"Bender" milk house releasers

[markcasper]

I have made syrup for 22 years and the last 4 have been getting more and more into vacumm. I never have been keen on spending these asronomical prices on releasers and vacumm equip.

Here in Wis., we have many smaller areas of woods which are not feasible to kook up big time equipment. Has anyone ever used or know of anyone currently using these older (40 yrs.) step-saver releasers. They were used for releasing milk from the milkline into the bulk tank. With the advent of pipelines , there are few farmers using buckets anymore, which makes these releasers destined for the excavator.

I currently am using 3 of these. I have not much more than 300 taps going into each one. I screwed up when i put the mainline in though. I only ran 3/4 inch based on what the leader book said. My only problem is that i have up to 1500 ft runs of it from the releaser, to top that there are several 3/4'' branches not more than 250 feet off of the through line.

I have did vacumn checks and i am still getting 10-11 pounds at the farthest tree away, however. Its not the best, but better than nothing. I do not think it is working that bad for me, since i have proven to get in upwards of 1/2 gallon of sap per day per tap, with no freeze and the bags are not dripping a drop. I am running about 17-18 pounds vacumn at the pump, using all surge SP-11 pumps.

Any experience with the step-saver releasers would be appreciated. I have had them tend to not want to dump when the vacum gets above 15 though, I am planning on putting another weight on them to force them to dump, fixing the higher vacumn problem. I assume they were designed to not run more than 15, per it was for milking and not pulling sap. My other concern was the small air space for the vacumn. But if this was an inhibitor, then why am i still getting 10 pounds at the end of the line?

One other problem i have encountered is that towards the end of the season when the bacteria are high, the sap tends to froth verociosly in the jar and gets foamy. The releasers then sometimes start sucking foam and this all ends up going into the air line, creating a headache!!!

Anyone know what the price of commercial is right now? I have heard that it has risen and I have a hoard of it i am sitting on. Some is 5 years old, but i have refused to haul it up for .90 a pound.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

According to Bascoms, the price of commercial is at an all time high and is supposed to stay this way.

Give them a call tommorrow! :D

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[markcasper]

Kevin, First of all--I was not planning on converting to vacumm when I initially installed this mainline. If I had thought ahead I would have gone 1 inch all the way. I do not plan on doing many changes as our woods is in the Managed Forest program and is scheduled to be thinned out the winter of 07-08. All of the tubing is going to have to come out and then hopefully that will give me the chance to improve the entie system.

The "Bender" releaser is not electric at all. It totally is mechanical and I assume works the same way as one of the expensive ones that are currently made for sap.


I will explain the best I can how they worked in the dairy barn application.
Every farmer at one time milked their cows with buckets. The buckets then were dumped into a pail and each pail was transferred to the milkhouse. The pail was then dumped into a milkcan and then later in later times into the milk bulk tank. To aid in the lugging back and forth, someone came up with the idea of having a step-saver. This was a stainless round resivoir that formed a funnel at the bottom. It was about ten gallons in size. This resivoir was monted on a cart with a couple small wheels and a push-pull handle. To the bottom of this resivoir the farmer attached a long piece of clear milk hose. The hose was as long as the enitire barn with additional footage to reach the milk house bulk tank and releaser. As the farmer milked cows he could manually dump each bucket of milk into the step-saver. As he milked his herd one would just wrap the hose around the outside of the resivior in the rack provided and keep doing this till one was through milking. This was the forerunner to the pipeline milking system. The plastic hose was suspeded from the ceiling via hooks every 8-10 feet or so.

The releaser was monted to the milkhouse wall and contained a glass jar not much bigger than 2-3 quarts. On the top was a vacumn inlet to which you hooked up the vacumm line. Below this is a stainless stem the length of the jar. On the bottom half of the stem there is a large stainless float ball. The milk (sap) comes in from the bottom, but not before going through a plastic tee check-valve. The line coming in would go out to the step-saver, or in the case of sapping, out to the mainline. The milk (sap) then fills up the jar, at the same time raising the float. When the float rises up the stem it is pushed against a stainless weight that is locked in place to the stem via stainless cotter pin. The pushing of the float against the weight causes the whole stem to rise which then stops the vacumm from coming in. With no vacumm, the jar then empties by gravity into the tank. Their is another check valve on the end of the short hose that enters the tank. With the glass jar empty, the float lowers and the weight of the float pulls the stem down and then causes vacumm to be on the entire system again. I forgot to mention that in the milking situation, there is also a grape-fruit sizes plastic ball that sits in the step-saver. When all of the milk has gone up, the ball seals the bottom until more milk is dumped in.


