Reo tubing clog

[Berner]

A while ago I put some MFP ejuice (its an intense orangy/anise concoction) in my Reo Grand and I noticed that the tubing in the bottle really swelled up and got longer after a short time soaking in the juice. It never clogged, but was very obvious. Yesterday I put some of my famous homemade 60:40 peppermint lime juice (I use lime oil) in my Reo mini and within about an hour it was completely clogged, as in I could squeeze the bottle with vice-grips and no squonking of juice occurred. I took it all apart, rinsed it out, and put in a different juice and it worked fine. The only difference I can think of right now is that with the Reo Grand, the bottom of the tubing has a V-cut in it, but the tubing in the mini is flush cut across the bottom, so maybe when these oil containing juices caused the tubing to swell, it pushed the mini tubing into the bottom of the bottle preventing any juice flow? Not sure what the moral of this story is, either don't use oil based ejuices, or if you do, make sure your tubing has a little V-cut on the bottom?

 

[DoogieTony]

I've definitely never seen the tubing swell like you describe. Sounds weird.

I'd say either your tube suctioned to the bottom of the bottle or you had an airlock in the bottle.

 

[Hypatia]

I won't run my one anise oil based juice through the tubing, for fear of hurting it, like you describe. It could be the oil somehow degraded the integrity of the silicone tubing (ahem, I do know from other things that oil-based substances can damage silicone surfaces). Oil and silicone do NOT play together well. It COULD be what's going on, check the suctioning to the bottom of the tube issue, too. Hope you didn't hurt your Reo baby and it's just a simple thing.

 

[Berner]

I won't run my one anise oil based juice through the tubing, for fear of hurting it, like you describe. It could be the oil somehow degraded the integrity of the silicone tubing (ahem, I do know from other things that oil-based substances can damage silicone surfaces). Oil and silicone do NOT play together well. It COULD be what's going on, check the suctioning to the bottom of the tube issue, too. Hope you didn't hurt your Reo baby and it's just a simple thing.

Yeah, at this point I'm pretty sure its the oil in the juice causing swelling and blockage of the end of the tube against the bottle. Unfortunately I really like my oil based juices - cinnamon, anise, citrus oils, peppermint - but my Reos seem to be fine as long as I make sure the tubing is V-cut or curled so the bottom doesn't suck up against the bottle bottom.