Heat tape on Popcorn Machine oil lines

[Barry Floyd]

I own a seasonal drive-in theatre in middle Tennessee near Nashville and we are getting ready to re-open for our season in a few weeks. One of the issues we constantly deal with in the early spring and late fall is frozen oil lines on the popcorn machine. Our machine is a 32oz Gold Medal machine with the bag-in-the-box oil pump down in the base of the cabinet. When the temperatures get down below 70 degrees, the oil lines freeze solid. I've got a small space heater I keep down in the cabinet to keep things thawed, but the heat also dries out the kernels, which makes them not pop "fluffy".

I've been thinking about getting some electrical plumbing "heat tape" and zip-tying it to the oil lines. Didn't know if this was overkill. Don't want to melt the oil lines, but at the same time, don't want to deal with frozen oil lines.

Anybody else have to deal with this issue, and if so how does your theatre handle it?

[Jack Ondracek]

Hi, Barry.

I've also fought this problem forever.

I have a Cretors 'Giant' open cabinet machine and a Cretors 'President' closed cabinet model that we use on busy weekends. Both have Cretors' 2-box heated pump units underneath. Both have heat strips that follow the plastic lines up through metal gooseneck tubing.

Both units have the same issue with cold weather dispensing, and we also use space heaters to get things going at the start of the cooler evenings. The heated tubes keep the oil melted after everything warms up for the evening, but we frequently come in to find the oil has solidified, even with the heat strips turned on.

I've always been a 100% coconut guy, but last season we tried a coconut - canola blend, which does not harden up like full-coconut oil does.

The idea seems to be working pretty well. We've been able to put the space heaters away and haven't had any locked-up pumps or plugged lines. Color and taste seems to be about the same, and I haven't noticed any difference in popping time. We also don't have to start the box heaters on Wednesday when we're open weekends.

We haven't gone so far as to turn the heaters off overnight when we're open full-week. Last year, they stayed on 24/7. That'll be something to try this year.

The jury's still out, because I haven't changed this in over 50 years... but so far, I'm thinking the adjustment may be permanent.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Unless you switch over to canola oil, you'll probably have to live with this problem to some extend. My way to go is to keep the coconut oil cool, so it stays solid and I simply scoop it into the popper, I try to avoid those fully automatic machines. . Still, you should care about quality. Coconut oil is "a thousand times better" than canola oil...

The most common solution to avoid the solidification of the coconut oil is, indeed, to install a heater inside the cabinet where the oil is located. This solves most of the problems, unless you're operating in a really cold climate, where the pipes could still clog up. I'd actually expect Gold Medal to offer such a solution already, you cannot be the only one with the problem. I'm not familiar with Gold Medal, but I'm pretty sure Cretors sells bag-in-box heated cabinets, some even with heated oil lines for their poppers.

[Barry Floyd]

Our biggest issue literally is the design of our building. Instead of an enclosed lobby, we have an "open-air breezeway" with two 6 foot wide concessions windows. When we are open in the colder months, the cold air that blows through the open concession windows chills the machine down enough that the lines freeze up. We have a heated bag-in-the-box rack inside the base cabinet of the popper, and the oil pump also stays thawed. Our only issue is the flexible lines that run from the box to the pump and from the pump to the hard metal line of the cabinet. I think Gold Medal does offer a solution, but if I can find a local "off-the-shelf" remedy, I'd rather go that route.

[Randy Stankey]

Find out how Gold Medal makes theirs then redneck engineer your own!

[Phil Ranucci]

Does the Bag in box pump have a heating element under the box? That would be a good place to start, by melting the box contents.
We just gave theaters hair dryers to heat up the oil lines.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I own a seasonal drive-in theatre in middle Tennessee near Nashville and we are getting ready to re-open for our season in a few weeks. One of the issues we constantly deal with in the early spring and late fall is frozen oil lines on the popcorn machine. Our machine is a 32oz Gold Medal machine with the bag-in-the-box oil pump down in the base of the cabinet. When the temperatures get down below 70 degrees, the oil lines freeze solid. I've got a small space heater I keep down in the cabinet to keep things thawed, but the heat also dries out the kernels, which makes them not pop "fluffy".

