My New Blue Alpine freeze dryer arrived!!
After getting it up my porch steps and into my kitchen, I could start setting it up. This was no small task since I'm a mere shadow of the man I once was. But I was quite excited to get started, in fact apparently obviously too excited to do it right. I'm now investigating if it's due 100% to my 'pilot error', or something else as well.
After setting everything up and adding the vacuum pump oil to the pump and replacing the filter, I didn't tighten the filter properly, so in my third session it worked itself loose enough to leak out down to the min oil level in the sight window.
More oil has been ordered, due at the end of the week, and my setup & familiarization process will resume then. I have some apples and a couple strawberries from the second session that I like a lot, so I am looking forward to a summer of storing up great fruits and veggies.
I'm adding a couple new default fields (power loss and vacuum leak) to my logbook application to help me track this issue as I learn about the proper process and techniques. I'm also adding a feature to the logbook that will let a site visitor print out pages to put in theri own personal logbook, to keep track of their food preservation efforts.
My first session was a candy cycle with the Nerds Gummy Clusters included with the unit. It worked OK except for giving a couple of error screens, a power loss and a vacuum leak notice. The circuit breaker didn't break, so this is a problem that needs to be resolved. I will check with my power co-op to see if they have some sort of power monitor that I can plug into the line to try to determine the issue here.
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The large frost buildup may be an issue from a leak in the system, or maybe that's the normal amount of water removed from a session, but since this was only my third session, I have no experience to base anything on. The snapshot in the lower left side tries to show a drip coming out between the door and the seal after defrost, sorry for the poor focus. The lower right view shows the vacuum oil that leaked out on the shirt I was using to pad the pump. I immediately shut down the system when I woke up in the norming and saw that most of the oil had leaked out. I'm waiting for a shipment of new oil to arrive so I can continue trying to set things up.