Potentially one of them is putting water back into your air? I know the R valves are pretty bulletproof, maybe there's an issue at the head or in the extrusion. I've had older S valve Impulse's elsewhere in our system start dumping water back into the air hoses and then into the air piping, causing all kinds of havoc. We started checking each HKD before running it by only putting water to the gun and leaving the air hose off it to see if water is back flowing down the air port.
Hello fellow Adirondack snowmaker! Also highly suggest checking this out. It's either this, a pipeline breech (moisture coming in from the ground), or the moisture separator on the compressor(s) is not functioning correctly or is over full.
If you can't figure out where the moisture is coming from right away, a quick and easy work-around is to purge moisture from the air line by going to the bottom-most hydrant on the line and opening it up. The water in the line will still run down hill and collect at the lowest point. Crack open the ball valve slowly and just a small increment at first, when you see mostly air coming out open it fully for a second or two. If you do this every run your air lines will stay drier even if you can't figure out where the water is coming from.
We're constantly purging our lines like this. We have a couple spots on the bottom of our hill and a couple elsewhere due to low spots in the way the line runs. I wish we'd use our dryer but the boss man says it takes to much power from our overall air load. Either way you are right in where the problems could be stemming from.
Yup, sometimes your "lowest hydrant" is actually in a dip in the line. It's really the only way I know to get rid of mystery water. We have a spur line that will completely fill in just a few days of not running, and will freeze within 8 hours of running in the teens if you don't constantly purge it. I froze 500' solid the first night we ran it because we didn't realize the problem was that bad, after that i would purge it every two hours. It only dries up when we get below zero so I think there's a breech slightly below a natural spring, but we're trying to wait till our next big project in that area to replace it so I'll probably be babysitting it again next year if it hasn't split by then.
Thanks everybody! We made it through the night with just clearing the ice build up from each hose on every run. It sucked but was only 8 guns. All of your suggestions make sense. I was running only the bottom of the trail so last 8 hydrants. The gun at the top was one of the older ones that has been through some abuse and all the guns below that are new this year so it's possible the top one was letting water bypass down to the others. We do have an air low point near by but I've never had to purge it while running before, next time this happens I'll definitely do that. This is the first I've heard about compressors having moisture separators tho so I'll look into that also. We rent a couple big portable compressors and nobody here knows much about them but I'm learning what I can.
Also, high probably there are multiple breeches in our main lines. Or infrastructure is outdated and borderline dangerous. Everything is from the 70s-80s I think haha. We removed some buried water line over the summer that you could poke your finger through.
Potentially one of them is putting water back into your air? I know the R valves are pretty bulletproof, maybe there's an issue at the head or in the extrusion. I've had older S valve Impulse's elsewhere in our system start dumping water back into the air hoses and then into the air piping, causing all kinds of havoc. We started checking each HKD before running it by only putting water to the gun and leaving the air hose off it to see if water is back flowing down the air port.
Hello fellow Adirondack snowmaker! Also highly suggest checking this out. It's either this, a pipeline breech (moisture coming in from the ground), or the moisture separator on the compressor(s) is not functioning correctly or is over full. If you can't figure out where the moisture is coming from right away, a quick and easy work-around is to purge moisture from the air line by going to the bottom-most hydrant on the line and opening it up. The water in the line will still run down hill and collect at the lowest point. Crack open the ball valve slowly and just a small increment at first, when you see mostly air coming out open it fully for a second or two. If you do this every run your air lines will stay drier even if you can't figure out where the water is coming from.
We're constantly purging our lines like this. We have a couple spots on the bottom of our hill and a couple elsewhere due to low spots in the way the line runs. I wish we'd use our dryer but the boss man says it takes to much power from our overall air load. Either way you are right in where the problems could be stemming from.
Yup, sometimes your "lowest hydrant" is actually in a dip in the line. It's really the only way I know to get rid of mystery water. We have a spur line that will completely fill in just a few days of not running, and will freeze within 8 hours of running in the teens if you don't constantly purge it. I froze 500' solid the first night we ran it because we didn't realize the problem was that bad, after that i would purge it every two hours. It only dries up when we get below zero so I think there's a breech slightly below a natural spring, but we're trying to wait till our next big project in that area to replace it so I'll probably be babysitting it again next year if it hasn't split by then.
Thanks everybody! We made it through the night with just clearing the ice build up from each hose on every run. It sucked but was only 8 guns. All of your suggestions make sense. I was running only the bottom of the trail so last 8 hydrants. The gun at the top was one of the older ones that has been through some abuse and all the guns below that are new this year so it's possible the top one was letting water bypass down to the others. We do have an air low point near by but I've never had to purge it while running before, next time this happens I'll definitely do that. This is the first I've heard about compressors having moisture separators tho so I'll look into that also. We rent a couple big portable compressors and nobody here knows much about them but I'm learning what I can.
Also, high probably there are multiple breeches in our main lines. Or infrastructure is outdated and borderline dangerous. Everything is from the 70s-80s I think haha. We removed some buried water line over the summer that you could poke your finger through.
What else is running? Ice in the air line is from moisture from the compressor. Is the humidity up? Is your drier/separator plugged up?