Maple Flats
01-08-2006, 10:06 AM
At the winter maple conference I attended a session about washing tubing given by one of our own (but he has never posted yet). Chuck Winship told how he washes tubing. He says he designed his system to be washed and collecting sap was secondary. (?) Seems he has a single pipe system with vacuum with valves to isolate each section and a valve at the far end of each line. With this he washes the main trunk first, discharging onto the ground at the top of the hill, closes this valve and does each leg the same way and after that he does the 5/16" lines and blows out the taps. For this he uses hydrogen peroxide. Buys it form a lubricant dealer (?) as 35% hydrogen peroxide at about $35/gal. He mixes this at 1 gal/300 gal water ratio (which is more dilute than what you get in the drug store). He washes and does not even rinse. Claims he has done it for 3 years on a new pipeline system and has not seen any drop in sap or syrup produced. He was not selling anything and did not give the supplier name just that you could find it from distributors. The peroxide supposedly leaves NO residue what so ever, in the pipeline or on the ground as it breaks down very quickly with any exposure to uv rays of the sun. Says he had some tubing tested recently by cornell and that his (bugs) were 2000x less than tubing washed by more common methods. His readings were 500,000/ml and the normal is 1,000,000,000/ml for other wash methods. His tubing was washed in May 05 and the test was recent. He claims that he has not had any squirrel damage as there is no salts in this solution what so ever.
This year I had considerable damage using calcium chloride and last year was damage from sodium chloride (clorox). I think I will try his wash method. The times he stated were 10 minutes flow on the main trunk line, 10 again on the intermediate lines and 5 on the final lines. He then let it drain and eventually opened and drained the drops which always have a loop to hold some solution. Says if he had more time he would blow out the drops but that will wait til his grand kids are older to help. Except the solution his mothod sounds like mine the last 2 years except I double rinsed mine, still damaged by rodents. Almost forgot. He uses 90psi on the water and 80 psi on the air with check valves to make everything go where he wants it and not backflow.
This year I had considerable damage using calcium chloride and last year was damage from sodium chloride (clorox). I think I will try his wash method. The times he stated were 10 minutes flow on the main trunk line, 10 again on the intermediate lines and 5 on the final lines. He then let it drain and eventually opened and drained the drops which always have a loop to hold some solution. Says if he had more time he would blow out the drops but that will wait til his grand kids are older to help. Except the solution his mothod sounds like mine the last 2 years except I double rinsed mine, still damaged by rodents. Almost forgot. He uses 90psi on the water and 80 psi on the air with check valves to make everything go where he wants it and not backflow.