Slope problems

[royalmaple]

I am new to setting up main lines etc and for 1 I think it may be overkill in my situation but due to distances between trees or groups of trees I have opted to run a 3/4 main line and latterals off that. In one area for example I have say 50 taps main line is about 250-300 feet long, and most taps are at the high side of the main line.

At start I am dumping into a trash can so say final height of line is 3 feet off ground, and I would say that is particular layout does have some natural slope and I have the other high end at about 4 1/2 feet off the ground. But my trees are in pretty level areas off the main line, so in order to end up higher than the main so they flow somewhat into the main my latterals are 6 feet off the ground at say 100- 150 feet out.

Do others have the same problem and what do you do when you need extension ladders just to tap the trees to get slope? Switch to buckets.

Honestly for my application and talking to others (thanks brandon) I think it is best to run mostly 5/16 line in smaller groups and do away with the main line. Just seems too cumbersome and does not seem to fit my application. Or I am just out to lunch and need some light shed on the subject.

Also if you are setting up on a level piece of land, lets say. Do you just eye up the slope in the latteral lines and if they "look" to be sloped is that good enough?

I appreciate the input. Big learning curve. I'll need to keep a close eye to any posts about seminars etc and do some traveling and scoping out other operations.

[mountainvan]

on one of my lines, bout 100 taps into a 100gallon tank, I have the tank buried a foot in the ground so my mainline is roughly 2ft at the tank and 3.5' at the end on fairly level ground 300" 1/2 mainline. a line level or berger sight level are good to use when laying it out. as long as your taps are higher than your mainline getting the perfect slope isn't necessary. There are guys who hang everything on wire to get slope on flat land.

[sweetwoodmaple]

Well, sometimes it takes being creative. And, sometimes it takes extension ladders! :lol:


First, Buy a sight level (if you don't already have one). Once you get it, pick a slightly sloped area and drive two posts in the ground, leave them stick up about 3' or so for convenience. Now, start at one post and set the sight level on top of the end of the post and sight in the top of the other post. Remember where the bubble fell on the scale or write it down. Walk over to the other post, and do the same procedure looking at the first post. The bubble location should be opposite, but showing the same slope. If not, the level is not calibrated correctly and should be adjusted or taken back for a new one. This is important if you are going to be using this level to get just the bare minimum of slope on your ground so you don't get a nosebleed while tapping. :wink:

Ok, some ideas.

Acquire some 55 gallon plastic barrels and seal up the bung plug (check for leaks just to be sure). Next, drill out the vent bung plug to accept your 1/2" or 3/4" line. Lay the barrel down horizontal on the ground, or dig a little trough to get the main line height as low as possible. This will gain you a few feet over your trash cans.

Once you get a the lowest point possible for your tank, use fence wire and tighteners to route your main line. This will keep it straight and also allow easy adjustment with your sight level to get the exact 3 to 5% slope needed. Wire up your main line once you have the slope correct and the wire very tight.

As far as other advice on running tubing, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You really need to find someone in your area to look at your sugar bush.

Good Luck

P.S. And in those reverse slope cases...there is always vacuum...

[royalmaple]

One other thing I did that I see now was not a good idea, at least for what I did was run #14 Electric fencing wire as my guide wire. Seems a bit too brittle, and I was not able to really reef on it and ratchet it without breaking or sagging. And if I tried to tie to trees I passed by along the way, it always seems like I was causing more peaks everytime I tied off to a tree along the way.

Anyone else used this stuff with success? I figured I could save some money. I bought 1/4 mile spool for 20ish bucks, compared to 60 ish bucks for 800 feet of #9 and that stuff seems so difficult to deal with.

I guess the main thing is to do all the set up work ahead of season so you have all the bugs or most of them ironed out. I think I am mostly chasing my tail trying to do this set up stuff in season.

Worst I can do is spend more money and just lose my sap with mistakes. Gives me something to learn from anyway.

[royalmaple]

Thanks I do have a berger sight level but honestly never understood how to use it properly or what the hash marks in the viewing window were representing. Do you run a tape to get your distance to calculate the slope?

I was using a rubbermaid container in one instance which did get me closer to the ground as you mentioned which did help.

Also you mention fencing wire, do you use regular #14 electric fencing wire and no problems getting it tight over a span? I snapped a piece just ran one strand about 200 feet and had a ratchet on each end of the line and with the tension I had on the lateral lines hooking onto it, the thing snapped.

