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View Full Version : Lapierre Hobby Releaser Situation



markcasper
03-30-2014, 02:02 AM
I bought some new Lapierre hobbies for this year. I have a 225 tap woods and started it before I started tapping. The woods is split between 3 mainlines coming into the releaser. I got the first mainline tapped in while the other two were closed off via valves. The gauge read 27" after getting the first mainline tapped. Everything seemed fine. I opened the valve to begin tapping the 2nd main, looked down the hill to see sap being sucked up the vacuum line. (Keep in mind there were some hanging drops and holes sucking air consatntly) As I continued to tap away and make repairs the vacuum got greater and greater. Ditto on the 3rd mainline.
When I finished and went to shut the pump off for the night, here the 5 gallon or so air tank under the pump was almost full of sap. I drained it and the pump oil, even though there was no sap in the pump oil....YET. Is the fact that there was so much free air coming in while I was tapping in explain all of this. I am hoping so, I never actually watched the releaser dumping as I was in a hurry to get the woods tapped, BUT I could hear the releaser tripping every so often. I have a Trap but do not have it set up yet b/c I am going to be a running another releaser from the same air line on the opposite side of the hill. Regardless of the trap, the dang thing should not have sucked close to 5 gallons down the vacuum line in an afternoon. These releasers never came with any instructions either which they should have. I see there is a little set screw thing that can be turned to control splashing.....WHAT....? When I completed tapping the gauge read 26" plus with slush forming. HELP!!!

para2
03-30-2014, 07:55 AM
Your problem started with tapping with the vac on. Your Releaser never had a chance to build vac. The releaser never needs approximately 15 inchs of vac to work. So as you tapped and closed system vac increased and the releaser began to work. Install moisture trap between pump and releaser put a valve after trap so you can add on and work on system vac as needed.

maple2
03-30-2014, 07:58 AM
slush means leaks and will also cause splashing, sucking sap into the pump. With 26in of vacume, its hard to beleive there is such a major leak. Maybe the vac. guage is off?

markcasper
03-30-2014, 11:35 AM
Your problem started with tapping with the vac on.

Thanks fellas for the information. Like I said no instruction book comes with this stuff....pretty strange if you ask me. Never new you wern't suposse to tap with vac.on. I kind of like it....was able to fix the leaks and catch them while i was tapping.