I have about 300 + yard of good mixed topsoil/sand with some clay and i am thinking about building a topsoil screen, I have a couple idea of what i would need to do, but has anyone built there own from the ground up :beatsme any idea would be alot of help.
My dad and i built a trommel screen. The screen was 6 foot in dia, and 12 foot long with a slope of about 18 inches and turn at about 8 rpms. the upper bearing was a hub off a semi trailer the lower bearing and gear box was off an old corn chopper. We ran this with a hydraulic motor, and an 8hp briggs and stratton run the pump, this set up worked fine.
Trommel screen story I built a Trommel screen using expanded metal screen and the top and bottom ends of a 55 gallon barrel. The barrel ends gave me a lightweight but strong and round place to start. There used to be a scrap recycler here in Dallas that would let you go thru their piles of junk and buy piece parts. Whenever I'd haul a load of scrap in I'd always take a walk around and see what somebody else had sent in as junk. Now they are so big they won’t let you pick any more. I found a gearbox off a grain auger that I bolted a 3 inch pipe to and then built the 24 in dia. screen around the pipe. This is the low end where the big stuff falls out. The other end is the high end and rests on roller bearing dolly wheels and is where I feed in the raw material. The dolly wheels roll on the 4 inches of barrel metal I left from the ends of the barrel. I welded the expanded metal to the rim of the barrel and fabricated a number of spokes that went from the screen back to the 3 inch pipe in the middle. It’s surprisingly strong. I found another gearbox off a fertilizer spreader truck and a stainless steel feeder chain which worked great in the bottom of the feeder hopper. The hopper feeds into the open end of the drum on the end opposite the gearbox and motor. I had an 8 hp B&S off an old mortar mixer with the 6:1 gearbox to run the whole thing. The drum is about 6' long and as I said about 24 inches in dia. I have about a 6 inch drop on it. 90% of the sifting gets done in the first 2 feet because I have so much fine material. I feed material into the open end from the hopper with a chute. Sticks, stones and bones and bigger chunks etc fall out the end nearest the motor. All that gets tossed back into the compost pile for more work by the little microbes. I use it to sift compost. I don't know how long it would last sifting dirt and rock but it does a real nice job on compost. I would make these design changes if I had to do it again. I would have raised the Trommel screen drum up high enough to get a loader bucket under. I would have had the hopper down low so it was easier to load. Hey there isn’t another one like it anywhere I garronteeeee you. Save the worms!!!! I suppose I should sell it but I still use it every year to sift our compost so I guess it’s not hurting anybody. Besides it’s always a conversation starter when a stranger looks in my back yard.
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