any advice please???

[Rivers Maple Products]

hey everyone, we are going into our third yr of sugaring and have come to the conclusion that we have to switch to tubing or shut down. With that being said we don't have the capability to buy new pumps and re leaser and the likes, nor used for that matter lol, but i saw this is was wondering if it would work for a vacuum pump or even a pump and re leaser in one unit....We are trying to understand all the vacuum and re leaser things but we are finding it very complicated so this may be a dumb question but any intake would be greatly appreciated, It's a Galvanized 30 gal Vacuum Tank, that's self draining, thanks

[madmapler]

Can you post a picture of it? Maybe explain it a little?

[Urban Sugarmaker]

Just curious, but why would you have to shut down?

[BreezyHill]

Well if the budget doesn't have room for vac pump and releaser then run gravity system to collection tank(s) to reduce the work.

depending on your design needs you could save for a recycled dairy system for a couple seasons and then convert to vac from gravity.

[maple flats]

Do you have any slope? If yes, try 3/16 lines. They need about 30' drop after the last tap for max. performance, but 10 or even 5' will give you some vacuum. On those 3/16 lines, run them as straight down hill as you can, and then dump into a mainline that gravity flows to a tank or just a barrel or tank that you can collect from. Where there's a will, there's a way.
I have 3 vacuum pumps and all 3 combined only cost $1200, 2 are Alamo pumps, a 30-40 and a 50-100, the last is an old BB4. You might also explore the little diaphragm pumps, they don't need a releaser at all, they pull the sap into the pump, then push it to your tank. If you have slope, the 3/16 is by far your best bet, but those other options each have their merits too.
However, I would not use an old galvanized tank, it will have lead in it and the older it is the more lead it has.

[MT Pockets Producer]

How many taps are you running? We set up a small tubing and vac system for very little money this year and had great results. We built our releaser based on plans from threads on this forum an used a small 2.5 cfm pump on 92 taps just to get our feet wet and figure this stuff out. Granted, you are not going to do a large bush on this pump but we could have done another 50 anyway or maybe closer to 100. We did not get quite double the sap per tap on vac compared to the buckets that you read about on here,but 13.4 gallons per tap on vac vs 7.6 on buckets is not far off. We probably would have been a little closer to that mark but we lost about a day and a half of vacuum due to an unreliable power source. Our biggest expense was the larger tank we had to purchase for the additional sap gathered. I must say though, we are scroungers so many of the parts and pieces were items we scraped up for little or no cost. Combine that with a little ingenuity and anything is possible. About December/January I felt the same way you do about vacuum and releasers being confusing. I spent many hours reading this forum for a better understanding and by February we were shop testing a successful system. The folks on this forum are very generous with their knowledge if you want to take the time to research and ask questions. I am less than an hour away from you and would be glad to show you what we did if your are interested in seeing it. Just PM a number and I can call you to set something up. Waiting on our new Gast 1550 pump to get delivered so we can get this thing really rolling next season. It should be here by tomorrow. Purchased that with money we made from all that extra sap and syrup.

[Sugarmaker]

I dont understand the concept of "shutting down" Need more information! Please describe your operation.
I would not consider using galvanized anything in your syrup system.
Regards,
Chris