Not only does it spread the cost, but it can also increase the amount and variety of the preserved food you store away. Additionally, a group purchase can also lead to purchasing bulk quantities of food to freeze dry.
The alternative was to simpIy cut a small section from the guard at the lowest point and allow the water to run down the front of the panel in a single stream. I am not crazy about the look, but it is absolutely necessary to protect my investment and the electronics. If you look carefully you can see the hole in the gutter beneath the center screw.
I think a community-built troubleshooting manual is a great idea. These machines are simple in some ways, and more complex in others, and having a lot of eyes on the problem is always good.
I sent Harvest Right a note with a picture and they immediately shipped me a new display. Great Service again from the support team there! I think water had dripped down the front and the back of the unit and onto the display card shorting it out.
We have two freezers in the garage as well. All of these machines generate heat and humidity. Our FDer front regularly sweats up an storm and water drips off the door and from around the entire chamber perimeter down the front of the unit. It got so bad that I taped a plastic shield above the display to route the water around it. You can see the water on the door and on the stainless steel front past the 4 screws on the unit.
They replied with some good information, but didn't really directly answer the question. I know that there is pelo one answer for all foods, but a rule of thumb is certainly within reason.
Learn how to safely preserve berries through a variety of methods, such as canning, freezing and other methods.
I'm actually working now on making myself a vacuum microwave instead. Got the idea from an article in MacLeans magazine about Domenic and Cindy Duby, who use one to produce interesting flavours. Takes up less space and hopefully produces a product a bit faster. We'll see how it works out.
You can determine when the product is dry by feel or by calculation of the amount of water remaining in the product.
5 Posted September 16, 2015 (edited) Gypsyman: Proof again that "great minds think alike". In my initial pondering, I thought using an oil filter base would be a logical approach -- but I didn't have one handy and figured my car might miss it. Besides, one of my goals was to keep this affordable, and they tend to be a little pricey.
After buying our Shop Now freeze dryer I was naturally curious as to how it "knew" when something was done, since batch times varied so much depending on what was being processed. Watching the cycle times didn't seem to tell me anything at first -- especially without a thermometer to tell me what was happening inside -- until I finally caught on that applying heat to the frozen food affected the vacuum, which provided the measure of how dry the food had become.
I want to suggest to Teppy that you get a bunch of oito quart hard plastic foodsaver containers to keep your products in under vacuum, being so low in moisture they attract water and soften rather easily. E-bay is a good source.
This is why so many people are buying their own freeze dryers to use at home. The market is essentially cornered by Harvest Right, which isn’t a bad thing since their quality and customer service are both superb.
I've run the system in countless tests including over filling the pump and running the pump without a load (both result in lots of oil spitting out the exhaust port of the pump). I've drained the catch can twice, once with over 5 oz of oil in it, but have not collected any oil downstream in the jar so the system is performing well.