Moisture trap filling too often

[Dill]

I think I know the answer to this one, just wanted to check first. The last week we've had decent runs, but nothing wicked hard. My moisture trap has filled 4 times and shut off the pump. Yesterday it was fine, checked this morning and its filled back up. I'm running the original style hobby, and its dumping fine. I'm wondering if I have too many taps for it now? Not sure the exact count but I'm probably around 350-400. Is the releaser just not able to keep up? The moisture trap has kept sap out of the pump which is good, but I'm losing sap when it shuts off vac.

[mapleack]

Is it always happening over night when the temp drops? The flapper may be freezing shut.

[mountainvan]

I had the same problem with the hobby releaser and was told it needs to be completely level. I ended up getting rid of it and getting another releaser after the moisture trap didn't stop the sap from going into the vacuum pump. with the loss in sap it may pay to get a regular releaser and sell the hobby.

[Dill]

Its been icing up in the elbow between the tanks on cold nights like last night. But the first couple times it happened the temp was up and it wasn't froze. This is my 3rd year with the hobby and for the most part its been trouble free for me. It was dumping good yesterday when I pumped it out at noontime. In fact it almost dumped right on my 2yr old's head when he was looking in the tank. I think he was just as obsessed with watching it flow into the releaser as I was.

[Dill]

Okay I just bit the financial bullet and bought a new single vertical. And I see the issue on my hobby already. I have one line on a sap ladder that comes into the releaser in large glugs of sap. It sloshes all around the manifold. With the hobby since the vac port is on the manifold everytime it would do this some sap would get sucked in. Now not having that vac port on the the manifold I don't have to worry about this. My moisture trap was already half full between 11 and noon today before I got the swap done.

[Dennis H.]

What vac level were you running the old hobby releaser?
I found that anything over 24" it would every now and then not reset or take a long time to reset after dumping.
I did as other have and added some weight to the top of the float rod. Fixed it right up. Now I can run it at 25" and it runs just fine.

[Dill]

The only time mine is over 24 is if the whole system is a ball of ice. Mostly I was running 19-21. I thinking that I'm pretty much at the limit of cfms for the pump. Also as I sat there watching the new releaser dump, its dumping 5x less which means my vac levels are staying much more consistent. I'm already lining up a spot for the hobby and another RV2 at our new house.