3/16th tubing

[rayi]

I have looked thru the archives and can't find an answer to my question although I know some one has asked it before. I tap about 20 trees with tap to tubing to 5 gallon bucket at the base of the tree. Would it be any benifit to use 3/16th on these taps

[psparr]

I remember a thread about that. Not much gain. The higher you tap on the tree to gain vac the less head pressure you get from the tree.
The upside, is the tubing is real flexible and would be good for drops.

[Paul VT]

For every foot of drop you get .88 inches of vacuum.

[mapleguy]

I am considering installing 3/16 tubing on a portion of my woods nxt. year. There's probably 60 - 80 feet of drop and it's 1200' in length. My question for anyone who tried the 3/16 is can I eliminate some of my mainline I currently have. can the 3/16 lateral be 1000' or longer. I understand 30 - 40 taps are recommended / lateral. Does anyone use the cv-1 or cv-2 adaptors? I see grimm offers a 5/16 x 3/16 tap. Has anyone tried these? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!

[n8hutch]

I used CDL 3/16 this year, the taps were 5/16 with 3/16 Barbs, I personally wouldn't run 1000 ft laterals, the tubing pulls great vaccum but It seems like the flow might be somewhat restricted on long runs, I had 3 runs of 3/16 this year & the shorter runs seemed to out perform the longer ones. They all had similar drop in elevation.The lines are always full of sap so if you have 100-200 ft laterals they are going to thaw much faster than a 1000ft plus. Once they thaw you have instant vac.

[PerryW]

It will be interesting to see if the smaller diameter of 3/16 will result in more clogs after the tubing has been through more than one season.

[n8hutch]

It will be interesting to see if the smaller diameter of 3/16 will result in more clogs after the tubing has been through more than one season..
I am curious about this also, I am pulling my taps & leaving them hanging for a day or 2 before I hook them on the t's hoping that the lines will drain completely

[Maplesapper]

[QUOTE=n8hutch;282267]I used CDL 3/16 this year, the taps were 5/16 with 3/16 Barbs, I personally wouldn't run 1000 ft laterals, the tubing pulls great vaccum but It seems like the flow might be somewhat restricted on long runs, I had 3 runs of 3/16 this year & the shorter runs seemed to out perform the longer ones. They all had similar drop in elevation.The lines are always full of sap so if you have 100

Very interesting Hutch-
We had 400' laterals, and as the tubing sloped down the hill, shaded by the sun, we actually had back pressure as the top taps ran and the bottom of the laterals remained frozen.
Next year we plan to side slope the hills, still maintaining a good drop, but trying to keep all the lateral in the sun.

[mapleguy]

n8hutch, did you see an improvement over what you had previously? Thanks for your time!

[n8hutch]

I can't say I saw an Improvement over last year because it was all new trees that I hadn't tapped previously. What I had was 35 taps on a 600ft run, 20 taps on a 500 ft run ,17 taps on a 300 ft run & 5 taps on a 100 ft run,

The 17 tap run consistently out performed the other 2 large runs , about 1.5 gpt per day. The longer ones gave about 1 gpt per day, and the shortest one gave 2 got per day the 5 tap line had a T at the end and would over flow two 5 gallon pails per day,

All lines had about 20' of drop with the exception of the 35 tap line that had closer to 40' of drop.

The 35 tap Line ran real hard at collecting time, usually 5pm but I think it just took so long to thaw out that it just didn't have time to run before it was frozen again.

I can say for certain that the 3/16 lines ran on days when the buckets did not give a drop & they were still running at the end when my bucket trees had more or less quit.

[mapleguy]

n8hutch, thanks for the info and your time!