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i had the same issue at the beginning of last season Spud. I have a hobby mechanical releaser, I'm sure yours is a quite a bit bigger, but probably same concept. my float wouldn't go back down either. I had cleaned it in good shape before using it, but neglected to re lubricate all parts. once I did that, I never had the issue again all season. I set mine in place on Sunday and gave it a good lubricating, with hopes I won't run into the issue again this year.
I learned this for the first time last year! I know exactly what your dealing with. I use the food grade oil on this part, no grease, oil only. I took apart the valve assy. a few weeks ago on my hobbies and found the O ring on the plunger is all cracked. This is the one that would be subject to outside and inside air/vacuum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Parker
I ended up taking the bolt right out and dissecting it in terms to those sliding plates. Dirt comes in over time and don't matter how much you lube it, there comes a time when dirt is attracted to lube and then your asking for a seize up. But the taking it apart, remembering how you took it apart, clean with a soft paper towels, put back together and worked like a charm until the next day when the float slides down the stem b/c the snap ring wore off on the bottom of stem.
Spud, we had same problem on two mechanical releasers we ran. At leader they have small white packets of food grade clear grease. Every day we check the releasers, wipe down the rods, and apply a small amount of lube. Never had a problem again. Key is cleaning the rods first.
Craig
Thanks everyone. I went out this morning and cleaned the rod and sprayed it down again. When I turned the pump on the releaser filled right up and dumped without any problems. I hope it's smooth sailing from here. I will be spraying the rod and other moving parts each day.
Spud
Certainly not breaking any records here but the sap started running yesterday afternoon when the sun really came out. I finished tapping and fixing a few areas where I had some red squirrel issues. I'm letting the 150 taps that run into a sap lifter rinse before turning that section on later today. I'll have all my taps plugged in earlier than ever this season.
Good luck everyone. Looks like the season is about to start!
I got 1200 gallons so far today coming into my sugar house. Sap still coming in very slow. My vacuum dropped to 25.5 at the releaser. I plan to find the leaks next week. Today I had to spray 350 more fruit trees with deer repellent. I plan to let the pump run till morning. Who knows maybe I will have 1500+ in the tank by then. Sap testing at 1.3%.
Spud
Hopefully going to start drilling and replacing taps this weekend. Been moving & splitting wood the past few weekends.
It's 34 degrees here at my place this morning at 7:15. I went down to the sugar house to shut my pump off and the sap is still running 150GPH. I have 3000 gallons in the tank now. looks like we are going to have 3-4 good days of sap runs starting Monday. Hey DOOCAT does that grease work good even when the temps get cold? Although I spray my releaser rod I'm thinking of putting some of that grease on the inner part of the white bushing. The releaser has been working great all night.
Spud
Pulled in about 900 gal. since Wednesday and it is still slowly coming in. The peak was yesterday afternoon when the sun came out for a bit.
I figured out that the float in my sap lifter is leaking so it was not working correctly...it was filled with ice so I thawed it out, drained it and then lifter was working good as new. Then it was filled again this morning so same drill... I need to get a replacement or figure out a fix... I'm looking forward to doing away with that thing for next season.
I would just replace the float. I just had the same problem with my float being full of sap. I drilled a very small hole in the float and drained it. I put silicone over the hole and the crack where it was leaking. I'm keeping it as a spare but feel much safer having a new float in my releaser.
Spud
Tapped in last night, temps in the 40's in Central Vt. Every tree was dripping FAST. Now I need to get storage online... evap put back together .. cut more wood... oh, well LET the FUN begin !
Spud, Our releasers were in sheds, not heated, but inside. Not sure if they were outside in the very cold air if it would stiffen up. Worked great for us.
Got my first run yesterday only 150 gallons at 1.2%. Didn't get a lot but had enough sap to check for air leaks. 3/16ths is surprisingly easy to check for leaks on.