I got it 1/2 doctored up now so at least there is some slope to the mainline. only thing that saved me was it was the first line I had set up the chinese finger traps on and they held.

[GregMVT]

My first year I tried the aluminum electric fence wire to hang tubing on. It was light weight and easy to use but way to many problems. Could never get it tight and our 13 acres border an elementary school so we kids walking through on the trails and they would break the wire. Once it's broke I could never get it as tight as when I first hung it. I ended up pulling it all down and using the 12 guage galvanized wire. It has worked really well. I anchor it to a tree that will be culled in the future at the high point and walk it down to wear it will end. Then I use the winch on my ATV to tighten it, then run wires out for my laterals. All my tubing is hung on wire because of the way the land slopes. The sugarhouse is near the norhwest corner with a hill/ridge running north-south right behind the house. Most of the land and trees are on the eastern and southern areas with a lot of flat spots. I have a couple large areas with 30+ taps on 1/2 mainline but most are small with only about 10-15 taps on 5/16 tubing. All of them run into the rubbermaid containers, either 20 or 30 gallons with a couple of 5 gallon buckets on the really small lines. I set up 2 pumping areas with quick disconnects on 1" mainline. I needed to use a step ladder to get these high enough but it works great. There is a 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tank attached to a carryall on the back of my tractor that I use to collect then take it to one of the pump areas and use a small Tanaka 2 stroke pump to empty the stock tank and send it down to the sugarhouse.

Greg

[royalmaple]

Greg-

Sounds like me. Actually I was brainstorming about some sort of rig that would work in a similar fashion. I was thinking of hanging or suspending a container up in a tree(could use my deer tree stands to support them), then attaching a line could be 1/2 or 5/16 and running serious slope either to a large collection tank or right to my house.

Then I was going to have 5/16 lines going into a container and have a 12v battery right by the container, a bilge pump w/ float in the lower container with tub extending up to the overhead container. Then as a run occured sap would flow into the lower container and be pumped up to the overhead container and flow away.

Then depending on need I could set up additional overhead containers and tie into the line.

Just a thought, but I like playing with this stuff and I like inventing / creating "systems" , even though I know about zero with maple industry.

[lew]

Since you already have a sight level, get someone to show you how to use it correctly. There really isn't much to it. This level will take all of the guess work out of running your mainline. You'll be surprised at how much slope you actually have (or don't have) once you look through your level and know what it is telling you. As far as wire on the mainline, we use 9 gauge wire to support the mainline and 12 gauge to support it. What we do is anchor one end with a heavy screweye and lay the 9 gauge wire on the ground to the other end where it is anchored with another screweye. The wire should lay on the ground all the way and run between many trees on its course to the other end. Then we take the 12 gauge wire and support the 9 gauge wire. To do this we wrap the the 12 gauge once around the 9 gauge then wrap it around itself several times. Then you take the 12 gauge and go around a tree and back to the 9 gaugeand pull the 9 gauge a small amount. You repeat this process several times along the 9 gauge, pulling the 9 gauge back and forth, one way and then another, a small amount at a time. the 9 gauge shouldn't start to tighten up until you are almost to the opposite end. Once all of your 12 gauge supports are in place, you can go back down throught and tighten up your 12 gauge wires to makemake your 9 gauge wire tighter than a fiddle string. You acn't have too many 12 gauge supports. When you get done, the mainline will have a sort of zig zag appearance, but should have a nice even slope down hill (htat's where you use your level). I should have mentioned that when you put the 12 gauge wire aound the trees, you should slide the wire through a piece of old tubing so that the wire won't cut into the tree, and it will be easier to move the wire should the need arise. We have found that with this system we can get the mainline wire tighter than with a fencing tightener rachet. Actually we have pulled those types of tighteners apart when trying to incorporate the two methods of tightening together. The highlights of using this type of tightening is 1, you can tighten or loosen the mainline at anypoint you may need or want to without any tools. 2, If a tree or large limb falls on your mainline, the 12 gauge supports will either slide down the tree or break, leaving the 9 gauge wire intact. Sorry so long winded. Didn't know how to say it any quicker.

[royalmaple]

Lew-

Thanks, are you attaching both ends of the mainline then adding in the 12 ga tree -to- line wires?

[lew]

Yes. I attach both ends first. Remember, the 9 gauge should lay right on the ground when you first start with both ends attached. Also, I forgot to mention that the screweyes need to be a closed eye and not an open hook. Even if they are heavy duty (3/8"), if the eye is actually an open hook, the pressure you eventually apply will actually open the hook the rest of the way and your line ends up on the ground. Also, make sure you knot your wire well at the eyes so that they don't slip. We wrap the 9 gauge through the screweye twice then make our knot and twists to hold the wire in place.

