I’ll take you through the unboxing and setup process of the HR FD XL, Harvest Right’s remarkable extra-large freeze dryer. Join me as I share my firsthand experience of receiving and unpacking this incredible appliance. Together, we’ll explore everything from checking the dimensions to lifting the weighty unit, and I’ll provide you with valuable insights and tips if you’re considering the HR FD XL for your freeze-drying needs.
I’ll be your guide as we unbox and setup the Harvest Right XL freeze dryer. Together, we’ll unpack the appliance and highlight important details such as its dimensions and weight. I’ll emphasize the significance of careful handling during the setup process and offer practical suggestions to optimize the unit’s performance. From connecting the pump to checking the oil levels, I’ll share my observations and first impressions.
Full video transcript
Lloyd Burch:
[00:00] Well, it finally got here. This is the XL Harvest Right. And it got a lot bigger as we finally got it in the house. And if you’re thinking of these, one of the things you’re gonna want to do is be sure to check the size of your door.
[00:14] If I look at the bottom here and you want to keep it on the pallet, it is exactly 28 inches that it’s going to have to go through the door, and it is 48 inches long on the pallet.
[00:27] So, if you are trying to bring it in on the pallet, you’re gonna need a door that can allow you to have the full 24 inches and not actually hit the door. Now most homes and outside door, this will work fine, but on some inside doors you might have an issue. So beware. This is big and that’s a good thing.
[00:54] Until you’re trying to lift it, for getting it in here, me and two of my daughters were able to slide it out of the truck, slide it across the porch, and get it into here with a little bit of sweat and a little bit of work. It is manageable, but I’m guessing this thing is somewhere around 250 pounds plus in the pallet.
[01:15] So you may want to think about, bring it to the garage first, unpack it in the garage, and bring each of the independent pieces. So, let’s open it up and see what’s inside and how they packed it.
[01:26] I feel like it’s Christmas time and it’s time to open the presents, but here it goes.
[01:43] Now we’ll see if I hit the ceiling.
[01:56] Now that is big and well packaged.
[02:04] I can only imagine what this sounds like on this recording. Be aware, I dropped our impulse sealer. Those are gonna come off. And the pump, fortunately, is set very, very low.
[02:23] Okay. First warning I see is, “Do not lift this freeze dryer by holding onto the door.” I would pretty much guarantee that would be a great way to ruin a whole lot of fun by tearing the door off your freeze dryer. The plastic is coming off pretty good and you start to see what the real size of it is. Remove the boxes, the, uh, pump. And look at, and it is,
[03:04] This is the premier pump and I don’t know if they even offer anything else on it. And I’m also noticing that the, uh, This is larger in the pump that comes on the large one.
[03:18] It comes with some oil
[03:31] Now, I’ll guarantee it actually weighs quite a bit more or than the other pump, having moved, both of them.
[03:41] Get the manuals out of that.
[04:05] So if I’m right, this is the 10 C F M pump. So they’re going from a seven to, it looks like a 10 CFM pump on the premier pump.
[04:20] Everything else pretty much looks the same. It does have the bypass and it is in the open position. This is very important for maintaining the quality of the oil to make sure that that is left open to help get rid of any moisture that may build in the pump.
[04:40] Okay, so now, because this is really heavy, I think I’m gonna try to get all the weight I can off, and we’ll look at what all the different sizes are as we go. So, comes with it’s manual. More manuals, important notes. We’ll have to read those before we hook it up and firmware troubleshooting guide. The bags. Pretty much seems to be the standard stuff that we’ve had before.
[05:13] I’ll take this off to be able to get at the other
[05:19] hose,
[05:23] and I think that hose is actually quite a bit longer
[05:33] and. More oxygen absorbers to go with the bags. So it comes with pretty much the standard. It looks like they’ve, uh put an angle piece, which I think they’ve done on some of the newer, large ones. So I don’t know if it shows in this video. These shelves are huge.
[05:57] this is off my large freeze dryer. These are substantially larger so you’re gonna need to be sure that you have a way to freeze these. If you have a chest freezer, that’s probably gonna work great. If you have a regular freezer, you might want to see if you can fit them.
[06:23] To pre-freeze. Again, you don’t have to pre-freeze, but these are about 29 and a half inches long and about 11 inches wide. So those are substantially larger. I’ll get those set up on the side. The goal here is to get all the extra weight I can out of it because this is heavy. And if you were asking me is, uh, to lift, I think this is the three person job to lift.
[06:59] And these go there. And if you’re thinking of putting this on a, uh, plastic table or anything like that, I would say forget it. You’re gonna want a stable platform to put this on. It is not lightweight at all.
[07:24] Now you can see the access to the back. The connector is substantially larger. Again, rubber connector; go in, should be a very good seal, and there’s actually more thermostats and more wires in this one than the large. So it almost looks like this might have three thermostats to pick up the heat. So they’re probably doing a thermostat on every other shelf and then probably controlling those independent, so you might find this actually is more accurate than the large. That is actually a really cool feature. So let me move these out of the way and I’ll bring a table in and we’ll see if it’s gonna fit.
[08:10] So this is the table I plan to put on it. It’s a little over an inch thick with, uh, the hardwood piece made out of good square stock. These are available, this one I picked up at Costco, and they’re about $160. So for the price and for the structure; as far as stability; I’m not a light person and there’s no flexibility.
