All h^*L let loose

[maple flats]

Last evening I was boiling and R.O.ing when I heard a large "ping" and then water (sap) was shooting everywhere. I shut off the RO, closed all valves and it took a few minutes to find the problem. All I can determine is that something hard might have entered the feed pump (stone?) and it was thrown against the cast aluminum pump housing, and made a hole a little over 1/4" and then a crack spread across the face of the housing. I removed the pump, connected my gas sap pump and resumed. Now I need to get a new pump and I'll also get a new pump housing and rebuild the pump to have as a spare. It sure seems wierd that this happened. The crack is horizontal, I wonder if in the off season there was about 3-4" of water in the pump and my heat temporarily failed, allowing it to freeze and weaken the housing. I likely only have maybe 15 hrs on the RO this season so far. Now, trying to order a replacement from Northern it looks like 5-7 business days to get it. I'll make a call to Ray Gingerich in the morning and see about getting a new one out over nighted or USPS priority. I kind of got used to the quiet after converting the RO to electric, but for now the gas pump will have to do.

[highlandcattle]

Sleeting cold nasty. No sapbut our first boil here in Charleston just above the Mohawk River. A very bad year so far. Trying out the wet/dry line. Good luck everyone.

[mapleack]

Dave, don't you have a Wye strainer in line before the pump? It's a good insurance policy to protect the pump impeller, let alone the housing.

[Sugarmaker]

Dave,
Good recovery plan and work on getting the RO back up and running!
Regards,
Chris

[sapman]

Sorry to hear of your troubles, Dave. Seems like I've had more problems myself this year than ever.

All the best,
Tim

[maple flats]

While I was waiting on my replacement pump to arrive, I used my sap pump as stated above. Just a few hours into that, THAT PUMP also split the housing. In a rush I picked up another pump, and maybe 4 hrs into that it also split (a little 1.5" long hairline crack). I took some super sticky 3M foil tape and repaired it. That has now held for about 12 hrs of use. I'm at a loss. The first pump to fail was 3 yrs old, the second was new at the beginning of the season and the third was new and only had 4 hrs use. These sap pumps are the same as I have used for 4 seasons, my first is up in the woods at my tank that I need to push sap about 800' to the road. That one has never failed (yet). I think the mould used to cast the pump housings has been changed or there has been a flaw in the casting. All of the failures have cracked in the exact same place, about 1.5-2" below the suction inlet. However the cracks have not all been the same size. They range from about 1.5" long on the last one, to about 4-5" long on others. One spread all the way to the drain plug hole.

Well, my replacement pump and a spart pump housing arrived yesterday. The pump is installed and hopefully things will go better today. I'll wait to rebuild the first pump until needed, because if I only need to swap out the housing I'll do it on the one on the RO, if something else goes bad, I'll put the spare housing on the original pump body and swap out the pumps.
Sometime I think I need to find a more dependable (maybe a SS body feed pump) to mount on the RO, rather than the cast aluminum housing pump I now have.
When I ordered the new pump and a spare housing from Ray he said he has sold more replacements and housings this year than ever before.
Tell me about the Wye strainer you asked about, please.

[Burnt sap]

Hi Dave sorry to hear this. I have been in the fire service 25 years and have seen my fair share of pumps damaged. As said above inline strainer is a good idea. We suck water from some pretty nasty places to fight fires and would never do it without a few measures in place. First a barrel strainer keep big foreign body objects (FBO'S) out and at the pump intake a smaller inline strainer to keep smaller FBO'S like rocks, pebbles and sh!t out. Some even a third inline and these are mounted on the pump at the discharge side to protect the nozzle from damage. I use only two and no problems so far. Don't forget to drain pump if your not using it for a few days if stored where it will freeze and crack. I'm sure you already knew this. Good luck.

[jmayerl]

How could anything get past the prefilter?

[Clarkfield Farms]

I hope I'm not butting in, butt... :D
Dave, the "wye" is related to the shape, it looks like the letter "Y" and is spelled that way instead of just using the letter. I'll bet you've got one on the suction line of the sprayer you use for the blueberries. There are tons of them everywhere, I'm sure you can get them local at a lot of places including TSC and plumbing supply & hardware stores. But here's what I mean (and they come in plastic, too): http://www.watts.com/pages/_products_sub.asp?catId=64&parCat=2961

I am amazed that the replacement pump that you hooked up just before I left went bad, too. I still say, "Made In China" is the problem. But what do I know. :)

[sapman]

Dave, my RO, and all Airablos, came with a strainer by Banjo. They're poly material, like Banjo fittings. Certainly a must, I think.

Good luck,
Tim

[maple flats]

My pumps have never frozen, except a slight possibility on the first one that failed on the RO. I have heat in that room all year along with a hi-lo recording thermometer. But the thermometer is mounted on the wall at 5' high, and it once read 34 degrees, the pump is at about 1' off the floor. I suppose that might be the issue there. Since I had that reading I've turned the thermostat up to 50 from 40. For next year I'm changing the heat too, so I will be better able to deal with deep cold. My heat is on electric, on grid with solar battery back up. The inverter controlling the back up has never shown a low voltage on the battery bank and it keeps records since initial power up in 2008.
My other pump failures definately never froze, they get drained every night.
As far as the possibility of something getting past the pre filter, certainly nothing that could damage the pump, but on my RO the feed pump is just before the pre filter, it pushes the sap thru the filter and then to the HP pump. I will however be adding a strainer to the system.
Tim, in regards to my irrigation system, yes they have filters on both systems, but both are after the pumps, by typical system design. One small system that is by the sugarhouse only pumps drip irrigation to that 3/4 acre garden and it uses a submersible pump. It only pumps water hauled in from home. The big system at the blueberries/raspberries has a dual sand filter, but that is after the pump. The only protection on that is the strainer on the suction line in the pond. That pump has never failed, but it is cast iron and rated to handle up to 3/4" solids, the strainer holes are 7/16". The air blast sprayer for the fields does have a filter.
I'll check into a Banjo filter for my RO.
I really doubt the issue with the 2 sap pumps that failed this past week are related to anything other than the casting the housing was made from. They either had a flawed mold for casting or just a flawed engineer who designed the mold (or a flawed plant manager who over rode the engineer's design to cut material costs. If the mold was not flawed somehow it was made to cast too thin. Thin cast aluminum is very fragile, heck, even thicker cast aluminum is fragile, but less so than thin.
Having been a plumber in my job prior to retiring, I know what a wye fitting is, I just had not seen them used on an RO.

Those who do have something, if you feed line is 1" do you step up to a larger size filter to give better flow if the strainer does catch something? I'm thinking maybe hooking in a 2" Wye strainer then reduce both sides to the 1" feed line.

[Russell Lampron]

How could anything get past the prefilter?

On my RO the pre filter is in-line after the feed pump. I think most of them are made this way.

[sapman]

Dave, my feed is 1.5". The fitting is also 1.5". I think the nature of their construction allows for a pretty big area for the strainer assembly, at least on the Banjos.

[maple flats]

OK, thanks Tim.