Sizing a wet/dry line set up

[waysidemaple]

I'll be headed up to leader this weekend for the open house and plan to get 3/4 to all the mainline I will need to tube my woods. I went through and the rough estimate will be 500 to 700 taps. plus the 250 I had this year. So I plan to run a 1 inch wet line and a 1 inch dry line with 1 inch branch lines off that. Ill use the leader 30p for the wet line and just black water pipe for the dry line. Does a 1 inch wet and dry line sound about right for this type of setup and this number of taps?

Thanks for the input in advance.

Scott

[wiam]

3/4 should be plenty for wet line and branches. Use 1 inch for dry.

William

[sugarstone]

I'll be headed up to leader this weekend for the open house and plan to get 3/4 to all the mainline I will need to tube my woods. I went through and the rough estimate will be 500 to 700 taps. plus the 250 I had this year. So I plan to run a 1 inch wet line and a 1 inch dry line with 1 inch branch lines off that. Ill use the leader 30p for the wet line and just black water pipe for the dry line. Does a 1 inch wet and dry line sound about right for this type of setup and this number of taps?

Thanks for the input in advance.

Scott

keep in mind that on heavy flow days and when your wet line is frozen, sap will come in via your dry line...if you want to consider food grade pipe for your dry as well.
I went black water pipe for my dry line and next time will run food grade. Sap came down my dry almost every morning this year due to frozen wet line (Leader 30p-blue). Obviously because black thaws quicker than blue.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

An advantage to a single size is that all fittings etc are the same size. Simplifies construction and repair. I'd go with the 1". Always better to have too much capacity than too little.
Doug

I'll be at the open houses. Old coot with lotsa grey hair (on the sides at least) and a beard. Will be wearing a maplehaulics sweatshirt.

[Thad Blaisdell]

I would never ever use 3/4 inch wetline..... ever. The smallest I will go with is 1"/1". As far as your mainlines, I do not believe that you need to use 1" unless they are particularly long. I think they are much harder to run, and more expensive for not any gain.

If you have a mainline that is 500 ft long and have 300 taps.... and they run 2 gallons a day. That is only 600 gallons for the whole day. That is not an awful lot of liquid in that pipe at any given time.

[maplwrks]

I agree with Thad---I run 500 taps on a 3/4" line, and on good runs, I have a full 3/4" pipe and some coming down the dry line. Go with 1" wet!

[Amber Gold]

If you think you'll go over 500, go w/ a 1" wet line. I thought I was going to have 500 and ended up with 600 and on heavy runs, I'd have sap coming down the dry line too...it's also on a 2% pitch so it's not helping things. Even w/ sap running down both lines, I was still pulling 26" on the branch lines so I wasn't losing any vac.

You also want the pipes to run as full as possible so the pipe stays cooler and so does your sap so you don't want to go too big. I'd run all 3/4" branch mainline...much cheaper and the additional size isn't needed.

[waysidemaple]

My wet and dry line will be 1500 feet long at least. My branch lines won't be more than 500 feet. So I guess I will plan on 1 inch for the wet and dry line and then come off that with 3/4 inch branch lines. I don't think, if all goes to plan, that I will have more than 150 taps on each of the 3/4 inch branch lines. I went on Google earth tonight and mapped out where I think the mains should go and it looks like it will take just under 6000 feet of mainline to do the rest of my woods. Sound like the right approach to everyone?

[Thad Blaisdell]

Keep your mainlines close enough to not go over 4 taps per lat. Makes a huge difference. Some places that is impossible but do your best and you wont regret it.