How about a vacuum bucket?

[red dorakeen]

So while boiling today I got this harebrained idea. Take an air tight 5 gallon bucket with one of those screw on lids. Add a fitting for sap inlet from the tap and a fitting to suck some air out with a little vacuum pump.

I imagine as it filled the vacuum wouldn't be as strong but as a little airtight system bacteria could be minimized.

It might be good for folks with few trees or of course it might not work at all but I'm curious if it could work.

[Russell Lampron]

It won't work because the amount of vacuum that would be enough to pull sap would collapse the bucket. It only takes about 3" of vacuum to collapse a 55 gallon barrel.

[DrTimPerkins]

You would also lose vacuum fairly quickly as the tree produced gases (along with sap) unless you had a really big vacuum reservoir of some sort (a tank of nothingness).

[red dorakeen]

You would also lose vacuum fairly quickly as the tree produced gases (along with sap) .

I didn't know that. As usual you're a wealth of knowledge.

I think some sort of vacuum could be created in a bucket without crushing it. I figured the weak link would be how well the tap seals.

[motowbrowne]

I think a much much cheaper option would be to run tubing to a Shurflo pump. The tubing, taps, pumps, are all very inexpensive. It wouldn't be hard even on perfectly flat land to run a tiny vacuum system that would do what a couple dozen of your vacuum buckets would do, if they could be made to work.

[red dorakeen]

I think a much much cheaper option would be to run tubing to a Shurflo pump. The tubing, taps, pumps, are all very inexpensive. It wouldn't be hard even on perfectly flat land to run a tiny vacuum system that would do what a couple dozen of your vacuum buckets would do, if they could be made to work.

Just curious if it could work. I figured it would only be good for someone that had only a few trees.

[motowbrowne]

Just curious if it could work. I figured it would only be good for someone that had only a few trees.

I see where you're coming from, but if you're talking about having a pump anyway to create vacuum in the bucket, a Shurflo and some tubing could be used for just a few trees in the same sense. The big difference I see is that all of the stuff a person would need already exists and is cheap and easy to deal with. A vacuum bucket that is sealed to the tap and also needs to be unsealed from the tap and opened up to be dumped when the sap is collected just seems challenging to engineer and expensive versus tubing. It would look kinda cool hanging on a tree, though...

[spud]

A few years ago there was talk of a sap bag that has vacuum. Was that just talk or are they really working on it?

Spud