Thanks. Sorry to respond so late.Quote:
Originally Posted by drewlamb
This year there was my friend, my dad, and myself who helped tap, along with my aunt and uncle who volunteer to help us out and do a couple thousand or so every season. We are lucky to have free help from family and friends who enjoy being out in the woods. My dad, my friend, and I all work independently, all working one mainline at a time. Maybe have one person work the taps closer to the main and one work the farther away taps from the main on mainlines with longer laterals. But for the most part we work independent, I think that helps to reduce the chance of missed drops. My friend and I averaged around 500 taps or so each in an 8 hour work day which is what I try to shoot for.
My aunt and uncle work together, usually one puts on the spout and one drills. I'm not a fan of this approach for a number of reasons, but they enjoy helping us out and like to be close by when they are working, plus they are volunteering so what can I say.
I find tapping while within hearing distance of another tapper is helpful to keep your energy and speed up. It's also good to be able to listen to the sound of the other workers drilling, gauge their speed and quality of the job they are doing if possible. Look over once and a while to see that they aren't missing any trees. It's really difficult to manage employees in my opinion, to be assertive and respectful when telling someone what they need to do differently and also remember to remind them of what they are doing well to keep spirits up.
But I'm not fan of paying employees (or myself or dad) to put spouts on first, then having another paid employee come back and drill and tap in. I figure it takes me like 5 seconds to detach the dropline from the pin and grab a spout and wiggle it onto the drop. Same with our other paid tappers this year, it goes pretty quick when putting a spout on. A significant amount of time is spent walking between trees when tapping (luckily we didn't have much snow this tapping season), so in my opinion it makes little sense to pay people to put on spouts without tapping at the same time. Wasted money in the form of time spent traveling between trees. Furthermore, when it warms up any frozen liquid in the bacteria-contaminated dropline immediately drains and sits in the spout. So better for us to have each person do every aspect of tapping on their own.
Lastly, my dad and I do all of the walking of lines by ourselves. I go to UVM so am out in the woods between classes as much as possible, and he walks after work and on weekends if he doesn't have to be in the sugarhouse running the RO. Historically i've done most of the walking as he simply doesn't have time. We have been lucky to be able to walk lines a lot early in the season and then have high vacuum hold without too much more maintenance for the rest of the season. we don't have bad animal damage so that's a godsend. We've probably walked lines for about 40 hours so far this season and now vacuum is up above 27" in both bushes and we are in good shape for this week.
Finally I feel like it's not a race against time anymore, for the first time since we started the new install this fall. All tapped in, lines tight, hard work has paid off and now we just hope for no more leaks, good weather, functioning equipment. I don't know if anyone else feels this way but when we work so hard to get our operations in good shape I think we should take a break and be proud of our accomplishments. It's easy to always look at the next thing that needs to be done, but I find it important to stop and just be happy to have accomplished so much thus far this season.
Good luck to everyone, should be a good seven days ahead of us.
We got the season back on track today. My son and a friend came over and we tapped our vacuum line trees. We got into a good rhythm of replacing spouts, drilling holes hammering taps. I had repaired chewed drops, breaks, and pinched manifolds last weekend. My wife and her friend took care of the buckets. Great day to be outside!
Tomorrow I will plumb up the new Ariblo and hopefully pull, at least some cleansing sap.
Look like a wild week ahead!
Best of luck to everyone!
Get ready!! Going to be an extremely busy few days for everyone. We had 60s in January, maybe 70 wensday, 80s in March again? This could be not good, freezing nights seem to perish with the arrival of warm spells this year.....
Sap is running 200 GPH into my sugar house. There was too much wind today to allow the sap to really run hard. I was able to find and fix a few leaks in the woods today. The big leak was an end cap and clamp that came off one of my mainlines. I am now running 28 Inches of vacuum. Should see 1+ GPT each day for the next few days. I welcome the rain so all this snow will melt.
Spud
Spud- how many taps on the 200 gph?Quote:
Originally Posted by spud
i was unpleasantly surprised to wake up and see no sap coming in. I got about a hair less than 1/2 gallon per tap here from 11 a.m through the evening. hopefully it picks up today!
