A hay drying plant in France at Ferme des Chenevifs in the Alps
Valérie and Alain LAMOUILLE have joined forces with Virginie and Laurent RACHEX to form a farm partnership. They produce organic cheese in Saint-Laurent, a commune in Haute-Savoie in the Arve valley.
In 2020, Alain decided to modernize his farm and build a new drying facility that would form an L-shape with the existing barn. The idea was to install a hay crane and use it to manage feeding: The approx. 1600m2 building was therefore built so that the crane could also be used in the existing barn.
The drying system comprises four 140m2 hay boxes with a height of 6.5m, a 50m2 flat drying cell with LASCO gill plates, a roof extraction system under a photovoltaic system, a 36kW high-performance dehumidifier and an M70 hay crane with curved track, air-conditioned glass cabin, infrared camera and weighing system.
The system can be operated via smartphone.
When the weather is fine, the fan draws the fresh air at the gable to a central collection duct: Thanks to a special installation system of the photovoltaic system, the air is heated with optimum heat exchange.
Sensors measure the humidity level in the hall and automatically open a sectional door, which is integrated into the control system, to ensure that the moist air escaping from the hayloft is extracted.
Depending on the set program (fast, economical or individual) and the measured humidity, the HB4000 control unit decides whether the dehumidifier should be switched on. In this case, the sectional door and the fresh air flaps close to switch to recirculation mode. To optimize the performance of the dehumidifier, the building was insulated on the floor and sandwich panels were also installed on the ceiling (under the PV system).