Sap ladder configuration

[rogerw]

Have a question for those using sap ladders. I have a new vacuum line bringing 600+\- taps to tank. Approx. 300' feet from tank 2 1" mainline legs come together into an 1 1/4" line. At this point I need to lift it about 8' to maintain grade across a small bog.

Question I have is am I better to construct a ladder on each 1" trunk or to combine them into a short piece of 1 1/4" and lift thru one big ladder.

Thanks for any input.

[BreezyHill]

I have built and used ladders from all size lines from 1" to 5/16" for risers. The most efficient size riser is 1/2" It has the least amount of slippage for higher capacity lines and will thaw faster and rn longer into the evening than any other size riser.

Larger risers will take along time to thaw on a cloudy day and you will loose production.

I would suggest a manifold made of 3" PVC with a wet line on the bottom to drain the manifold and a black dry line on top.

Risers will enter to the bottom and side of the manifold using inserts with no angles. Angles will reduce the efficiency of each riser.

If yo need pics let me know. I have used these manifolds for two season and they work super well. I had to switch large 3/4" and 1" risers mid season and one even mid run one day due to how well the manifold down line was working.

[rogerw]

Any pics of the manifold with larger risers would be a great help. My experience with the ladders are smaller 40-60 taps using stars and 5/16 risers.

[BreezyHill]

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A few tips. Go to ebay to buy the thread cutters for the 1/2" inserts it is far cheaper than anywhere else. It may take you a month to get a great deal but I have every size from 1/8 to 1.5" and the total cost of all auctions is less than $50.

I use rapid tie to support the manifold. It is important that you have no sap covering the insert into the manifold at any time.

Do not use an elbow of any degree on the top manifold. This will greatly reduce the flow of sap into the manifold. You want the sap to rush up the ladder on its air bubble and blast into the manifold. I like to have the inserts 6" apart and entering the manifold so that the sap will swirl around the side of the manifold and let gravity keep it on the bottom and flow to the Mainline exit on a 2% or less slope. Having a small amount of sap in the bottom of the manifold is good to stop swirling sap from the risers.

I use pipe dope to seal all thread holes. Blue from home depot is excellent for sealing va leaks that may happen.

I will searh for the pics I took while making a manifold.

Note that on the bottom I use different angles on the connection to the main line and alternate sides for connections this works very well to balance the flow to each riser.

I have also installed poly ball valves in some pics of ladders to experiment with the number of risers needed to make a ladder flow the best. It is my experience that if you are just over the volume of the mainline with the volume of the risers you will have the best result. Just over will compensate for frictional looses of the risers side wall being greater than the surface area of the mainline. This is one of the factors that hurts 5/16 risers the most IMO.

Remember to install an injector 50' or so from the ladder in the case that you need to add a little air to get the ladder flowing better.
I would also suggest a ball valve in the mainline directly behind the injector in the event that the ladder floods. You close the valve to stop the flow of sap to the ladder and open the injector more than its normal setting and the ladder will clear in a manor of seconds. Then you return the injector to the original setting and open the ball valve and adjust the injector to its optimum setting.

I just at peak flow and walk away.

I plan to install ball valves on the feed line to every ladder this season. The one I experimented with saved me loads of time on a ladder that was not working right. Ended up the star fittings were plugged. I found this out after I switched the ladder to 1/2" risers.

The ball valve on the risers also makes for quicker cleaning of the ladder in the fall. I like to wash down the lines with peroxide solution so they are clean and junk free.

Ben

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

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this is how i do mine

[murferd]

Ogdens,

Do you have more pictures of your ladder? Can't quite make out the connections on top & bottom.

[eagle lake sugar]

How many taps are you able to lift with each 1/2" riser? I might change my existing ladders and build future ones like this.

[BreezyHill]

I have around 608 running thru 4 1/2" risers for a 1" main.

The key to this setup is to match the volume of the main to the number of risers. This will enable you to conduct vacuum thru the ladder with minimal reduction by reducing the pooling in the main and by quicker thaws and slower freezes at night.