About half full tanks overnight in Underhill. Warmed up to about 38 deg F yesterday afternoon, but dropped to 35 by 5:30pm before rising slowly overnight. Lots of wind here too, which must have broken something...vacuum dropped to 13" Hg overnight. Trees are starting to "wake up", but sluggishly. Not unusual for this time of year. Will fire up the RO and concentrate what came in, but hold it in the bulk tank over overnight, then RO again tomorrow morning and probably first boil of the season tomorrow.
Second boil of the season last night and made about 15 gal of nice AR. That was with about 1000 gal. from last week and the weekend, in addition to another approx. 400 from yesterday. Sugar at about 1.5
Will be interesting to see what the next 36 hours brings and if the warmth will be enough to really get things moving. Still lots of ice in the ground. Most of the snow is now gone but I still need crampons in the woods.
Checked every mainline for leaks on our big bush yesterday and fixed every leak I could find except one mainline that I didn't have time to walk because got the call that our back pan has a leak (again, this happened two years ago). Called a bunch of people to help lift it into truck and brought to Leader to be repaired, hopefully by tonight. Sitting on a lot of sap and it's a time crunch to get fixed so we don't overflow or spoil. Besides that we're in very good shape, high vacuum, things working as they should.
Sap has been running all day yesterday and last night. Since yesterday morning at this time I have gotten 1.5 GPT. Sap is testing at 1.6%. Vacuum holding at 28 inches. I would like to see it pick up today. Right now it is 59 degrees at my house.
Spud
sap flowed very well up here last night. same as Spud... 1.5 gpt and still coming! testing 1.75. i'll take that for mid/late February! looks like it'll stop over night and pick back up come Friday.
Finished tapping this weekend, got vac on Monday morning and dumped for 8 hours. Finally started collecting at 7pm Monday evening and in 36 hours I've gotten about 1.75gpt. Hopefully before it shuts off tonight I'll have 2+gpt in 48 hours. good first run for me.
First boil yesterday Sap is 1.5-1.7 sweeten pans and made 100 gals. have small crack in one of the RO post hope to get fixed on Thursday My biggest problem is the drain in the RO room is clogged spent 5 hours on it still can't get it GRRRRR! At least the drains on the sides of the arch work so had to leave door of RO room open and the water flowed out and down that drain should have 12000 plus gallons of sap today Oh loving my new monitor equipment in woods and sugar house
Trees certainly woke up over the course of the last two days I have a remote Sugarbush with large old growth trees from 7:30am Tuesday to 7 p.m. Wednesday they spit out 2100 gallons on 900 taps 28 inches!! First time with high vacuum on this Sugarbush I'm certainly impressed and excited for the major runs.....
125 gallons in Barrel so far all Amber
Still nothing record breaking here with a bit over 2gpt in 48 hours. I boiled about 1500 gal. last night and made 20 gal. of DR, just over the line from AR. Classic dark amber. My sap hydrometer I realize is way off and my refractometer filled with sap so I am not sure the sugar content. Things working well in the sugarhouse. Now that we are through the warm-up and the early season tubing slime sap, I'm going to clean the flue and syrup pans in preparation for the next phase of the season.
I realized yesterday that a bunch of CV spouts that were tapped in January needed to be reset with a tap or three. Mainly in an area with low slope and some inverted lats. I have not had this much of an issue with these spouts in the past, but we have had some back and forth weather. Not so much of an issue with smart spouts...
First boil last night.
425 gal 2%
With High Pressure pump rebuilt I was doing 3.0/3.5 Perm and 1.0/1.25 Con. One pass to 8%.
So Home made ro doing 240 GPH at a cost of $3600, I have to say not bad at all.
made around 3/3.5 medium / dark amber.
Pulled in another 1.75-2gpt from Saturday & sunday afternoon through the night to Monday morning. Maybe a total of 36 hours of vac time. Not bad for two days that never got higher then 38 degrees. Should run good this week.
