Silo inspections are an important part of any building’s safety plan. These detailed inspections help the engineer and owner manage a productive safety program. The key to a successful safety program is getting regular inspections and getting them done right. Safety inspections help the owner and the engineer to focus on what’s most important – preventing disasters in the first place. Safety is one of the cornerstones of good construction. So it makes sense to pay attention to how your silo and every other building in your stack are built and maintained.
The construction and mechanism of a silo
Some silos might have three stories, some might just be one level. All silos are designed to support heavy loads but there is a delicate art when it comes to building a roof that will allow the loads to rest without stressing the roofing structure. Annual or semi-annually Silo Inspection A proactive safety system needs to consist of annual or semi-annually scheduled silo inspections just to check for potential hidden damage and to evaluate visible issues that could cause structural failure in the near future. While there isn’t usually a need to get a completely full roofing inspection (most won’t need it unless the roofer hasn’t been making repairs to avoid having to do so) once in a while the inspection of a more neglected area of the building will reveal issues that would lapse any less rigorous safety program.
Once every year or every other year, your Silo Inspection should concentrate on two primary areas: the roof and the walls. Both are important to your Silo Safety, as the roof secures the load, the walls provide the structure to support the load, and cleaning and maintenance help identify possible weak spots. You don’t want to skimp on any of these areas. If you don’t address weak spots in your stack you may be waiting until it’s too late to make the changes that are needed to prevent injury and preserve the structural integrity of your silos.
Why an annual inspection is required for better validity?
During your annual silo inspections, pay particular attention to any hanging or missing shingles on the roofs and missing or loose shingles anywhere on the walls. Also pay special attention to the corners of your silos. Often, by the time a new installation is completed those problematic corners will already be showing signs of damage from years of neglect. This can result in silo failure, increased roof costs, costly replacement or remodeling and may even result in a lawsuit. Regular inspection of these problem areas prevents unnecessary expense.
Part of your annual silo inspections should focus on cleaning the outside of your silos. In general, this means removing any debris buildup issues that you may have missed during your previous inspection. Frequent cleaning and checking of these key areas will keep your stack upstanding and will help reduce the risk of silo failure due to improper silo construction or deteriorating external conditions.
The need of inspecting interior of the silos
The interior of your silos should also be inspected at least once per year to identify areas of concern and potential silo failures. Your inspection should also include a visual inspection of the welds and areas of weakness in the steel. This visual inspection of the welding and weak spots will help identify weak areas in the future so that you can make necessary repairs before they become a major problem.
It is also important to perform periodic structural integrity assessments for your silos. These inspections will identify any possible areas of structural failure in the walls or floor systems. You should include these assessments in your annual silo inspections. Some of the areas of structural failure identified in prior annual inspections may not be visible during a visual inspection and so additional inspections are needed to detect these areas of structural failure. Silo inspections will identify these areas and perform additional structural integrity inspections if needed.
It is your responsibility to have your structures evaluated annually by an accredited gemologist to determine the overall health of your silo material flow. Silo inspections are the first step in determining these levels and should be performed based on your historical records as well as current evaluations. Performing these inspections on a timely basis is important to ensure that your structures continue to perform as expected. These inspections will help you determine predictive maintenance techniques that will help improve your operations and prevent future unexpected failures. For silo inspections one can find the services by checking out websites like infrastructurepc.com.
