underwater taps... safe to use again?

[SilverLeaf]

The rapid melt of a larger-than-normal excess snowpack this year has put some of my taps under water. Still can't get at 'em, but that could change this week as things drain.

What I'm wondering is, are there any disease concerns if I start collecting the sap once I can get at them again? Obviously I'll be washing out the buckets, etc., but with who-knows-what floating about in the muck, has that "contaminated" the taphole in any way related to disease? I'm sure one effect of this is that the holes are probably going to quit running faster due to the extra bacteria they've been exposed to, but this isn't really my concern. I'm just wanting to make sure it's safe to use. I'm assuming the sap flow probably does a good job of flushing anything out, and I know the boiling process kills a lot of buggers too, but just want to make sure there's nothing I'm missing from the equation here....

[buck3m]

Seems to me that just about the best way to sterilize something is to boil it. So as far as food safety goes, all the sap will be thoroughly boiled and any bacteria that would have been in it will be killed. The flood can't do any good as far as drying up the tap holes and all that of course, but if it were me I'd wash out the buckets and not worry about the sap itself.

[Kev]

just be glad you still got the buckets....

[brookledge]

You don't hear of that happening very often. Like Kev said be glad you didn't lose anything other than the sap that was running
Keith

[NDTapper]

I might be in the same situation since the Red River is due to come up any day now. But I'm more worried about the trees having an "open wound" when the river comes up. Anything to that?

[Kev]

I might be in the same situation since the Red River is due to come up any day now. But I'm more worried about the trees having an "open wound" when the river comes up. Anything to that?

might depend on what else is in the red river besides H2O.
after seeing about 20 buckets had traveled down the sangamon river once to parts unknown. I would be VERY tempted to save the buckets and forgo the sap before its to late.
but I admit I am predjudiced... the same time the buckets washed away I could not reach several dozen buckets for an extended period of time. thats when over 20 more got split from being full and frozen solid. so with a loosing the use of over 40 buckets in a 140 bucket hobby operation it was a pretty pricey trial of a mapling location. I would love to tap that place again...but it will be with gravity tubes from up high on the trees to out closer to the road if I ever do it.

[NDTapper]

In my case, the Red rises quite slowly. We will know a week ahead of time if the river will get to the trees or not based on flood forcasting models that are pretty reliable. So, I will pull accordingly.

The Red itself is pretty clean. People eat a lot of walleye, etc from the river.


might depend on what else is in the red river besides H2O.
after seeing about 20 buckets had traveled down the sangamon river once to parts unknown. I would be VERY tempted to save the buckets and forgo the sap before its to late.
but I admit I am predjudiced... the same time the buckets washed away I could not reach several dozen buckets for an extended period of time. thats when over 20 more got split from being full and frozen solid. so with a loosing the use of over 40 buckets in a 140 bucket hobby operation it was a pretty pricey trial of a mapling location. I would love to tap that place again...but it will be with gravity tubes from up high on the trees to out closer to the road if I ever do it.

[ComputerSteve]

We started the season with 37 taps. Last week we lost 11 of them due to the river the trees were next to overflowing and so much that some buckets were washed away and the others were floating in deep water, still anchored to the trees by the tubing. (We use individual tap and tubing toeach bucket). In a small hobby operation, losing almost a third of the taps really reduces output.