[08:34] There’s no moving and appears to be pretty stable. The legs are adjustable, which is important since I’m on tile here. Tile is never exactly flat.
[08:44] The dimensions of this are 24 by 48. And again, the thickness is about an inch and a quarter, and these stalks are all two inch, um, steel square stock; and put this together. Comes in an unbelievably small box, but actually seems to go together pretty good. Now, the free dryer is coming right in at 23 and a quarter and a length of 33 and a quarter.
[09:20] So if our measurements are right, it’ll be right to the edge and we’ll go back to about right there. And hopefully that is enough that we can go ahead and put the pump in the back. If not, we’ll be mounting a piece on the side and moving things around. So I think all this left now is the scary part, and that is lifting this thing up and setting it down on here.
[09:48] I think what I’m gonna probably do is break the foam away so I can get my fingers at it. Again, there was warnings all over. Do not lift it in any way by this door. This door is great for holding suctions, but these pins are only to hold the weight of the door, not to have you pull on the door and try to hold the weight of the freeze dryer.
[10:12] Okay. So when you’re thinking about where you’re gonna put this and how far or how close to the wall you can get, this is gonna be your intake and that’s gonna have a hose coming out of it. So you wanna be sure you’ve left enough room for that.
[10:24] This is your ventilation side. You’re gonna wanna be sure you have plenty of air for it to come up. You’re not gonna be able to put this right next to the wall.
[10:31] This is the USB port. And whenever you’re trying to do maintenance, you’re trying to copy files or do other things, you’re gonna need access to that also.
[10:46] First thing you’re gonna do is note and check that little gasket on the inside. Make sure nothing’s wrong. I know it’s brand new, but uh, you never know when something’s been just not quite put in. And if that doesn’t fit just right and you tighten it in, you’ll ruin that gasket.
[11:02] So this screws onto there. And again, this is hand tight. There’s a reason this is not a big square thing to hook a wrench on. You’re just tightening it with your hands and that’s all you’re doing. And then that’s gonna come over and connect to
[11:20] the pump.
[11:21] And again, check the seal. As you can see, the rings in there and everything’s complete. And if nothing else, you’ll now know if it’s messed up, you messed it up, not Harvest Right.
[11:37] Again, the same thing. You’re trying to just snug it down with your hands.
[11:47] Okay.
[11:49] And then the pump is connected to there.
[11:56] It is presently turned off and note, there’s no oil in the pump and nothing else is done. So the next thing we’ll do is add oil to the pump.
[12:08] All right. So we’re looking at mounting it behind, but they’ve actually given us a long enough hose, because it looks like you can place it clear to the floor and we might do that, put an elbow bracket on it so that it’s not quite as far from the wall, and then go ahead and put it underneath. The only issue with that is you’re gonna want to lift it up when you drain it, but since this can do 20 batches at a time without draining.
[12:35] That’s not that big of a deal to have to lift it up just to drain it. And when you look at how much a batch can do, it might be better on the ground. I’ll call Harvest Right, and see if they suggest it on the ground. The cord’s a little short to put it on the top, and most people will suggest not putting on the top because sometimes it can back leak oil.
[12:57] You want to be sure that the oil has to go uphill or at least level so that you don’t ever pull oil back in. If you were to lose a vacuum.
[13:06] Again, the balance is open. Remove this and always check for the O-ring that’s underneath it. It likes to, needs to be right in there like that and you know to notice where it goes. And we’ll add oil
[13:24] And I’ll get to where I can see the oil make sure that is closed.
[14:08] Let’s see if we can see the level on it. Looks like that’s the level right there.
[14:18] It looks like it took almost all of it, but not quite.we’ll let that sit for a while. The other one is, we’re not gonna start this immediate because this has been moved and you want to let the air conditioning in the refrigerant unit sit for a while so all the oil can train back into the motor. So it’s been sloshed up. You don’t run the motor without oil, and I actually have a little bit extra. After that sits for a while, I will probably drain some of it out, but if you look, you can see the levels just a little bit high. So the next thing I’ll do is put the cap back on again, checking carefully to make sure that seal is in place.
[14:59] It will move
[15:03] again. Be very careful when you put these on. You do not want to cross thread. If it’s taking pressure at all, you’re doing it wrong. And then just a little snug at the end and that’s done And then the final assembly piece is to connect the drain. And I’m not gonna put Teflon tape on it because it’s just a drain and it’s unlikely it will will leak.
[15:32] So we’ll leave that on. And then I’ll set up a bucket for this to drain in,
[15:37] First thing you wanna do is remove this ring and remember we put it back on because you don’t ever want to close the door with this sharp edge on it.
[15:47] Then you’re going to take this and set it. I’m gonna set it right there just so I don’t have to hold it as much. Plug it in, and that goes until it clicks. You can literally hear it, click as it goes in, and then tilt this up
[16:10] and put the ring back on.
[16:35] This is gonna be loud,
[16:44] so it’s now ready to go. We’re gonna let this sit overnight. Then we’ll put the final plug in. Hook it up, and again, you’re gonna be looking for dedicated plugs. I’ll talk a little bit about that. This is going to require a full 20 amp circuit for it. The good news is it’s 120 volt, so that’s pretty easy to get in most homes right now.
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