, construction joints, effluent containment, rainwater separation and dozens of other detailed elements that can mean the silo you end up building is designed to limit losses to an absolute minimum.

The blog section of this website contains an ever growing library of information about how to design your next silage clamp.