I've been thinking about getting some electrical plumbing "heat tape" and zip-tying it to the oil lines. Didn't know if this was overkill. Don't want to melt the oil lines, but at the same time, don't want to deal with frozen oil lines.

Anybody else have to deal with this issue, and if so how does your theatre handle it?

Be aware that the heat tapes made for plumbing may break down when exposed to oil residue, resulting in them failing. You must also connect them to a GFCI receptacle so when (not if) they fail, they won't energize the popper or arc and start a fire.

A small ceramic type heater (NEVER one with any exposed heating elements) inside the cabinet, on the LOWEST heat setting, will provide enough warmth to keep things flowing. Make sure where you set the heater is well away from any potential oil drips, popcorn residue or the cardboard oil boxes.

Can you store your popcorn kernels somewhere else to avoid the drying out issue?

[Marcel Birgelen]

If I interpret Barry's posts correctly, the pump itself is already heated, so there most likely is a heating element under the pump and what's clogging or "freezing up" is the plastic piping between the "pedestal" and the kettle injection system, despite the pump already being heated.

Personally, I'd also be wary using some kind of third-party heating strips alongside those plastic pipes, it will be hard to properly control the temperature of those strips and those pipes being made out of plastic, you definitely risk melting them, spilling popcorn oil all over the place or worse. The Cretors system I know with heated piping, use galvanized, metal braided hoses to connect between the oil pump and the oil delivery system.

[Mike Blakesley]

If I interpret Barry's posts correctly, the pump itself is already heated, so there most likely is a heating element under the pump and what's clogging or "freezing up" is the plastic piping between the "pedestal" and the kettle injection system, despite the pump already being heated.

That's the exact problem. It's the hoses, not the oil in the boxes, that freezes up. Anything below 76 degrees will freeze it, so even air conditioning can cause it to happen.

We use a small space heater which, when the employees arrive for work, they'll set on the floor behind the machine and turn it on high. It takes 3 to 10 minutes to get the oil flowing, depending on how cold it is outside.

Our machine from Cretors is 1996 vintage. I wrote a note via the "contact us" form on the Cretors website a long time ago asking for a solution to this issue and got no response. I can't find anything on their website about it either. HOWEVER, their butter pump has heated hoses built right in. So I'm not sure why they don't just move that idea over to the popcorn machine. You can't use a butter machine's hoses on a popcorn machine because the fittings are differerent (and there's no wiring for it either). We've been using the space heater for so long that I never get around to seeing if there's some way to home-brew a better solution.

[Randy Stankey]

Can you wrap some insulation around the line? Maybe just a piece of split, foam tube?

If the oil is heated in the box and at the pump, maybe all you need is something to keep the line from losing heat and getting too cold.

I don't know... just thinking... It's often the simplest solution that works best.

[Mike Blakesley]

I don't know if insulating it would be enough, but it might be worth a try. The nice thing about the clear tubes we have is, you can see immediately if it's froze or not.

[Randy Stankey]

I wasn't certain that insulating the tube would work but it's simple and easy. If it doesn't work, you haven't spent a lot of time or money. It's still worth a try.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It takes far more energy to melt water than coconut oil, since the intermolecular bonds are far weaker. So, you only need to take it slightly over the edge and it will melt pretty fast. But, the insulation will probably only help if the ambient temperature is above the melting point long enough.

The space heater is probably the easiest way to solve the issue, but will waste the most energy. Maybe an infrared heater would be more efficient, as this primarily heats objects and not so much just the air around it. Also, an infrared heater probably has less a chance of catching fire due to neglect over time, as popcorn oil has the tendency to go everywhere, including inside those space heaters. General disclaimer: I'm not a specialist in those things, so this is purely deduction, it's not my fault if your new infrared heater catches fire and burns the place down.