Moisture Trap w/ Remote Releaser

[twofer]

I am getting my electric releaser setup and trying to figure out if I need to put in a moisture trap. For one the releaser itself has a ball in a cage on the vacuum port that looks like it would prevent water from getting sucked into the vacuum line. Also, the vacuum pumps are 400' away with a difference in elevation of ~20'. It seems like between those two things it would be pretty hard to get any moisture up to the pumps.

What do the veterans say?

[wiam]

I have had the ball in the top of the releaser fail as a stop. I would not run without a trap

Will

[maplwrks]

DITTO---I pulled sap 250' last year, right into the pump.

[ennismaple]

How many inches of vacuum are you pulling? Vacuum will pull sap up about 1 foot per inch. We have 1 zero tank that is remote with the vacuum pump at the camp. The dryline runs 500+ feet and it's more than 30 feet from the top of the hill to the tank so we don't use a moisture trap because it's impossible to pull sap 30 feet up with only 18" to 20" Hg. In your case I'd spend the money an a moisture trap to ensure you never flood out your pump.

[twofer]

How many inches of vacuum are you pulling? Vacuum will pull sap up about 1 foot per inch. We have 1 zero tank that is remote with the vacuum pump at the camp. The dryline runs 500+ feet and it's more than 30 feet from the top of the hill to the tank so we don't use a moisture trap because it's impossible to pull sap 30 feet up with only 18" to 20" Hg. In your case I'd spend the money an a moisture trap to ensure you never flood out your pump.

We're a brand new sugarhouse, brand new tubing setup (still have to do the lats and drops), running two new-to-us Gast vacuum pumps so I'm not sure what they'll pull just yet.

Probably just about the perfect storm for a mishap......better get to work on that moisture trap.