Due to this releaser I can tell when the risers will start to freeze.
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To run the longest at night have a straight enterance into the manifold. On an elbow there will be a small amount of sap that runs back down the riser and this will start ice to form. I watched this occur two nights in a row on an elbow enterance and the straight lines ran another 10 minutes before they froze.

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The lines were running in the system even with air temp making ice cycles on the thee.

use a hack saw blade or a dremel tool to notch the wet line to drain the manifold completely and only tap into the pvc as deep as needed to start the threads. Else your elbow will penetrate to far. This one had to be modified to clear the sap flow. I do not glue on the caps but use thread sealer so they can be removed for cleaning and modifications if needed.

[PCFarms]

Hello all,

Ben thanks for your advice - my brother and I installed a sap ladder as per your advice, lets see how they perform this year!
We have to lift about 600 taps up over a 40' slope. We have 2 ladders each 20', but we have split each 20' ladder in half, in effect making 4x10' to make the total 40' rise. See the manifold half way up the ladder. My thoughts are that this "resets" the flow, mixing the air and sap. This eliminates the slippage that typically limits the height of ladders. At least in theory, lets see how it works! We have also put in place a small air injector on a designated lateral line that runs from about 50' upstream of the base of the ladder back to the base.

We also have a tree climbing kit - essential to doing this work safely. (A hunter has a blind in one of the trees that we use for our ladder which also helped)

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[BreezyHill]

Hello all,

Ben thanks for your advice - my brother and I installed a sap ladder as per your advice, lets see how they perform this year!
We have to lift about 600 taps up over a 40' slope. We have 2 ladders each 20', but we have split each 20' ladder in half, in effect making 4x10' to make the total 40' rise. See the manifold half way up the ladder. My thoughts are that this "resets" the flow, mixing the air and sap. This eliminates the slippage that typically limits the height of ladders. At least in theory, lets see how it works! We have also put in place a small air injector on a designated lateral line that runs from about 50' upstream of the base of the ladder back to the base.

We also have a tree climbing kit - essential to doing this work safely. (A hunter has a blind in one of the trees that we use for our ladder which also helped)

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I fear that you will be fitting an uphill battle with this modification.

Slippage is the amount of sap that flows around the bubble and is on the wall sides. A bubble is usually shaped convex with a flat bottom in my glass ladder (1.5" diameter) in the smaller lines the top is still convex but the bottom will look concaved due to the slippage affecting the next bubble. The larger diameter ladder needs more bubbles from the trees to make a bubble to speed the sap up the ladder.

I also have a ridge that I will need to ladder sap up and over. It is 40 and I will be doing it with 3 16' ladders. I have one 18' ladder and was not pleased with its performance on the spider lines it was much better on the 1/2" risers and I wish you luck.

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

Ogdens,

Do you have more pictures of your ladder? Can't quite make out the connections on top & bottom.15214

I apologize for such a long delay on getting back to you, Today the wind took a tree down and when this was laying on the ground i remembered this post

[lew]

Breezy, why do you suggest installing your air breeders 50 feet from the lifter? Why not right at the lifter?

[keill4]

We are trying to lift 600 taps 14 feet using a two pipe system. We installed 2 - 1/2" risers on a 1" mainline, we have puddling and vacuum has dropped after risers. We are not sure what we did wrong. Should we install another riser or what suggestions can you provide. Thanks

[BreezyHill]

For a 1" main you need 4 1/2" risers. to get the sap up the ladder and the vac past the ladder.

4 1/2" are nearly the same square inches as a 1".

[BreezyHill]

Lew, sorry didn't get a notification on this one.

You want to force the sap up the ladder. If you put it to close then the bubbles will not force the sap up the riser on a bubble, just the bubble will rise up the ladder.

