Flushing 5/16 gravity lines idea....

[Dave Puhl]

I run a bunch of 5/16 tubing... main line is 5/16 too...and have been taking down every year..but then unrolling it at home and hooking the hot water hose to it and flushing it...well this season I took a drill pump and a hot bucket of water up the the first tap and pumped water in...worked good but I seen the natural vacum kept the water going in...but I couldnt get to all the taps to flush them so I go down the line pump some more and so on till done ....all my lines are in for the year but my BIG idea is to get a primer bulb ( new of course) like the ones on the boat motor start priming the line and get the siphon/natural vacum going and go from tap to tap down the line and flush them out while the first tap is still sucking the water out of the bucket.....anyone do this or tried it????

[PerryW]

I have several runs of 5/16 only tubing with 20-30 taps each that I wash this way. I take a 30 gallon barrel and put 10-15 gallons of rinse water in it and bring it to the highest tap of the line. I remove the first few taps from the trees and plug them except for the upper tap.

Then I just stick the upper tap in the drum and start a siphon by unplugging a down stream tap and sucking on it. (you can also get the siphon going by using a backpack sprayer and squirting some water in and quickly plunging the upper tap under the water)

Once the siphon gets going, you can walk down the line and pull the taps and work the clean water down hill. I let it run for a while and then plug the bottom so it develops some head pressure. THen go back up the line and unplug the taps again and squirt some more water out.

[sugarwoodacres]

Thanks for info.

[Sugarmaker]

This year I used my RULE 3700 pump to pump clean water back up the line and then removed each tap and let it run for a few seconds., Plugged it in to the cup tee and on up the line to the end (20 taps) Then unplugged each tap as I went back down the line to let the water drain out. Seemed to work OK and hope to save some frustration when I take them down.
Regards,
Chris