Milk House Find

[Paddymountain]

OK all you "Surge gurus" My friend is scrapping out an old dairy barn and pictured below is the vacuum system. The one picture I'm sure is the moisture trap, the other is the pump,it appears to be a oilless vane pump.
The last picture is an overall picture of the setup. There is also another
glass 'vessel" off to the side and above where the bulk tank was. I think the control panel was for the releaser. I'm in need of a pump and such for 100 taps or so. Anyone having any knowledge of this stuff would be a real help for me. thanks.

[markcasper]

What you have is an electric releaser jar for the pipeline. The pump on the bottom of the jar is not a vacuum pump it is a transfer pump that took milk away from the glass jar after it gets about 1/3 full. There is a electric sensor in the middle of that jar that comes down from the top. When the milk hit the sensor the pump would turn on almost emptying the jar. This always allowed vacuum to the pipeline, thus never having to relieve vacuum to empty the jar.

There is a stainless elbows and pipe attached to that pump that would send it to the milk tank. That appears to missing in your pics. They may be laying around in that milkhouse or someone needed them. The two toggle switches on the control panel........the right one would manually trip the pump in that photo on for a specified number of seconds. The left one would turn on the vacuum pump and vacuumize the whole system. We have the same thing in our dairy barn and is currently in use.

[Paddymountain]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like the moisture trap is the only thing I can use.
There is also a vacuum control unit not in the picture ,I'm going to get that also. What kind of vacuum pump was on this system? It's not there, I'm just curious.

[Dennis H.]

Why can't you use the releaser?

This will work just like an electric releaser. Unless you don't have electric where you would place this.

I pick a Delaval up at an auction last year, I am thinking about putting it into operation this year. Help to get away from the constant vac leak with the Benders.


I would grab it, maybe you could find someone who would be willing to give a few $$ for it. Just a thought.

[Sugarmaker]

Looks just like the system my dad had in the dairy milk house.
Chris

[Paddymountain]

Dennis H: I can have it all! best of all ,the price is right, free. I would be hesitant to use the electric part of the releaser, it looks pretty nasty. I'm
thinking I'll try and get both glass jars along with the other stuff. It will be awhile til I can get it home as it's in NY ,just up the road from my cabin.

[markcasper]

The jar is worth $300 alone. You needed a Surge Alamo 30 or bigger for that unit. We have an Alamo 100 rotary vacuum pump, good for 6 milker units. The vacuum pump was most likely located not too far away, normally in the barn on the other side of the milkhouse wall.

[murferd]

Take a look we have used the exact same setup for 7 or 8 years. We have since changed over from the 2 probes to an electric eye. It works great for our setup.

[Paddymountain]

thanks alot Murferd, I called up to NY today and asked them to save the glass for me. I probably won't get back up til May, I need to go see my cousin
he said he has their milker pump yet and that I could have it. I want to try and get this set up for next year.

[gmcooper]

Paddy, You want to get the whole setup there. Later if you don't want everything you can sell or give away the extra. The pump motor housing may not look like much but doesn't mean it won't work. New pump motor must be $200+.
Nice find!

[Haynes Forest Products]

My motto is if its free take it all if its junk you can always scrap it. I just went thru my attic and with Jim Shumackers help I upgraded my draw off bucket with a Step saver bucket and screen. Added handles ports and brackets to hold it to the evap sides and it works great. Had it for 5 years and untill now didnt see a way to use it.

[Paddymountain]

Well,it's been a good week for procuring vacuum goodies! First off, I found a Surge BB2 vacuum pump close to home. I also went to NY this weekend, and got the releaser parts out of that milkhouse. Pictured below is the vac pump,
moisture trap & reg, glass jar, and transfer pump. Also have the bigger glass jar,about 4 gallon with 3-2" openings on top,1-2" on bottom.My plan is to use the glass jar shown with the transfer pump on the bottom of it. As far as regulating flow, my son works in industrial electrical as a saleman,so I';m
sure we can put 2 limit switchs and a controller on for the pump. I want to pump from the transfer pump right to the head tank. Question is, won't I
need a flapper valve just after the pump so it can keep it's vacuum?, I see
in Murferd's picture in an earlier post, they have some sort of vacuum apparatus right past the pump, I don't know what it's for. Also does it look like everything is there for the regulator? Sorry pics aren't in order,vac pump is
last instead of first

[U.S.M.C.Cpl]

Wow that is a nice find, like they say some people have all the luck!!!

[Dennis H.]

