Homemade cultipacker

[Central Sands]

I needed to upgrade from my 30" wide lawnroller to something a little wider and heavier but without a high price tag. I Picked up a free damaged plastic culvert, cut a 5' piece off of it and made two treated end caps with holes cut in the center to match the outside diameter of some 2" galvanized water pipe.

First I screwed one of the end caps to the culvert with the 2" pipe slid into the center hole.
Next I stood the culvert vertically and strapped it to tree so I could fill it with the three 80 lb. (240 lbs) bags of Quickcrete that were also free when I helped a friend move and he didn't want them.

I knew the Quickcrete wouldn't fill the volume of the culvert and the weight needed to be evenly distributed for easy rolling so I first filled the inside with 3" wide by 4' long strips of 1" thick foam to fill the space without adding extra weight. After filling the culvert with the crete I put the other end cap on and let it dry over night.

Now with the 2" pipe cemented in place acting like a sleeve I put 6' long 1 1/4" pipe through the inside to be an axle and attatched some chain for towing. The chain alone didn't work too good as the culvert would roll over the top of it when I stopped and it would get tangeled. To fix the tangeling problem I sleeved the chain in some more galv. pipe and made a loop to go over the ball on the ATV hitch.

Here are a couple pics




A view from my bowstand

[GeauxLSU]

CS,
Looks good! Be interested in how many miles the axel holds up. Thanks for the idea!
Great looking view too.

[Luckybuck]

been trying to firgure out a way to plug up the ends. Seems the simple things are the hardest to firgure out. Thanks for sharing.

[kodiakswitchback]

Thanks for sharing...very good idea and low cost

Dave

[Luckybuck]

CS,

How did you attach the foam to the inside of the culvert? Was 240 lbs of crete enough to fill it up? Just curious.

[drew]

I have been thinking about doing the same thing, let us know how it works. I would have to buy all the material but if it works I may do so.

Drew

[Central Sands]

Originally Posted by Luckybuck

CS,

How did you attach the foam to the inside of the culvert? Was 240 lbs of crete enough to fill it up? Just curious.

Luckybuck,
The foam wasn't attatched in any way to the inside of the culvert, the 3 inch wide by 4 foot long pieces of the 1 inch foam that I ripped on a table saw were slid in making sure the 2 inch sleeve pipe stays centerd untill no more would fit. Didn't count how many strips went in but it was around 12-15 in total, because the culvert is 5 feet long and the foam is only 4 feet it leaves a nice place to pour the buckets of concrete. The last foot was filled with chuncks of foam at the end of the pour before the second end cap was installed. I also thought about using packaging peanuts instead but the foam was left overs and free anyway.

The three 80 lb. bags looked like they would only fill about 1/3 of the culvert so I knew the foam needed to fill up 2/3 of the volume first. Mixed the concrete loose so it would flow into all the air pockets to insure even weight distribution throughout the entire culvert so it would roll smoothly. Filling it with sand was my second option but decided on the concrete thinking the soupy mix would more easily flow into the voids left around the foam.

Jeff

[Kunz Engineering]

Very nice job. That should give the results you are looking for.

Matt

[WVhunter]

Great idea thanks for sharing, good old American ingenuity

[Luckybuck]

CS,

Thanks for explaning the process. Wasn't sure how you were using the foam. Thanks again, can't wait to get started.