What exactly are releasers?

[Flatfoot95]

I was looking through my Leader catalog today and came upon the releasers. Nothing tells me what they're for and what the difference is between the belly, mechanical and electric releasers. Anyone have any input to educate me on releasers?

[John Burton]

flatfoot, releasers are a mechanical vessel used with vaccum to allow the sap to be drawn to your collection area and dump into a non vacum rated tank ie a stock tank. and still maintain vaccum to the sugar bush. a vertical releaser stands upright and dumps out the side at the bottom. a doubble has two collection vessels so that while one is dumping the other is collecting,and a belly dumps out the bottom.mechanical releasers run with a float system with linkages to tell it when to dump.I have never seen an eletrically controlled one but would assume that some type of switch is used to tell it to dump. I am sure that other traders could go into greater detail on this topic as to what has worked best for them or how to best size one for your needs. if you can get to bascoms open house they usually have them all set up running on water so you can see just how they work.

[royalmaple]

THe electric ones have a float as well and when the sap fills up the tank, the float rises and trips the switch which will power the transfer pump to pump the tank out.

You have power to the switch on the releaser, and then output power from the switch goes to the pump. They work good if you have power and need to pump sap to another holding tank, instead of dumping into an open tank.