A quick rundown on some straight-up, dirt floor, barn tek.
Full disclosure this post should be used to inspire ideas and not necessarily be blindly followed. Do your own research to make sure all of the materials used in this process are safe for whatever your using them for.
Materials list:
10" Filter housing (3)
String wound water filers (various micron sizes needed)
Filtering flask
Various fittings to connect the filter housings
Various hoses to feed and discharge
Flask stopper
Vacuum pump
190 proof ethanol
5 Gallon stainless stockpot
Chest freezer
Un-winterized material
To prepare for winterization you will need to dissolve your un-winterized material in ethanol and chill it. Depending on the wax content of the starting material you will want to dissolve it anywhere from 1:4 to 1:10 crude:ethanol. Place this mix into a freezer for 24 hours.
Connect all of the filter housings. I recommend installing ball valves in-between every filter housing as well as at the beginning and at the end of the line.
Unscrew all of the filter housings and install the string wound filters. I typically stage them 100-25-1.
Now connect hoses to both sides of the filter set up. You want the feed house to be long enough to reach the bottom of the feed bucket. The discharge hose should be long enough to reach the top of the vacuum flask without any tension.
Connect the vacuum pump to the filter flask and make sure the discharge line going into the flask stopper is tight. You may need to insert a hard pipe at the end of the discharge hose to make sure you can make a vac tight connection going into the stopper.
Provided your solution is properly chilled, we are ready to filter it.
Take your previously mixed solution out of the freezer and place it on the table.
Place your feed line into the solution and turn on the vacuum.
You should see the solution flow through all 3 filters and start to come into the filtering flask. Just keep filtering until you either, fill the filtering flask and need to break vac to empty it, or the filters clog.
When the filtration starts to slow, you will need to change your filters. Stop your vacuum and swap out the clogged filter.
Thats it! super cheap winterization tek. I save my spent filters until I have a 55gal trash can full. Ill then scrape all the waxes off them and redissolve in EtOH to recover any cannabinoids hiding away. I usually get at least a few hundred grams of usable oil doing this but it’s deff a rainy day activity.
You can also easily mount these bad boys to a uline cart and then you’ve got yourself a nice little filter skid.
