Cleaning cubicles was a huge job for dairy farmer Seoirse McGrath from Arklow, Co Wicklow, until he converted an old one-tonne dumper to a cubicle sweeper.

Seoirse has 160 cubicles which in the past he used to physically sweep by hand with a yard brush twice a day.

Last summer, Seoirse decided to do something about it and make life easier for himself.

“I had a purpose-built cubicle sweeper out on demo before but found it wasn’t capable of crossing over steps and other obstacles and a skid steer was too wide for parts of the shed,” according to Seoirse.

He also felt spending over €12,000 on a machine that just cleans cubicles was too hard to justify in his situation. “The only other option was a dumper – it was narrow enough for all the passageways, the four-wheel drive and big tyres allows it to mount steps and crossovers with ease and the hydraulics would cater for an arm and rotating wheel,” explained Seoirse. He bought a secondhand one-tonne dumper for €2,200 and took the front skip and ram off. A high tip dumper allowed for the new arm to rise up and down, the old tipper function allowed the arm to fold in and out and a third service was added to enable the brush to rotate.

Simple

He said the fabrication of the new arm was simple. “I just welded a plate to the frame of the dumper and bolted on the new arm.” A gutter brush and plate that was used on an old Johnston street sweeper complete with a motor was bought for €200, the old steel bristles were taken off and replaced with nylon bristles that were simply bolted to the circular plate at a cost of €40.

Mick Lyons from Craanford, Co Wexford, fitted the new hydraulics to work the arm and a smaller motor was put on the rotating brush to increase the rotation speed. The hydraulic work cost €900. “I can now drive the dumper in first gear and full throttle while sweeping, and 2ft of the cubicle is completely cleaned in one run. It only takes 10 minutes to clean the 160 cubicles now,” said Seoirse.

Just over €3,000 was spent purchasing and converting the dumper to a sweeper and Seoirse is delighted with how the project turned out.

This article was first published in the Irish Farmers Journal on 18 February 2016.