Everyone's thoughts on Farming Magazine article

[MillbrookMaple]

My father-in-law reads Farming Magazine and he told me about an article about using 3/16 lines on gravity to achive natural vacuum of around 25. Here is a link to the article online. http://www.farmingmagazine.com/article-7484.aspx I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on the subject. I have a bunch bushes of around 300-500 taps that I will be running lines for over the next 2 years and was planning on setting them up for vac but maybe I should consider this approach.

[tuckermtn]

very interesting read...I have had very good luck with one set up I have that is all on 5/16 tubing and gravity- 48 taps. over the last few years it has produced between 12-18 gal/tap. Never checked vac levels, but like the gallons per tap.

[lew]

WE used to set up our lines for natural vacuum back in the '80's-early '90's. Stuffing a lot of taps on a single 5/16 line. Some lines had 80+ taps. during a good run you would achieve a good vacuum. I never measured how much, but if you pulled a spile you could hear it hiss. the problem with natural vacuum is that if you have a small run there isn't enough volume of sap in the lines to get things going and it actually hinders the flow of sap. there isn't enough weight of sap in the lines to start pulling downhill and overcome the original friction and get things moving. During heavy sap flows it was not unheard of for us to get 2+ gallons per tap on a 1200 tap woods with an almost steep slope.

[beetree]

Interesting. This seems to go against all the advice I'v heard at the maple supply stores, but it dose sound logical. I have one set that's got 500 ft of 3/4 main line going up a fence row with about 4ft of slope. I'v never been overly impressed with the amount of sap I'm getting there. maybe I should reduce the size of my main line. Anything we can do to increase efficiency without spending ob-seen amounts of money,I'm all for. It's insulting to look at the prices on equipment in any "specialized" industry, especially
in the maple industry!

[wiam]

Reducing mainline size will not help you. Guys are just overloading 5/16 to try to create vac. There are plenty of old dairy pumps out there and the "ob-seen" amounts of money can be made back in less than a couple of seasons. Vacuum is one of the quickest paybacks in sugaring.

[farmall h]

I totally agree with Lew...no flow = no natural vacuum. My folks farm has a very steep sugarbush and we started with buckets 500 +- then added tubing. All tubing back in the mid 80's...1000 + taps and when we had a great run you could hear the sizzle of a squirrel chew!

[Ridgeland Farm]

Im no expert but I have to think if you put a gravity setup with this 3/16 line and vacuum setup like we use now and set the vac at 25 that the vac setup will far outproduce the gravity. JMO Wiam..... you are right, I used a deleval 73 dairy pump the past 2 years on 800 taps and no dry line. got 24gal/tap last year. they work very well