[rhwells2003]

So I PM'd back and forth with Breezy a decent amount in January about two small ladders around my house, and I thought I'd share my set-up and some results. So both of these spots are small. One ladder is 14' and lifts 25 taps, and the other is a 12' ladder that lifts 30 taps. The 30 tap ladder is all 1" mainline, and the 25 tap ladder is a 3/4" main below the ladder and 1" above it. I also run a gast 1550 pump that usually gets me 23.5"Hg. So I set my ladders up like breezy does with 1/2" ladders. He was concerned with how few taps I have that the ladder might struggle with the smaller volume of sap. So both of them I installed two 1/2" lines in the ladder with one of them having a 1/2" ball valve incase I didn't need it. My set-up was the main coming from the trees to the bottom of my ladder, with (2) 1"x0.5" tees or 3/4"x0.5" tees, then up the 1/2" lines to a 3" pvc manifold my brother-in law made for me. He tapped the 1/2" ports directly into the bottom and then tapped a 1" port for my main leaving the ladder. He then epoxied and screwed plexiglass on the ends so I could see in and make sure things were working right. I didn't install a bleeder valve in my bottom main but both situations at the end of my mains I have a vac guage and a ball valve. All I did was just barely cracked that ball valve so I could barely hear any air. It literally didn't effect my vac at all.

So I think my results have been pretty good. No I don't really have a ton of volume of sap to probably make it work the way its suppose to but I never have pooling, and I have good vac at the end of my line. So when I first turn my vac on there is usually sap pooled at my tees. Once I turn it on it takes a couple seconds for some air to get that first plug of sap pushed up through the ladder. After that pooling is cleared (literally not more then 10sec.) it seems like a sort of violent bounce of sap and air going up and down my ladder. I think this is b/c of the lack of volume of sap being able to constantly fill the ladder. But this allows me to only use the one 1/2" line and therefore it never being full full I always have good consistent vac on my bottom main. I've tried opening the ball valve and using the 2nd 1/2" line and it seems all the air goes up the first tee while the futher down slope tee just sits stagnant and pools up till the sap hits the upper tee and acts the sameway as I explained before. So I've kept that valve closed off and have been using just the one 1/2" line. Like I said before I usually have 23.5-25" before the ladder and at the end of the main after the ladder I consistently have 22-23".

After getting use to the set-up and not worrying about it all the time I just walk right by these ladders and aren't constantly checking or babying them. The one thing I would suggest is the upper manifold pipe make sure you use a good thick pvc pipe. My brother-in law used a thinner wall pipe and the 1/2" pipes coming up in I have them screwed 1/2" up in so they're fine. The 1" drain line I wanted that almost flush with the inside of the pipe to drain all the sap. Well with thinner wall pipe that doesn't leave a lot of the fitting screwed into the pipe. I had to put a lot of pipe tape on the fitting and I still had to silicone the outside so they didn't leak. But no leaks now and seems to be working good

[MT Pockets Producer]

We are using the attached set up with 3 risers on 30 or so taps and are having issues with sap stalling in the lines. Mains are 3/4 inch with between 50 and 60 taps total on a Gast 1550. Laterals before ladder moving fine and after ladder sometimes going backwards with no movement up ladder. The vac at the releaser is 27" and at the end of the lower main after the ladder is 25". We are thinking it is a pooling issue and are considering adding another riser. Had considered the 1/2 inch riser idea but were concerned about small amount of taps/ volume to work properly as mentioned above. Tried cracking valves to introduce air with same results. Should that air be introduced between the valve in the pic and the ladder or somewhere on the opposite side of the ladder? Not opposed to converting to manifold style ladder if thoughts are that it would work better. Thanks.

[PCFarms]

We trialed our sap ladder this year - 600 taps with a rise of 40'. I posted earlier with our exact configuration - we broke it up into 4x10' ladders, each with 4x1/2" risers.
The results were quite good, the ladder never stalled and we had good vacuum most the season. We ran about 22 inches in the bush and were getting 17 at the end of the lines. I thing we can do better by tightening our mainlines as there are some pretty flat sections. We had a very busy season and no time whatsoever to take and look at how to improve.

In any case it worked quite well, I might consider adding a 5th riser to the system as I think it struggled. We have two 3/4" lines and one 1" line coming into the base of the ladder.