A decent run here this weekend. Pulled in 910 gal on Saturday before it froze up and about 1100 gal. yesterday and overnight. Pretty marginal freeze here last night as it was still trickling in this am at 6:30. I was very surprised at how well it ran yesterday given it was so cold. Must have been the sugar snow...
After the last boil I ran the contents of the flue pan through the filter press and then cleaned the whole rig. Boiling later today...
Ran pretty well today. Best of the season so far I think. Good vac in both woods and had a good first boil, finally our evaporator is all fixed.
Still having some pump issues but was able to get .75 GPT yesterday. I'm sure I lost at least a quart a tap. Sap is now testing at 1.1%.
Spud
Very nice run overnight Sunday into Monday suagr was 1.9 then back down to 1.7. stockpile 2500 gals Sunday night, added about 3200 monday.....our new 3x10 inferno with steampan was pumping out 17 gals an hr,- incredible, a whole new dimension for us. Made 82 gals light Amber.....in just over 5 hrs.
Sap ran some on Saturday. Not quite as well on Sunday. Picked up a good bit yesterday.
Ran the Lapierre HyperBrix RO yesterday to generate 349 gal of 30 Brix concentrate...stored safely away in the refrigerated bulk tank for processing. The RO is running now with the sap that came in yesterday afternoon and overnight (froze up around 8-9pm). Will start the evaporator in about an hour -- should be about a 200-225 gal syrup day.
Vacuum in the research area is 27" Hg. About 24-25" in the woods down the drive. Only about 20" in the main bush, but some of the crew will be out today tracking that down (3 trees down on the mainline from the wind this weekend -- was pretty wild up here on Sunday afternoon).
H2O Smartrek system for monitoring is working well.
I think this is going to be a good run. Already 400 gal. since things really thawed about noon.
I made about 50 gal. last night from 2500 gal. that came in this weekend and monday. Still not sure the sugar content but it is getting higher. Ratio is about 50:1 now vs. 60:1 earlier in the season.
Grade started DR from the sweet in the pans but then transitioned thru AR to the line with GD. Major flavor change too which was cool to see.
Pump is still loosing its prime at times. It will run anywhere from 30 minutes to 5 hours. Even with all the problems today I still have gotten 3/4 of a gallon per tap today so far. Still coming in at 400 GPH. Should run all night. Sap is now testing at 2.2%.
Spud
Another 250 gal of concentrate to go with our 349 from yesterday. Made 210 gal AR today (light transmittance 2% shy of Fancy). Crew got the vacuum up to 25” Hg. A bit more work, but getting close.
The last four days have been good to us. The overnights were in the upper 20s. Pretty steady average at 1.25 gallons per tap. Pulling 26” on the line of 1.5 to 1.6 SC.
The buckets bring it up to 1.6-1.7. I’m not thrilled with the SC but, I have to remind myself its still February.
Good luck to all!
Very good sap runs today. I think we did at least 1.5 gpt in both woods since this morning when it opened up. Good second boil, made a bit more than 80 gallons. DR but close to AR. Hope to make GD soon, haven't made any since 2016.
Fernco fitting blew off where our sap pumps connect with the line that exits the releaser and goes to our tanks in our MES releaser. That happened this morning when all the sap that was frozen in the lines and had thawed suddenly let loose into the releaser when the last of the ice jams gave way. We have chronically leaky boosters and valves that I believe causes this freezing.
Anyway, what happens is the clamp comes loose on the Fernco, sap pumps can't pump nearly as fast, releaser gets filled with sap and trips moisture trap. Anyone have similar issues with Ferncos coming loose inside releaser? We just have each connection single clamped with normal hose clamps but we need a more reliable type of clamp, one that won't come loose from prolonged exposure to high vacuum, sap, etc. Any ideas?
Also, Emerald Ash Borer is officially in Vermont. It was identified in Orange and has apparently been present for a few years. http://digital.vpr.net/post/first-in...-found-vermont
Don't transport firewood. It's how these terrible invasive insects often get brought into our woods.