Questions about the CDL hobby RO: (Please answer only if you have personal experience

[UncleGillysMapleSyrup]

Is it true that it can be kept in an unheated space? They claim it can as long as it is properly drained. Does anybody know what that entails? And more importantly how long it takes?

[Clamer33]

I have one, but I drain it everyday. I leave the wood stove running when I leave if the temps are going below -6C. My walls are insulated. but not the ceiling. I wouldn't leave the machine in a totally unprotected room, for any length of time. Remember beside the initial cost the replacement of the membranes are expensive. That is what would get damaged if they freeze. Aside from that I love the machine. I process about 600 gallons a day on the first pass and then run it again thru the second time and start boiling. Turning 2 brix sap into 8 brix. I have put well over 1500 gallons of sap thru in one day and did nothing but start the machine. Money well spend and many hours saved no feeding wood to the evaportor.

I just found out that I could take it over 8 brix but haven't tried. And now we are at the end of the season. So that will have to wait till next year. It will remove half of the water each pass.
chris

[Clamer33]

On the first pass I am processing about 2gpm of concentrate and 2gpm of premate. So that is about 240g/hr. it take about 2.5 hours to roll thru my 600 gallon tank on the first pass. On the second pass I have to lower the concentrate to 1gpm and the premate is around 2gpm it does take longer but I was looking for 8 brix. (started at 2.25, first pass 4.5, second pass 8) Though I could set it at 2gpm would be faster, just a lower 7brix. Hope this all makes sense.

[UncleGillysMapleSyrup]

Thanks for the feedback. How big of footprint does your unit take up? DO you have it sitting on a tank like they show in their catalogue? How big of a tank? I am tight for space. Do you have any pictures?

[markct]

About 2ft x 4ft. Having it on the 200 to 300 gal tank is a joke. Once you have an ro you need a much bigger tank. 2 weeks ago i turned 3200 gal sap into just under 12 hr boiling on my 2x8 after it went thru my cdl 250. A 300 gal tank will barely get you enough to fill the pans and start the fire

[WESTMAPLES]

ive been eyeing a cdl 250 gal ro ( that i could have used alot this past season ) and ive already got a 1300 gal insulated tank bought for a bulk tank ( biggest i could find on short notice) i saw markct setup a few years back and it was setup for production with 1 person ive used his setup as a outline of what i need to build up too to get high syrup numbers on 2x evap listen to his info he won`t steer you in the wrong direction

[Clamer33]

The ro takes up a space of 4 feet by 18". I have a 65 gallon wash tank beside it. and a 1550 gallon water tank outside. I have floor drains in my shack. I rigged the ro to tie in to the water tank and my tow 500 and 600 gallon sap tank tanks. I just move the blue pump house to where ever I need it. Via, wash tank tank, the two sap taps, or the wash bucket. I will upload some pictures tonight to show you once I get them off my phone.

[UncleGillysMapleSyrup]

Thanks. I look forward to seeing your pics.

[VT_K9]

We have a CDL Hobby RO 250. This was our second year with it and it still works great. I would recommend one of the Hobby units. Ours is kept in an unheated area. We do have heatlamp nearby incase we want to use it on a cold morning. We have three tanks in the RO area. We have a 230 gallon tank which holds sap pumped from the woods. We draw from that tank and empty into a 160 gallon tank (which is the tank the RO sits on). We run the sap through a second time and push the concentrate to a 100 gallon tank on a platform to feed the evaporator. If the sap has very low sugar content we can recycly in the 160 gallon tank before running it up to the 100 gallon tank.

We do the rinse/wash/rinse cycle and it takes about 45 minutes or so. I like to run the wash cycle for about 20-30 minutes keeping the temps in the mid 70s before pushing the temp up to 84 where the unit shuts off (I heat the wash on a burner to increase the temp in increments).

To drain the tank we open the membrane capsules and let the fluid drain. We remove the filter, we open the two valves and leave them open, and we remove the plug from the pump housing. If it seems like it will get very cold and we may want to use the unit first thing in the morning we will tilt the unit to get more fluid out. Most days we did not do the extra drain step.

Here is the only image I could find right now of the the RO in it's drain stage and the 230 gallon tank full.

11727

Mike