Is this the way the commercial mechanical units operate? My dad and brother milk cows yet with a pipeline and they have an electric releaser jar and i am well aware of how they work. Yes, they have the electric stem and each time the milk level reaches it, the pump in the bottom takes it to the tank.

I have heard of people using these old "Bender" releasers for sap, but have never talked to any experts on this. I am afraid they would laugh at me. What is the average yield per day with vacumm and no freeze?? I have had up to 3/4 gallon per day with no freeze and then other days much less. It seems that it will pull more during the day than at night without a freeze to. This past spring I witnessed vacumm having less of an effect the lower tha air pressure was. Is there any evidence that supports this claim?? Thanks for any info...

[Parker]

Yesterday Bascomes was paying $1.20 per pound for commercial,,I had a releaser like the one you are talking about but never ran it,,sold it to a fellow that has another like it and runs it,,he has trouble getting it to dump consistantly,, and has to work to keep the plastic jars from leaking vacume as the are cracked by the sun,,,all I know...

[markcasper]

Thanks for the price info! None of my releasers are plastic, though the Surge dealer in town tells me that they still can get a replacement cylinder that is plastic, but no longer in glass.

As for the not tripping, one reason I forgot to mention is I always had trouble if the air line had any sap in it. Seemed to only happen during the end of the season when it started foaming. I bought my last releaser and step-saver for $27 a few weeks ago at a farm auction, waited all darn day though.

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[markcasper]

If I get time mon, or tues. I will take a picture of the one i bought at auction. The cart, releaser and all. There are several producers in my district that use the stainless resivior as a dumping station for syrup coming out of the evaporator. They then have this hooked up to a line to either their finishing pan or filter press.

My dad used a step-saver prior to 1977, at which time he put the pipeline in.

I do not know if a wey line dry line thing will work with this releaser.

No, there are only 300-320 taps on one mainline coming in to each releaser. The one THROUGH mainline (3/4') is about 1500 ft. in lenght, with the first tee coming out of the THROUGH line about 400 ft. up from the pump and releaser. That first line coming off of the THROUGH line is about 600-700 ft long I am guessing, with another 100 ft. tee not far from the end of that second line. As the THROUGH line continues, there are 4 more tees and short branches anywhere between 50 and 150 ft. Hopefully this gives a little more of an idea. I think if the through line would have been larger all the way, it would give me more vacumm. I am still not really sure of how the wet-line dry line thing works. :oops: :oops:

Now there is another releaser beeing run off of the same pump. However, I have run a seperate 11/2 inch air line from the vacumn tank up to that other tank and releaser location.

Last spring the ground was froze more than 2 feet in the woods (per driving fence post) and we had a whole week between March 17th and March 23rd where we had ideal conditions. 4o-50 during the day and a hard freeze at night and I was getting little sap, the only exception was the trees on the extreme south slope. I kept track of air pressure after the ground started to thaw, we had a storm systym come in and the air pressure before the storm had dropped to 29.30. It was in the 50's prior to this and I had a fair flow the day before. The sap was barely running. That night of the low pressure brought 3 inches of rain and even with the ground still mostly locked up yet the day after, I had all kinds of sap from my vacumn and not a drop from my ones without it. The day after the storm the air pressure had risen to the 29.90 to 30.00 range, still baffles me. Mark

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[markcasper]

Kevin, just typed a whole bunch and the dang thing erased it. Watch soon for pics. and more questions. If you only knew how i ran things......I did have a vacumm regulator, not anymore. I tried to have a moisture trap, but that failed too. So far I've been lucky you could say. Mark

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[brookledge]

Sorry I've been so busy the last few days
Yes Kevin and Mark I have used Bender releaser for many years It works good up to approximately 300 taps but better around 250 max.
When the album was up I had pictures posted of the one I had mounted to the top of my stainless tank.
The reason I'm selling the ones I have is for the fact that I have more taps on the mainline now and needed a new setup.
The way I used mine was to have a 1" check valve on the bottom and had the sap come in the side at the top with my vacuum line coming directly off the top.
Also I had another check valve on the sap line coming in so that when the releaser was dumping the vacuum was not lost out in the mainlines.
That is very important to keep a better vacuum at all times.
I added a weight on top of the float so that I could increase the vacuum. Without the added weight the float would get hung up once in a while. When it runs at maximun cycle time it dumps about 1 gallon per minute. Which is why it is good for a smaller bush.
For anyone looking for a economical releaser it is a good option as other mechanical ones usually run about 500 to 800 bucks for a small one
Hope this helps.
Keith

[markcasper]

Kevin, Brookledge, I got a chance to get my photos taken, I have them on the screen, but the album is not working????? I may have to get a pm and i can send them to you to view directly. I am not a computer guru and my wife is in bed, maybe tomorrow.

