Vacuum Pump with Generator

[themidnightsapper]

We obtained an additional acre for our sugar patch which will allow us to run our natural gravity lines with an additional 15' of drop. On the new site are enough maples for about 35 additional taps, however most of these are at or below the elevation of our collection tank. We plan to pump sap from the collection tank to the house with a generator. The question is, if we connect the 35 taps to a vacuum pump (which will run on the same generator) and only run the vacuum for several hours a day, will this be beneficial or would we be better off putting those taps on buckets?

[Clinkis]

Vacuum will definitely give you a lot more sap but I would think with that few of taps you would be much farther ahead to run a 12V diaphragm pump like a Shurflo. These pumps can a handle up to 100 taps and should almost double your sap yield vs gravity and they will run up to 24 hours on a decent deep cycle battery. Running a generator to run a vacuum pump for that few of taps would be poor use of resources I would think.

[themidnightsapper]

Thanks Clinkis....is this the type of vacuum system you run?

[Clinkis]

It was....and it worked great for me but I've expanded my main lines and gotten rid of all my buckets and up to 240 taps so I had to install a full vacuum system with pump and releaser.

I had about 100 taps on a Shurflo last couple years and it close to doubled my yield. If you do some searching on here there are tons of threads with information on them. They are inexpensive and simple to setup.