Analyzing What Went Wrong?

[steve J]

For the most part this has been a poor season for me mainly because my lines produced very little vs the buckets. Yesterday my buckets were still running while the majority of the taps on lines were dry so I walk the lines and tried to study what went wrong. These lines produced super well 2 springs ago prior to Irene. After Irene I was forced to re-route lines because trees were now missing.

In one case I saw I ran approx. 125 feet of line to pick up 3 trees which I connected to another line correct me if I am wrong but that few trees on that much line probably created no vaccume and may have hurt the line I connected to? on another section of the hill were it is quite steep there is a shelf just above this stepp area with several trees. This shelf is fairly flat and the pitch of this line is not great until I I connect to another line that goes down the steep. From the last tree tapped I had to travel along a fairly flat area about 60ft before tapping into a line going down the steep. Looking at this I now see I could have gone stright over the steep at point of last tree tapped and tapped into another line that also went down the steep about 40ft away but I would have been using the steep to move sap immediatly vs long flat?. Lastly at one point I had noted that my lines seems full of sap yet they were not running very hard I suspect with the cold nights that the lines froze and sucked sap back into the trees possibly causing my holes to now be dry. I am thinking the use of the new CV spouts might be the cure for this.

Does what I describe above make sense or am I just grabbing at straws here?

[unc23win]

I think it all depends on what you want to gain in sap yield. Some people are going for the natural vacuum and others aren't some have vacuum and others don't. I am assuming you are not running any mainline. I would suggest that if you are looking to go to 200 taps and you would like to have them all drain into one common collection point that you try some mainline and make your lateral lines from your mainline to your trees as short and tight as possible and then try to limit the number of taps per lateral line to 15 or less if you are staying with gravity 7 or less if you are thinking about vacuum. If you are interested in trying to get natural vacuum you can run the laterals a little longer and have a few more taps in each maybe 25. CV spouts will keep your tap holes open longer on gravity just like they do on vacuum.

[steve J]

No I do have 3/4 main line about200 ft of it

[jgrenier]

Have you put new spouts on your line or are they the original spouts? The older your spouts are the less sap you will get atleast that is how it has been for me so I atleast put new seasonal spouts on each year.

[PerryW]

From what I've heard, natural vacuum really doen't make that much differernce in sap yield. I'm guessing around 5% increase or maybe 10% under the best conditions. You would usually not get more and a couple inches worth of vacuum.

Also, I don't think the CV spout will do much without vacuum.

[unc23win]

Well how much sap did you get? Talking to a few other producers in my area anything over 8 gallons per tap on gravity is good 10 or more is great. Some are actually finding out some trees are just starting to run.

[steve J]

I do not have an accurate number but I say about 2 gallons of sap per tap. According to Leader the new CV tap yields about 47% more per tap on gravity.