100 Taps on an 18 x 48?

[arm08260]

I just bought a used 18 x 48 cdl dallaire and was wondering how many taps to run on it. The maple guys website says 25-50 but i gotta think that at 10 gallons sap per hour boil rate it can handle more than fifty taps.

[Bucket Head]

The question should be how many hours a day can you (or want to?) spend boiling sap? You need to figure out how many taps you want, then figure, roughly, how many gallons of sap that will be on a good day and then divide that by ten. Thats how many hours it will take to process sap from "x" amount of taps. I'm thinking 100 taps on that rig will be too much. Would upgrading to a 2x6 be a possibility? I believe you'd be a lot happier with that size rig considering the number of taps you've mentioned.

[SandMan]

50 taps on gravity is 350 -500 gal of sap on an average season. That is 35-50 hours of boiling on that size rig. You also have to consider storage capacity when your only processing 10 gal/hour! You could easily back up to 200gal of sap trying to keep up.

[arm08260]

i was thinking about buying a hybrid pan for it but cant find any cheap enough for what i want to spend.

[jrgagne99]

If you build a little homemade RO for about $300, you could easily do 200 taps on that rig. Check out my "Homemade RO" thread for details. I have a similar size (20"x40") and I'm moving up to 180 taps next year.

[Middleton Maples]

I had a used evaporator that only boiled at 10 to 12 gph, and for the past few years I had 500 to 600 taps. On a good run day it would leave me 12 hours of boiling. It all depends on how much spare time u have during maple season.

[SandMan]

Ok, hmm! Let's calculate this out...550 taps on gravity should yield between 2800-3900 gal of sap on an average season. Possibly as high as 5000 gal of sap on a good year. With a hobby evaporator that boils 10-12gal per hour plus finish time on a propane boil, your talking anywhere between 280-400 hours of boiling. Seriously, unless your not working at all with a regular job, nobody has this kinda time! That's as much as 33 days of 12 hour boils.

Just saying .....

[Mogli]

Don't knock the dedication of a person from otis, we have a way of working harder and longer than most ppl concieve. This being said, I miss otis though, the ithaca area of NY reminds me of the berkshires but it doesnt come close.

[Middleton Maples]

Yea a lot of work, but as a mason my slow season is during february and march. I don't get that much sap a year, never had a season with 33 days of good run, maybe 15 at most. Those days are behind me anyway.

[Dennis H.]

Have you tapped these trees before? If you have what kind of sap volume have you observed?

I have a 2x5 and right now I have about 200 bucket and vac taps on it and I have plenty of time to be able to do more.
There is only a few days a season when I can't keep up.
This is from my trees, all woods trees with smaller canopies.
So you have to look at your trees to decide what they can produce in sap amounts and use that to base how much time you will need to boil it off on the evap that you have.

[slammer3364]

We tap about 90to 95 trees on a 18x48 D&G. There is alot of long boils my son and wife will help boil we had a 15 hr boil this year,made 4 gal of syrup that day.......so I guess it is up to you and what kind of help you have,lots of luck.I did see the one reply to the thread about an RO I might look into that.