Lit off at 7:30 and wound it up to full bore busying myself with getting the laptop set up and getting settled in for what I thought would be the same old hour-long warmup on an 8 1/2 gallon run of 2nd generation sweet feed and feints. I cracked the condensers open and kicked back for the wait.
About 15 minutes into the heatup I started smelling that familiar smell of coming product and thought I had a leak so I shut down, checked out the rig, found everything copacetic and lit back off. Five minutes later I was about to go in the house for something to drink real quick when something made me do a thorough lookover. I find the thermo at 165 degrees and fores pouring from the parrot drain into the fores collection jar!
Jump up, drop the heat to almost a yellow flame, blow open the reflux valve and do some serious rein-pulling to slow it down and it still took a full 200ml to get it into equilibrium. I don't know what the main difference in the burners is. Same roar at full tilt, etc but somehow my heatup from a dead start is now about 25% of what it used to be. At this moment the rig is putting out 250ml every 6 minutes at 92%. Not bad for a 1-1/2" CM column that shouldn't.
Moral of the story: Just when you think you've got it all figured out..........you don't. Be careful out there!
tp (and how not to do it)