Nice find. Did the releaser come with the controller for running the pump?

I wishI had one of those moisture traps. Everyplace that I found a vac pump and stuff had no moisture trap????

I see that you got one of the vac regulators. I now have 2 of them and I might try and see if adding more weight to them will regulate the vac pump at more inches of vac. I hate to throw them out if I can make them work.


Way to got PaddyMtn.

[Paddymountain]

I could of got the controller with everything else ,but the mice had got in it and it looked really bad. My boy was up and looked at my stuff and he said
all it would take would be a relay to run the pump off of the probes that are in the big jar(picture on photobucket) I also seen in an older thread that there is supossed to be a check valve right after the transfer pump. I'm going to clean everything up,get the motor wired ,and see how it pumps, then I'll
worry about controlling the level in the jar.

[Dennis H.]

I thought the check valve was between the jar and the pump at the bottom. I will have to look at mine to see.
On my jar there is a SS 90 at the bottom with a vacuum relief valve. It had a tiny tube going up to a barb fitting on the vac line. My thinking is, since I never seen one run before, is that once the vac is off and there is no more vac in the system the valve opens and dumps any remain liquid.

[Paddymountain]

I was under the impression that vacuum never comes off. That the transfer pump overcomes vacuum. Anyway ,the pipe from the pump to the bulk tank was missing so I'm not sure what was there. There was a 90 degree elbow between the jar and the pump though.

[Dennis H.]

I said it wrong. What I was meaning by vac off is when you turn off power to the vac pump. The drain valve thing will open and drain out any liquid.

Besides that you are correct the suction pump hooks up to the glass receiver. I posted a pic here to show how mine was hooked up when I got it.

In the pic at the very bottom below the pump and SS pipe there is a round shaped flying saucer looking thing. That it the drain valve I was tlaking about. You can also see the tiny tube that runs up to the left that activates the valve.

[Paddymountain]

That looks pretty slick,it would be great to have it drain after you shut it down before a freeze!

[markcasper]

paddymountain,

That big jar was meant to work with the pump you have. our pump has a fratistat device that closes after the vacuum is turned on and is located right after the pump outfeed. From there it has another 90 degree ss elbow which has a clamp and maybe a 3 foot ss line that goes verticaL, at the top of that there is another ss 90, then a 6 ft or so straight ss piece, then another elbow, clamps, then a straight pipe going into the tank. it kind of depended on the milkhouse, each one basically had to be custom fit depending on space conditions. And that is all missing by the sounds of it.

Your controller box that has the electrical controlled the dumping. The vacuum was never taken off, rather the milk level when it got below the sensors, there was some kind of relay in the box that shut the transfer pump off while there was an inch or so of milk still in the jar.

The smaller jar that you said was above the milk tank had nothing to do with this unit. My guess is that it was left from an earlier application (never taken out) I have seen jars like that, but it must be for something in earlier years. All that should have been with the big jar and transfer pump was the vacuum controlled shut off mechanism (which you don't have) and a tranfer line directly to the tank.

I will see if I can get some pics of ours and you will know what i am talking about. it will take a few days though.

[Paddymountain]

thanks Mark, you are right about what is missing. I could have got the control box too, but it had a mouse nest in it and looked pretty sad. I was thinking in an earlier post here that you or someone said It took a Surge 30
pump, and I just assumed the BB2 wasn't big enough to run that big jar.
what do you think of using the smaller jar, I don't need all the inlets on the top of the jar since this will only be about a 100 tap project,with no real chance of expansion as that's all the trees there are that are size enough to tap.

[Paddymountain]

sorry ,Mark I just reread your post and realised you were talking about the transfer pump!

[markcasper]

your bb2 would work for either jar for 100 taps. I was meaning a 30 pump for a milking application with pipeline milkers and electric pulsation. Since the releaser and electric pump are basically independent of the vacuum pump, the vacuum pump shouldn't matter even if there is 2" lines. (I run a 1 1/2" air line and a 3/4", 2 mechanical releasers with a sp11 and it works fine.)

[Dennis H.]

PaddyMtn I hooked up a BB2 to my tubing to see how well it would do. My results were ok. I use 2 Benders and found that when I only have 1 of them in the system it was able to pull above 20" of vac when I put the 2nd Bender in I could only pull about 17"
With the Benders there is always a vac leak and with 2 Benbers running it was just too much of a leak for the BB2 to keep up. Now with those electric releasers like the one you are looking at using I think the BB2 will work alot better as there is not a constant leak.