A conventional silo scale goes in while the silo is empty and hanging off a crane. DeltaSil bolts sensors onto the legs of a silo that is standing and full — in one day, with no downtime. You know what is in every silo, how much actually arrived, and where the losses occur.
Let's be straight about this
The market knows cheap silo scales: a set of four or six load cells placed under the legs, typically up to a few dozen tonnes. It is a good, proven solution, and on a feed silo being erected from scratch it is both more accurate and cheaper than ours. We will tell you that on the first call rather than waste your time and ours.
The problem starts with a silo that already stands, is full and is working. To fit load cells underneath it, you have to empty it, disconnect it, lift it with a crane, level it and recommission it. On a larger silo that means several days of downtime and a cost that can exceed the entire measurement investment.
How it works
Eight strain sensors bolted to the supports, in four independent channels — every leg measured separately. No welding, no crane.
Five PT100 sensors: one at each leg plus an ambient reference in the shade. A silo heats unevenly — south-facing legs behave differently from shaded ones. The system corrects for it.
Current contents of every silo plus the exact increase on intake and decrease on outload. History logged to the tonne, with date and time.
Every confirmed weighing — on a weighbridge or from a delivery document — corrects the calibration factor. No test weights, no periodic calibration service.
What you get
Meal, grain, bran, premix — the contents of every silo on screen, without climbing the structure and without back-calculating from production. With raw material prices moving, a purchase decision made a week too early or too late costs real money.
The mass increase in the silo during discharge. It does not replace a legal-for-trade instrument, but it shows immediately that something does not add up — before the goods blend into stock and stop being traceable.
The gap between intake and outload stops being an annual inventory line and becomes a chart with specific dates. Natural shrinkage looks different from shrinkage that has legs.
On farm silos the question runs the other way: was as much delivered as the mill invoiced? Same system, same answer — just from the other side of the transaction.
Comparison
| Solution | Installation | Cost | When to choose it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Load cells / feet under the legs (classic silo scale) |
Requires emptying and lifting the silo, or fitting during erection. | Low. | A new silo, or a small silo that can be emptied and lifted. That is the right choice then — and we will say so. |
| Level probe (radar, capacitive) |
An opening in the roof, work at height. | Low. | When "full / low" is enough. Tonnes require an assumed bulk density, which shifts with moisture and particle size. |
| DeltaSil — bolt-on retrofit | Bolted to the legs of a full, working silo. One day. | Higher — and we don't pretend otherwise. | An existing, larger silo that is not worth emptying. Several silos under one view. A need for history and balance, not just a reading. |
The questions we get most often
In how it is installed. Load cell feet have to go under the legs, which means emptying and lifting the silo or fitting them during erection. We bolt sensors onto the legs of a standing, full silo. On a new, small silo the feet are cheaper and more accurate — we say that plainly. Our advantage starts where lifting the structure is impractical or costs more than the price difference.
No. Installation is done on a full, working silo and typically takes one day, including commissioning and operator training. No crane, no welding, no downtime.
It learns from real tonnes. Every confirmed weighing — on a weighbridge or from a delivery document — is a reference point; the calibration factor is corrected using a weighted median, so a single mistyped entry does not throw the system off. Instead of a calibration with test weights once a year, you get a correction on every operation.
The shell material is irrelevant — we measure micro-strain in the steel legs. What matters is the support profile and access to it. We check that during the free site survey and say plainly if the structure is unsuitable.
The design target is ±1–2% on a single operation (intake, outload), achieved through differential measurement and continuous self-calibration. We do not quote field figures today, because the first reference installation is planned for winter 2026/27 — we will publish it as a case study with actual measurements, not as a promise.
Thermal drift is the main weakness of sensors mounted on a structure, which is why we address it separately: each leg has its own PT100 and a fifth measures ambient temperature in the shade. The system corrects each support independently instead of averaging one correction across the whole silo.
We measure each leg separately, in four independent channels. In a typical summing arrangement a failed sensor simply under-reads and nobody finds out for months. Here the system shows which leg deviates — and under the DeltaSil Care subscription the alert reaches us first.
Same system, other silos
DeltaSil works on any silo standing on steel legs — the hardware is the same, only the reason for measuring changes.
A 20-minute site survey: we check leg profiles, cable routes and where the screen goes, then you get a firm quotation — or an honest answer that a cheaper solution would serve you better. We demonstrate the system on a tablet, even with no hardware installed.
contact@deltasil.eu +48 600 225 995