How Many Taps?

[GSCampChris]

Hello,
We are in our second year of syruping. Last year we did 200 taps, and this year we had planned to go up to 300 buckets and 40 taps on a separate woods on tubes.
I finished GPS mapping today and I have way more good sugar maples than I expected. Now I am having an argument with myself about how many taps. I could go is another 50-100 with the trees we have, but wonder if that would be stretching it. We have a 2x6 Evap and no RO.
How many boiling hours would we have after a good run?
Anyone wanna help me make an educated decision about this?
Also- we don't rely on income from syrup. We are an educational facility, and only take donations for our product.


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[mellondome]

Your calculations will depend on how fast you can evaporate on your 2x6. When i started on my 2x6.. i was lucky to get 20gph. Now 55 is a good average.

Figure out your boil rate and 2 gal per tap for good run day. Rest is just math.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Run some numbers based on what you did last year with 200 taps and multiply it. Every woods is a little different and everyone's setup from the shack to the woods varies greatly. No better calculation than using your own information. For what it is worth, we do 375 taps on tubing that are relatively low yield trees on a 2x5 flat pan. Our evaporation rate is 12-15 GPH max. But we'll have 16 hour boiling days when it runs good for more than 1 day in a row.