Dryers cheaper to buy than to certify

Thursday, December 13, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

If peanut grower John Picard knew beforehand it would cost him more than $100,000 to modify 12 new crop dryers that he initially paid $36,000 for, he would have done something differently.

“Had I known anything this ludicrous was waiting, I could have built them from scratch for probably half that price,” says Picard of modifications that the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) required him to make to obtain certification on the peanut dryers he bought in the United States.

The La Salette, Ontario farmer says he wants to farm in a safe environment but the province has gone overboard in its pursuit of safety. “There should be a common-sense discussion on whether all of TSSA’s safety requirements are needed, especially for equipment that’s used just a few days a year, he says.

Picard bought the dryers in the spring of 2011 because he was expanding his value-added farm business, Picard’s Foods, near Delhi. He grows 90 acres of peanuts, along with potatoes, barley, soybeans and corn. He uses his peanuts to make confectionary.

Picard uses the dryers for six days a year. When peanuts are harvested they’re at 55 to 60 per cent moisture but they need to be dried to about 10 per cent moisture so they can be stored.

To get the dryers up and running, Picard called a local contractor, who sent the dryers’ equipment manual to TSSA in Toronto to see if anything special was required. It came back and TSSA wanted nine changes to the burners.

TSSA is non-profit, self funded organization that’s responsible for the safety inspections in Ontario of fuels, boilers, pressure vessels, elevators, amusement rides and ski lifts, as well as upholstered and stuffed articles.

Picard says what the TSSA required for his dryers “was in fact a complete rebuild of the burners.”

TSSA spokesman Wilson Lee says the dryers Picard bought weren’t certified either in the United States or for use in Canada. That’s why TSSA required “the equipment to be reviewed and inspected.”

The control system that operated the key functions of the equipment didn’t meet the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) code, he says. Those rules govern equipment like crop dryers for use in Canada.

Effective Jan. 1, 2013, the CSA will no longer certify gas or oil-fired crop dryers and farmers buying, upgrading or replacing dryers will have to get their equipment certified by TSSA. Equipment manufacturers have been working with the CSA to get new protocols written so CSA can continue certifying the dryers but the new protocols won’t be in place by the Jan. 1 deadline.
 
John Cowan, Grain Farmers of Ontario vice president of strategic development, says they’re working to ensure the new protocols continue to get written.

Existing equipment on farms, and equipment manufactured by Dec. 31 are not affected. “Anything manufactured after Jan. 1 would have to be approved by TSSA and that would be a field approval,” Cowan says.

Meanwhile, Picard says the rebuilding job for his dryers was so complex it couldn’t be done by the fall of 2011 when he needed the dryers for his crop. “We lost the entire usage for that crop year,” he says. “We had to scramble. It wasn’t the convenience we had planned for.” It took until August 2012 to complete the necessary modifications.

The TSSA’s requirements meant they had to go back to the drawing board, Picard explains. “We had to go back and get complete engineering and schematics done before electrical and gasworks.”

But, he says, “these are simple burners. They’re not complex things.” When he bought them he says he thought they’d need slight modifications for use here.

Picard says he had to hire an engineer to redraw the electrical schematics at a cost of $10,000. Then he had to pay $90,000 for the modifications to the 12 dryers required by TSSA. In addition, the cost to have TSSA inspect the dryers, once they were hooked up and ready for use this fall, was close to $7,000.

Lee says from “our perspective we definitely understand the hardship for the farmer, both financially and in terms of his timelines. But our responsibility is to enforce safety regulations for safety reasons. ”

Picard explains the 12 dryers he bought are the same ones used as standard equipment across the southern United States in eight or nine states for peanut drying. “There’s nothing new here.”

Picard questions why so many modifications were needed when the dryers were built in the United States and the American gas supply is similar to Canada’s.

Lee responds that “this is not the southern United States we’re living in.” Ontario has its own set of safety codes, standards and regulations. The province has an exceptional safety record and that’s partly due to the fact it has its own made-in-Ontario safety rules, he says. BF