Dump Station

[wkies]

We have a fairly large bucket operation. To make life easier and not have to climb up into the bed of the truck, I was hoping to build a dumping station off the rear bumper that we could pour sap filled buckets into. I have seen them before with some sort of bilge pump in a container that would transfer the sap into the 225 poly tank. Any ideas? Pictures welcome.

[jimsudz]

here's my dumping station, really saves the shoulders

[adk1]

That is very cool

[tuckermtn]

we have ours set up a lot like Jimsudz. using the 12 volt from the trailer wiring plug, we have a 2000GPH Rule bilge pump in the bottom of a juice drum that is cut in half. We fabricated a little frame to hold the barrel - plugs in to reciever hitch.
The bilge pump is activated by a Rule float switch, but we also have a second on-off switch mounted on the side of the juice barrel. helps prime the pump sometimes. we have had to replace the switch once, but the pump has been good. 5 years of doing approx. 200 buckets a year. We would not do buckets without the dump station.

[harrison6jd]

most of mty taps are on tubing so i don need a dumping station. but i put some thought into the original post and was thinking of something similar to your setup. i just wanted to tell you that is a nifty setup. if i were to do something, i would probably do the same thing. maple syrupers are crafty thats for sure!
here's my dumping station, really saves the shoulders

[wkies]

Great set up.

[Snowy Pass Maple]

We run a similar setup to this picture although ours is not quite as fancy you can make it in about 5 minutes - copied from someone on mapletrader - bucket-sized hole cut in the side of at 55 gal drum, and 5 gallon bucket stuffed in it with some drain holes and filter of your choice keeps it from splashing out when moving the truck to the next bucket. There is at least one picture on our facebook page from last season.

We are using a 55 gal drum on the Harbor Freight hitch mounted cargo carrier - it has held a nearly full 55 gallon drum, but I wouldn't drive around on the road with that kind of load in it!

To move the sap up to a drum in the truck, we used a 5GPM Aquatec food grade transfer pump that we connected to the cigarette lighter and manually switch it on and off - never got around to putting an automatic switch in but that would be nice. The aquatec pumps self prime and can run dry and do a nice job for this kind of application.

Definitely highly recommend building something like this - it made a HUGE difference when we were collecting 100 buckets last year. And the version from jimsudz is really nice!

[johnallin]

We did something very similar. I dump into opening with strainer in place, bilge pump moves it up into "gantry" with a milk sock filter at the end. I can switch tanks by swinging the "gantry" from one to the other. Power comes from 12 volt outlet in dash. For our small operation of 140 taps, it works great. I just dump and move on to next tree.

88268828

[Paul VT]

88670Here I our setup. This will be its third year. Works better then I thought it would.
88660
Sorry about the upside down pics.
Mine is much like the others. Uses the 7 seven way connector. Float switch in the bottom. And another switch before the float switch for when driving down the road it won't turn on and off on the smooth roads. Have a 250 gallon tank in truck with a pop on filter that hangs in the top that filters out all the bark/bugs etc.