25 overnight.  Sunny and 37 today, but a cold North West wind made it feel cold.  Around 2:00 PM the taps started dripping.  They are running now and will run until they freeze tonight.  Forecast calls for low 20’s overnight.  We will get ice.  Tomorrow partly cloudy with high 38.    With luck we get ice melt and can collect in the afternoon.

Tree pressure went from 1 PSI this morning when it was below freezing to 13 PSI this afternoon when the taps started dripping.  Although its limited data, it looks like tree pressure increases as the trees start to drip.  It will be interesting to watch if higher pressures correspond to better sap runs.  And could we start to predict from tree pressure how much sap to except.

Found a leak in the R/O.  During the wash cycle yesterday the wash tank lost water.  It should be a closed loop during the wash cycle that circulates water through the membrane.  We use about 17 gallons in the wash tank.  About half was lost.  During the rinse cycle today we looked for the leak.   We could see drips under the 220 volt motor and a pump seal.  Its unlikely two separate places could leak at the same time.  As we continued to investigate we noticed two fine sprays from a pump drain valve.  One stream went to the 220 volt motor.  We loosened and tightened the valve several times and got it to reseal.    Most likely there was a particle – tree bark, twig, small grain of sand, etc – that prevented a good seal.  R/O pressure seemed a little off yesterday during concentration:  it approached 500 PSI.  The R/O automatically stops at 500 PSI to avoid damage.  The floor around the R/O was also unexpectedly wet.  We’ll see if the leak fix helps with R/O pressure too.