flushing out liones

[maplefarmer]

I have 50 taps on 6 runs of 5/16 lateral lines feeding into 1/2" mainline, question is could i blow them out with port. airtank or do they need to have water ran thru ?

[Brent]

Ask 50 sugarmakers this question and you'll get 55 different answers.

I pump water into mine from the bottom until everything is full. Leave it a few days, then drain. Sugars end up everywhere inside the tubing.
If you don't fill them, you won't get the stuff on the tops, especially if you have 3/4 or 1" mainlines.

After that I put on the vacuum and take a pail of water to each tree and dunk the adapter in and let is suck 1/2 to 1 gallon to really flush it.
When they're all done on each system, I continue to let the vac run to dry out the lines.
If you don't do something like this, you get mould and crud inside.
Some guys use a bleach solution, some use alcohol, some use commercial tube cleaner(squirrels really "love" the salts from bleach and commercial tube cleaners, as compared to just water flushed, which they only just "like" )

Lots of guys do absolutely nothing, even some of the biggest producers with tens of thousands of taps. They let the snot grow inside all summer, and dump the first runs of the next season on the ground and waste it, then bitch about making dark syrup.

Some guys have compressed air / water injectors that I think would do a better job than my method, but you need compressed air in the bush, and that isn't always so easy.

Good luck. If there was an absolutely "right" way, it would be easy.

[PerryW]

Oh, I thought you meant Lions were roaming around in your sugarbush and you needed to get rid of them:o

I pull each tap and squirt w/ water w/ backpack sprayer

or get a siphon started at the top, plug the bottom and work the waterlevel up the hill pulling each tap and plugging as I go up.

maple dealer in Monroe NH told me dry vacuuming was all the new rage.???

[markct]

last year i washed about half my lines with water drawn thru under vac, i let the vac pull it dry and then capped the tap. Got busy with some other stuff and the other lines sat and finaly just pulled the taps and didnt wash them, to my surprise this year i didnt get any worse crap outa the lines that were not washed, infact in some areas it appeared even less stuff came out. i think this year i am just going to pull them and let the vac suck them dry and be done with it, the first sap that comes out always looks a little cruddy either way but once its filtered all is good it seems. I think my lines on gravity i will simply blow out with compressed air and call it good.

[Brent]

I can't point to a reference where I read it but the real purpose seems to be to reducing the effect of the microbes and bacteria on next year's sap.

On most systems the sap takes quite a long time to flow through the lines and doing that, picks up or can pick up a good load of the microbes that
cause darker syrup. So to my understanding cleaner lines means lighter syrup.

Apparently Bascom do not clean their lines and make one ugly dark batch of syrup on the first run of the year, then it gets light quickly and then gradually
darkens as the season goes on. Older pipeline systems make more dark stuff.

Our pipelines are on their 3rd year and this was the first time we made any Canadian "Amber" grade. The darkest A grade we have.

[adk1]

this is the next thing I really need to figure out, how I am gonna wash these lines. I dont know how a pressure washer will work really, cant see that there will be enough presure for 1000' of 3/4" mainline and 3000' of lateral line.

[PerryW]

this is the next thing I really need to figure out, how I am gonna wash these lines. I dont know how a pressure washer will work really, cant see that there will be enough presure for 1000' of 3/4" mainline and 3000' of lateral line.

It really isn't the length of your tubing as much as the vertical rise. Every 32 feet of elevation requires 14.7 pounds of pressure so if your pumps will do 45 PSI you are good for about 100 feet of vertical rise.

But the real tubing washers pump a mixture of liquid & air. This does not create the head pressure that pumping a solid column of liquid up your pipes would and they can pump much higher.

[stoweski]

Think about the diameter of the nozzle in a pressure washer.... quite a bit smaller than that of a 3/4" or 1" tubing line. Sure, the pressure will be greater the first 10' but after that it will trickle.

Not that I have all of the answers... and I don't have a tubing washer with liquid & air, but my plan is to use my sap pump (30 GPM) and connect it to the top end of the mainline. Fill one of my tanks with water and start the pump. I like the idea of filling the lines and leaving them for a bit before flushing so I may flush, fill, cap, wait, and then flush again. I would assume that there will be quite a bit of flow at the bottom end while pumping... more so than using a pressure washer.

I'm also thinking of taking my air compressor and blowing air through the lines after they've had time to drain... though I'm assuming that the nozzle on the air compressor is just as small or smaller than the nozzle on the pressure washer.

My biggest concern is what to do with the leftover water in the laterals that go around the tree. I have dead end rings (I'll be replacing them this season with Leader's 'flow through' end rings) and water/ crap will accumulate in the 'dead zone'. Another concern is what to do with the lines after they're "cleaned"... I'd like to leave them open but I can imagine all of the insects and/or critters that will try to make it their home. Ideas?

[PerryW]

I plug all my taps after the rinse is complete except the end tap of each lateral. I break off a twig and stick in in each end tree spout so that the tap can still suck air, but the mud wasps don't have room to fill the spout w/ mud.

[adk1]

yeah, I am thinking about the filling the lines thing. I cant fill them from the top though, would have to be from the bottom. that is gonna be alot of water with 1000' of 3/4" line then all the laterals. I need to PM you regarding your sap puller/pump to see what you got. I am thinking about a puller next year. also, I have the Lapierre slides for the end tree, I like them overall. I love them for the mainline fitting. But, after watching them all year and the amount of sap that stays in the line going around the tree, I am gonna use a section of wire to go around the tree then attach my slide to that. I think it will work.then the tap will be going straight down into the line rather than around the tree.

[PerryW]

Yeah, I have NO pump. I top-feed my mainline from a spring and get all the laterals uphill of the spring w/ a backpack sprayer.

For End Trees, I am gradually switching to a straight 5/16" connector, then hooking a wire through the little hole in the connector and wrapping the wire around the end tree (with a piece of scrap tubing to protect the tree). No more sap runing around the tree or a dead-loop.

[Brent]

We have the smallest Honda gas pump, I think its a WX10 and that one will pump up from our releaser tank to the highest taps, which are roughly 40 - 50 feet above the pump. Not a lot of pressure left at the top, but we only want to fill the lines to dilute the sap. We start with the pump at lowest speed, go to the lowest trees and pull the taps. When the water squirts out we cap them and move up hill. Eventually we have to go back down and crank the pump up a bit.
Each of our sections is about 250 taps and it takes less than the 70 gallons of water on the Gator tank to fill each section.