I am glad to hear from you brookledge, that I was not the only one using these releasers. What would Leader think?? There are getting less and less of these around as they went out with the advent of pipelines and parlors years ago. A few in use yet though. I had a chance at another one last summer but i was too late. A developer bought this old homesite and was going to level it for develpment. A cousin of mine told me about a vacumm pump, releaser, bulk tank and whatever else and that I could get it all for nothing. He knew the developer. Guess what, I didn't get their and the whole barn and contents got buried, ,,what a shame. I sure kicked myself. Anyway, enough rambling.

I have had the same problem with the float getting hung up at too high a vacumm too. Most of this was relieved i think when i strted running 2 releasers from the same pump. It seems that when they dump, there is enough air released from the top which would then let the other one dump. On the best day last year, each one was dumping every 15 seconds and it was working fine. Another problem i encountered was that they don't work at too low of vacumm either. The sap will dump and there would not be enough vacumm to pull the check valve shut. I have noticed that in the morning, it is best to run the pump and motor wide open for a few minutes so that their is ample vacumm quick enough to seat the checkvalves and get the mainlines energized. After that, I slow the engine down to a fast idle and this seems to work. Last year i was having trouble at strt-up and then spent 2 days walking and rechecking and then checking lines again for leaks-fixing these caused the releasers to function much better.

I may have mentioned earlier that towards the end of the season, the sap was foaming up and this caused foam to go right into the air line. Being that i did not have a moisture trap, I did have some in the vacumn tank. That told me I was done for another year. There also got some bacteria/mold growth around the top of the stem where the tiny rubber O-rings are. It was time to hang it up if you know what I mean.

Brookledge, the first year i was using these i had my mainline hooked up to the top as well. I asked the surge dealer and he said that that inlet was for washing only(maybe it makes no difference for sap) Ihave my mainline connected to the T checkvalve, the end that is up goes into the bottom of the releaser via short hose and the other end of the T is connected to a hose that runs into the tank. There is another larger check-valve on the end of that. So the sap coming in actually pushes on the bottom of the float. But Kevin, now you said that there shouldn't be any intereference, so maybe it should come in from the top?? Do you think I could run a dry line from that outlet that is not being used near the top? How far out would i run the dry line and where would i T it in? Does it matter if the dry line is laying on the ground? I don't care to string it up b/c the whole works has to come out in 2007 for thinning/logging/taking out the oaks in07-08.

I do live west of Menomonie and am right into the start of hill country. I do not have any drastic slope on any of my mainlines though, the most is maybe 10% at the most. I have one area about 300 ft that is barely sloping. It is not by choice, its either run it this way or not at all. However, I am still getting sufficient vacumn at the end of this area, as i am on the ends with steeper lines.

brookledge--did you know that my 3rd releaser was made by bender, but it looks nothiung like the tall narrow one, it has a short fat bowl instead, kind of like a fish bowl.

Has there ever been a study done that showed the difference in yield compared to the levels of vacumm?? Example: 5hg =1 quart, 10 hg=2quarts, 3hg=3 qts and so on. Since i have been on this site, i have not seen any mention of such. All i know is that the last two years, I would get between 1/2-3/4 gallons per tap per day on days where my buckets/bags and non-vacumm maybe yielded 5 gallons per 100 taps.

I hope to have pics. available soon. Mark

[markcasper]

Kevin, I was reading some of your comments in prior letters and you are so right about maintenance. You can look for leaks till you are blue in the face and still have them. For me anyway, time is lacking and if I added up all of the hours I spent walking and searching for leaks x ???, I don't think I would have enough extra syrup from vacumm to cover this :D :D :D Mark

[markcasper]

Brookledge, What did you use for added weight on your releaser? I am afraid to stop at the stainless shop. Any ideas would be welcome! Mark

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[markcasper]

Kevin, Imagine a horseshoe. Point it to the south and that is how my one woods is. The iron on the horseshoe would represent where my trees are.