[royalmaple]

Lew-

Ok. so you don't need to pull it banjo tight to start then tighten even more with additional side wires?

I was previously makeing a loop around the end tree and adding two ratchets to the ends, cranking and then trying to get sags out with side wires.

I think some "give" was happening in the loop stretching as well. Hence the screw eyes into the trees, makes more sense.

I was wondering how anyone could possibly get their lines tight when I know some people have miles of wire up and I can't get a 200-300 ft run to stay tight?


On a side note, at one end, upper end of the main I have added a spider fitting and run out 6 lines from that. I attached the lines directly to the fitting and were all very tight and I see that the fitting is actually leaning back from the tension on the rear fittings. Should I have done a normal type attachment instead....hooking each line to the wire first then making a loop to the spider fitting?

[maple flats]

Yes it should have hooked to the wire first then looped to the spider. I have a few smaller mainlines with from 20 to 72 taps on a main of 3/4". I looped the wire aroun the end tree with wooden blocks to keep it from digging in(early set ups were 9 Ga and my last is 12.5 high tension.) and then running it to the tank end and around an anchor tree there with a tensioner at 1 end up to 300' and 1 each end if over 300', getting pitch using a berger site level. All but the last one i did are quite flat land. On one of mine the line starts at the tank in a depression formed by a blow over many years ago at 32" above ground and ending at 6' above ground however the high end is surrounded by lower sugar maples that some are tapped as high as 14' above the ground so they can flow to the main which is anchored to the tree on a knoll. On a 400' main this only gives me a 2'/100 drop. If I get vac set up some day this can change. Tapping that high is a pain but I look at it slightly differently, being a sawyer as well as into maple, I save the butt log without tap holes but still get the syrup. If I remove some trees to improve the site I can get the best lumber from the butt log still on these high tapped ones. The best I can hope for is an earthquake that tilts my woods but then it is so much sand under the top layer that it would end up flat again before long.
Next I hang the main line from the wire which is TIGHT and hook 5/16 into the main at nearly right angles to the main. I have up to 9 taps on a line but most are 6 or less. After the season remember to let off tension on the wire. I have a corner tree on one line that is now leaning at prevailing leeward and I had left too tight the first year, however I am not sure I helped it but my tension was also pulling it the same way. (tree is a hemlock about 15" dbh, now leaning against another bigger tree) I have no side wires but if your design calls for branches out from the main this will tighten the main as well. Others of my lines are like spiders with branches of fron 4 to 8 taps run to a central low area with 4 to 6 branches on a tank. The line ends at an anchor tree and an end ring elbow with the angle down then hooks to the spider and then a short piece of pipe runs into a stock tank on some and a trash can on others. I have set ups like this with from 20 to 33 taps on each. Each time I do a set up I look at the situation and try my best to decide which method is best. I often find it faster to set up /tap for the spiders but must keep in mind the collection time. Each time I move the tractor and put the lines out and restart the pump time is lost over pumping time for the larger tank set up. It all depends on how hard it is to get more taps into a single tank and what the supplies will cost vs the potential time saved during the sap season.

[lew]

Yes, you should attach your lines to the wire first for exactly the reason you mentioned. too much stress on the mainline fitting.

Yes, also to not having the wire tight before adding the support wires.

We used to start and end our maonline wires by wrapping around the tree and using blocks also. But this did leave room for give and was more of a pain to make and maintain. So we started using screweyes about 6 or 7 years ago and havn't looked back.

As far as runnign long distances, we used to run up to 2 50pound rolls of 9 wire as a maximum before we ended it. Now I don't think I would run any more than 1 roll (about 800 feet). Maybe even shorter. This just makes it easier to maintain when you do get a tree fallen on top of the line. Only a small section of wire will be loosened up.

[royalmaple]

Thanks, I'll try to implement this on my next set up.

[maplehound]

Matt,
I too like the eye bolts on the end tree's. I might add though that you should use long eye bolts and leave some stick out so the tree has room to grow without growing over the bolt. If you use these long eye's then every couple years you can back them out a turn or two to allow the tree to grow even more.
Ron

[royalmaple]

Thanks, do you guys also use the chinese finger traps on the main line tube as well?

I wasn't sure if they were a must or just something else to add on.

[maplehound]

I have never used them.
Ron