membrane life

[Brent]

I am in the process of trying to decide on getting an RO

What are operating costs like
Electricity for the pumps is the cheapest part ... maybe 25 cents a day.

But do you budget for washes, rinses, soaps, acid baths ??

and then the big one what is the life of a membrane ??

[Mike]

Brent, I was looking at your pics...Nice place you have there....We have around 150 apple trees on our property and we put 6' wire fence around them....We had a ton of apples this year....We'll take the fences down when the trees get big enough so's the deer wont eat them.....If you need any info on apple tree care I can give you my brothers email address....He knows more on apple trees than most and if doesnt have the answer he knows where to get it.......He does the apple trees and me and my younger brother do the food plots..........

[Mike]

Brent, I run my RO off a 15,000 watt generator.....I also run the whole sugar house with it....cost me about $15 to run it for 4 hrs or so.....not bad seeing that I can make about 30+ gals of syrup providing I have the sap......Thats about 2 hrs Ro, 2 hrs boiling....

[maplwrks]

Brent,
It costs me roughly $175.00 to run my entire sugarhouse----R/O, lights, pumps,and evaporator.
Mike

[Brent]

Mike and Mike

thanks for the feedback.
Have any of you had to replace membranes yet ???
I understand they're pricy ... $ 1500 to $ 2500.

If you did replace them was it due to normal wear and tear or
was there some failure on cleaning and maintenance ??

[maplwrks]

I have yet to replace a membrane---not looking forward to it either. I beat mine up a bit by super concentrating my sap. I have heard of membranes on the internet that were real reasonable though. I do clean mine real well and send them for testing annually.
Mike

[Homestead Maple]

How many years have you used your RO and roughly how much sap do you run through it in a season. I'm curious as to how long a membrane would last. This will be the second season with mine and I would hope to get 6 years out of a membrane on 1,500 taps.

[Russell Lampron]

I'm going into the fourth season with mine and haven't noticed much of a decrease in production from when it was new. I clean and rinse more often than the manufacturer recommends and use membrane preservative at the end of the season. If you search the internet you can find new membranes for alot less money than the dealers want. They are cheap enough so that it is a waste of money to send them out to be factory cleaned.

Russ

[802maple]

We have sugarmakers in the area that have been using the same membranes for 10 plus seasons. The key is as Mike and Russ said is to clean them and rinse them religously. The advantage to sending the membranes to the manufacturer is they can test better than the average sugarmaker can for passing of sugars and for other potential problems. It is nice to know that your membrane is all set to go for another season instead of finding out in one of your biggest runs that it is junk. It is just a insurance in my opinion

[Homestead Maple]

What ever permeate I have from processing a run I used entirely to rinse and I have cleaned the membrane with the factory cleaner after every 4th time I processed a run of sap. Hopefully that does the job. The factory checks the membrane for the first two years for free. I haven't gotten it back yet from the past season to know how it checked out but I feel fairly safe that it will check out very good. What does anyone use for suitable water to rinse the membrane of the storage solution to start a new season. Buy a bunch of distilled water? There's no permeate at this point to use.

[mountainvan]

I just use water from my well. It's low in mineral content and works fine. You can have your water tested, the softer the better. I've also used water from the pristine mountain stream across the road.

[802maple]

We always used first run sap that ran while we were tapping instead of running it on the ground and followed with a rinse from the permeate collected. We always wash every day as a plate is dirty whether you have one egg for breakfast or 30.

[Homestead Maple]

My well water is high in manganese so I guess I wouldn't use that and my first run.............well I'll think about that and what commercial syrup might be selling for. I'll check around for some softer water.