unattended vac system that failed

[maple sapper]

I come to my pipe line system to find no vac. moisture trap full, line from releaser to moisture trap full, and vac pump still running and oil level beyond window on front of pump. So no doubt moisture made it into the pump.

Dump all oil and start over? Is it that simple? Will the pump sort of burn it off? I blew out the vac line which is 400' long and drained out moisture trap as well as line from releaser which is set up in a u shape to catch the moisture in the event releaser failed.

Is it my imaginination, or is it common to have moisture make it to the pump just from being in the air and gasses that get pulled to the pump. Does the pump sort of process this moisture by means of exhausting it? Not really clear on whats happening. I see what resembles steam or vapor coming out the exhaust at times.

I have a moisture safety switch and relay going on this weekend to shut down the vac line this weekend to stop this from happening again.

[SWEETSAP]

I know that a dry carbon vane pump will fail if any actual water makes it to the pump. It happened to us. We can only figure that we developed a leak at a joint and the sucked rain in for 2 days. We had about 10 gallons of water in our 400' of 1" line. Our moisture trap is now an 80 gallon air compressor tank. You may be just fine draining the contaminated oil and putting in some new oil.

[Haynes Forest Products]

I ran sap into my dry vane pump and it tripped the breaker. I ran it and all was well. I would avoid it at all costs. Now as far as small amounts of moisture in the oil it will evap over time with the heat. I believe the incoming air into the pump has small amounts of water in it.

[maple sapper]

I am on the same page as you with the the small amouts of moisture in the air.
I am thinking of doing the following to my pvc releaser design: installing a solenoid valve on the bottom of my sap trap that opens when my the other two trigger ( one that opens releaser to atmosphere and the other that closes off vac line. So a third one would be installed on the lower end of the sap trap and basically dump any (in the event there is any) moisture every time releaser dumps. The reason I am thinking this is that I am not completely convinced a racket ball would shut the pathway to the vac pump early enough to avoid a fair amount of sap getting sucked in.

If the line that goes to vac pump is placed on top of my 4" diameter cyclinder made of pvc. Then the line going from sap trap to releaser is placed just below the point where the racket ball will make the seal. The line technically needs to be as close to the vac pump line to avoid turbulance. If its placed to low the line will be below the potental amount of sap that would be needed to get the ball high enough to close the vac line. So I am of the opinion that the releaser line and vac line need to be close to each other due to the ball needing to seal before sap level reaches the level of the releaser line.

Another thoght I had was threading a hole at say the center of the sap trap and then installing barbed fitting and capped piece of tubing. So when the trap fills it will fill the tubing as well. On the outside of the tubing I will install a sensor that senses fluid (Diversitech SOS-1). When sap fills up to the tubing it will trigger the sensor and that will trigger a relay and the relay will open a solenoid valve and get it to dump the sap trap. The sensor stays off till reset so would porbably have to figure out a relay that will reset it as well. I would use the racket ball as well just in case of a sensor failure.