Conservative Tapping High Vacuum

[twofer]

Getting ready to put up laterals this weekend and am looking for some guidance towards conservative tapping for high vacuum. The majority of my trees are 21"+ (~90%). Originally I planned to just put one tap per tree but am now second guessing whether that is going to leave a lot of sap in the woods when I could be going to two taps (max) and not doing too much more damage to the trees.

What do you guys think? Go to two taps?

[maplwrks]

Stay with 1!

[ennismaple]

At 21" you're at the borderline where we consider adding a 2nd tap. If it's a healthy, vigorous tree with a good crown I'd probably go with a 2nd tap but it doesn't hurt to be conservative and stay at 1 per tree.

[farmall h]

No, we tap in around July 4! So...plenty of time.:lol:

[Maple Hobo]

From everything I've learned about tapping for vacume VS tapping for gravity (what most information is based on) Each tap has approx. a 16" radius of suction through the tree.

So if you can visualize that by drawing a circle about the size of your tree, then draw a 16" arc on it... The single tap can cover a pretty good sized tree. A second tap would overlap the first one quite a bit on many of the larger trees untill they get really large.

We put 3 taps now on trees that they used to put 5 to 6 taps on.