In the middle of the horseshoe there are no taps. My dad clear-cut this area in 1981 :cry: , with the intent to break it for cropping. So where the clear cut was, its sloping to the south at maybe 2-6 percent. Where it started to get too steep for cropping, they stopped and that is where my trees are. The horse shoe is broke into 2 parts. The west half is on one releaser, and the east half is on another. The clear-cut area ia about 8-9 acres.

The west half is where I am concerned. Imagine the west half of the horseshoe and imagine the ridge of the hill being in the center of the iron on the west half. Everything west of the center of the top of that ridge has to go down to the mainline that runs south and eventually east to the through line. I would say this to be a good 700-800 feet before it gets to the through line. At this point, the through line is about 400 feet to the tank.

Would it be necessary to have a booster tank? Or would i get by with just t'ing it in?

You are probably throughly confused by now!

The best part about the clear cut is that I have been releasing sugar maples for the past 8 years and some are nearing 5'' dbh.

Theres an awful lot of popple in there and they are up to 12 inches. I have been whacking them off to rot, but now i here pulp is way up.

Any idea what pulp prices for aspen are out your way? Would you continue to cut the popples down to gain 2 years growth on the sugar maples? Or wait out the 2 more years for the planned thinning and get some $$$ for this popple?

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[forester1]

Aspen pulpwood in the central upper peninsula of Michigan is $25-30/cord stumpage average. I've heard of it going for $60/cord or more for really good sales. It may be more or less where you are. You could call a local DNR or extension forester and ask. Mixed hardwood is about 1/3 or 1/2 that here. The price depends on quality, access etc. If you can figure out how many cords you have, that would help your decision to wait or not.

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[forester1]

Remember those prices are "stumpage"--- what the standing trees cost to a producer. Around here mixed hardwood is about $20-30 per cord stumpage but if you want to buy a delivered full 4x4x8' cord of green firewood it will cost you $120 and you have to buy 10 cords.

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[forester1]

I forgot to say here firewood at that price is delivered in 8' lengths since logging trucks here load wood sideways across in that length. So if you pay $120/cord you still have to cut it into usable lengths.

[Parker]

Rolling in it big time? Never really been able to pull that one off in the firewood business,,,Matter of fact I have not done any wood for about a month,,,,,,, Hardwood pulp around here deliverd to the mill pays around 25-30 dollars per ton, about 2.5 tons per cord,,,BUT you have to pay the landowner and the trucker out of that,,most loggers including myself pay around $3 per ton for standing pulp,,trucker gets around $12-depending on how far they are going..
.If I were thinning a sugarbush (considering the care that must be taken not to damage the little rockies) I would pay $1 per ton... I would wait till the planned harvest and do it all at once,,,but keep any eye on the bush when they log it,,it dose not take much to damage the maples in the course of a thinning,,,The logger really has put a good job befor production,,,and production is how we make our living,,good luck,,,I would also require that the thinning was done only while the ground was frozen rock maple is VERY suseptibale to root damaged

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[markcasper]

Kevin, I can't get a photo of the releaser up. I am not computer literate. All I'm getting after clicking on images is a little red, white and blue box in the upper left corner. Any advice????? Mark

[markcasper]

Make that a little blue triangle,green circle, and a red square. Allof this inside a little white square. I don't think it will work :cry:

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Father & Son]

To: Mark Casper,
How you were talking about not being able to find a jar for the bottom of the releaser if you ever needed one you should try this link: http://hambydairysupply.com/. :D I saw a picture of something of like u described but now i can't find the link. They are located in: Hamby Dairy Supply
2402 S.W. Water St.
Maysville, MO 64469

Phone: (816) 449-1314
Fax: (816) 449-3201.
Hope this helps
Chase (SON) :P Sorry I didnt put this in but they are a little pricey. 8O Merry christmas to everybody & their families & a Happy New Year. :)

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[brookledge]

Mark,
As I said before I used this style releaser for over 20 years and would be glad to e-mail you the photos I have of one of mine in operation. The ones that I have for sale will dump a gallon per minute. That is why it is only good for small amount of taps, about 300 max.
Keith

[markcasper]

I am not interested in buying any releasers at this time. I have 4 now and another guy is gonna give me one.

On the "Hamby Dairy Supply" I see a picture of the releaser, but they call it a bucket washer. This site seems more geared for a hobbyist with $$$ or for someone that is having difficulty in finding parts. I have found most of my vacuum equip. at farm auctions. The longer they last, the cheaper it will be!

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[markcasper]

Kevin, Good thinking, thats probably whats wrong. I will check into it.