Farmers Feed the World The Upper Annex Cupolas

This room, called the Annex Cupola, is located in the top of the grain elevator. There are two annex cupola rooms, one on each side of the grain elevator at the top of each annex. This room has two main items of equipment, the chain drag and the gerber. The above picture shows what the room looks like from the end of the room on the outside edge of the elevator looking towards the center of the elevator. The door at the end of the room leads into the Main House Cupola.

This is another view of the same room taken from the opposite end looking away from the center of the elevator. The door to the Main House Cupola is directly to the rear of the picture. You can easily see the chain drag going through the upper part of the room where it delivers grain to the gerber. The gerber, seen better in the picture above, is a distribution point for the grain, sending it to any one of the 16 bins in this part of the granary. The wooden box coming down from the end of the chain drag is a safety device. Should the bin the gerber is connected to fill up, instead of clogging up the system, the grain drops down through this box to the overflow bin below.           It's not necessary for the elevator operators to come up to this room every time they want to move the gerber spout to a different bin opening. Down on the main floor in the Main House part of the elevator are controls for moving the gerber spout around to the different bin openings. Flexible steel cables are connected from his controls. They run over 100 feet up through the elevator to the gerber.

This picture shows a close-up of the gerber spout and the openings for five of the different bins. The cable wheel which is connected to the bin wheel on the main floor permits the elevator operator to move the gerber spout remotely. You can see this wheel in the upper left corner of the picture.           Long tubes are connected to these openings that run down through the bin floor then empty into the bins.