powerdub
03-13-2004, 07:02 PM
I thought I would bring up something about mechanical releasers I, or anyone else that I have seen yet mention. You should shut your vacuum pump off before the sap freezes at night if your releaser is outside. The releaser needs to drain the sap out of it before it freezes. If the vacuum stays on after it freezes and there is four inches of sap in the releaser it will prevent the next days run from draining until it thaws which could be well after the sap starts running. The reason for bringing this up is because it happend to me once but the safety ball stopped the vacuum flow. In the case of my buddy, his ball was frozen and he sucked sap through his vacuum pump. My pump is water cooled so it does not matter but I know a lot of you are running delavals and it does matter with those. I hope this helps someone out there from seeing the sap coming out of there exhaust on the vacuum pump. Happy sappin'.