O.M.G. freeze dryer power outage in the middle of a batch!
This has never happened to us before, and I’m shook, lol.
Ok, so I had mango and kiwi in the Ice Queen (which is really a Harvest Right Home Pro Medium) and the dang power went out! To be honest, I was on the brink of having a complete meltdown, then I started googling, haha.
I also checked the owner’s manual, but it didn’t have any info on what the freeze dryer would do if the power went out in the middle of a batch. Unless I missed it, which is possible, I suppose, lol.
Anyway, it’s supposed to pick back up right where it was when the power went out. So… let’s see!
Whew! It did resume the batch where it left off!
After the power came back on, the Ice Queen (a Harvest Right Home Pro Medium) started right back up. I was so relieved!
When it started back up, the first screen to appear was bright green and said:
Previous job was not completed properly.
Job will resume in: 01:00
Then it had a CANCEL button and a PROCEED button. It was counting down, and I was taking a photo (see below), so I missed hitting any buttons and it proceeded on its own.
It did start back right where it left off. For me and this batch, it had been in the middle of the Drying phase. The total time, which is always displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, started back from zero. So unless you write down what time you start, you will lose total time during a power outage.
The screen also now displays information in the lower left-hand corner. This information is:
- Power Outages Count – this is how many times the power has gone out during this freeze drying batch. In this case, the number is 1, because it went out once (see photo below).
- Time – this is not freeze drying time. This time displayed is the amount of time the power was out while freeze drying. For us, it was 50 minutes (again, see photo below).
I’m really glad the freeze dryer picked up where it left off after the power went out, but there are some things I’m unsure of:
- How long until the vacuum seal breaks? Our power was out for 50 minutes and the vacuum was still going. But I don’t know if that would be the case after several hours.
- How long until the ice starts melting? Obviously, it didn’t within about an hour. But again, what if the power out for an extended period of time?
- Is there a point at which it will not resume the batch? I have no idea, lol.
So, yeah. More questions than answers at this point. I guess I’ll find out if there’s another power outage while I’m freeze drying something, haha.
I do try to avoid using the Ice Queen when I know there’s going to be bad weather. This outage was totally random. It was a nice sunny day, no wind, no rain or anything. So there’s no way I could have predicted this, lol.
