>Placing a golf tee in the holes is a good idea to help keep them open and to help you locate them.  

I've done multiple ProVap treatments on individual colonies and have noticed that the access holes begin to get sloppy after just a few uses. If you let the unit hang in the hole, as recommended by the manufacturer's video, its weight, and the softening of the wood due to moister makes the hole oblong in short order. The sloppy hole forces you to hold the unit upright until the cycle completes or it will just flop back to its inverted position because it's top heavy. So with sloppy holes, you need to be over or directly behind the unit in the initial turning procedure when the loaded Teflon cup empties its OA into the band heater which is also when accidents can happen. I'm looking onto sleeving the hole with the next size up copper tubing, or something else metal, to avoid hole distortion. Right now I'm running a 1/4" drill into each hole before I use it to ensure that there are no blockages - you would be surprised what comes out on the drill bit. IMO using a golf tee is not sufficient and since they are under 1/4 inch the holes get propolis buildup.    

>I think it is better to run the vaporizer on the 'hot' side to avoid OA build-up in the vapor tube.  I have had trouble with the tube clogging if I don't let the device reheat to 225 F or so between vaporization.  It takes
more time to wait for reheating but the results seem better. 

I'm not sure what you are doing but the unit should be allowed to heat up to 230c before it's even used and then back up to 230 during the sublimation process before being removed, so if you are using it correctly it's never cold. Allowing the band heater to get back up to 230c is a critical part of the process.


Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT

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