Leader Open house?

[tuckermtn]

anyone ever go to the Leader open house? (I think its this friday-saturday) never been but curious how it compares to Bascoms...went to bascom's last year but wondering what Leaders is like...

-tuckermtn

[Fred Henderson]

I am heading their way on Fri.It will be about a 3 hour drive one way for me. We are not planning on staying overnite but you never know.

[SapSuckers]

I visited the open house at leader last year. They were still new to their new facility but i thought they put on a great open house. There was displays, classes, ands lots of products. I can only imangine it would be better this year with then fully moved into the new building.

Also, if you are going to be in the area this is Vt's maple festivel in St albans. There will be many activites for the family, and MaplePro is having their open house as well

[802maple]

The best thing about the Leader open house is that all of the other companies are also having a open house at the same time

Lapiere 3 miles to the east.
Maple pro 10 miles south in St. Albans.
D&G 20 miles south in Georgia.

This way you get to see all of the competitions equipment and great seminars they are putting on also.

Plus the Vermont Maple festival is going on in St Albans

[New Hope Mapleman]

I'm planning on going up. I don't know that I will make the Friday, but at least Saturday.

[802maple]

Plus there will be 100"s if not thousands of sugarmakers there at the festival
I believe the site to find info is.
www.vermontmaplefestival.org

[Fred Henderson]

The reason that I am going on Fri is that I want to be back home for Sat. There is an energy fair at Canton college that I also want to attend. I have this very large stream that runs thru my property that has enough flow to generate all the electric I would ever need. The state allowed me to put a weir in it a few years ago. I have computed my total KW's for my house and now I just want to pursue this a little farther.

[802maple]

Good idea I wish I had a stream of some sort as I would do the same thing

[Uncle Tucker]

I was wondering witch manufactures are having open houses on witch weekends.

[802maple]

Leader, Lapierre, Maple Pro and D&G all are having open houses this coming weekend

[Pete33Vt]

Made the rounds to all three yesterday. I think they all did a good job. We started early and hit Lapierre first, then to leader, Leader was pretty packed.
Like I said I enjoyed it.

[super sappy]

I thought that leader did a real nice job this year. The ask the experts discussion with Bruce Bascom, Peter Purington and Glen Goodrich made the drive worth it. Now I have to ask myself....... It is necessary to wash tubing ? The candy and cream session was fun as well.-Sappy

[jdj]

Super sappy,
What did they have to say about washing tubing at leader. Thanks

[Fred Henderson]

I hit all four dealers and Leader was crowded. The parking lot was like a zoo gone wild. When I left around noon there was a tractor trailer blocking the driveway becasue there were so many cars it could not make the turn. Maple Pro was the most impressive to me with their CDL Dallaire evaporaters.

[super sappy]

The tubing ? was weather to wash or not to wash. Glen Goodrich says to wash with water only. Peter puington says that if it makes you feel good do it but he thinks its alot of effort and time for what the return is. (He also made a good point about what happens to untreated water in a pool VS sap residu turning into vinegar. ) Bruce Bascom has left 6,000 taps unwashed this year to see how they run next year. They all agreed that the sanitary adapters were the way to go or a new tap and drop. And also to use the semi rigid tubing for this practice. -SS Ps- FRED we were there all morning. I was the guy shaking my head at the prices.

[Fred Henderson]

SS, I got there just a little after 9AM. I was the tall man with the black sweat shirt that had embroidered on it "Moose Woods Maple Farm" and I was wearing a Kubota ball cap. What did you think of that new evap with the raise/drop flue set-up? I forgot to ask how many feet of tubing that they can make in an 8 hr day. But I was impressed that if some does not come out right the just grind it and run it thru again.

[Pete33Vt]

If that was you Fred I saw you. I am not sure on the amount of tubing they can make but the guy runing it when I was there said he worked the third shift for a while and that was 12hrs of runing. He said a few times buzzers would go off and end up with over 1000ft in one tub. He also said some rolls might be 500, 510,550,or 475. Operator error, But a very impersive setup. Just wish they could find a way to cut down on the cost of tubing to begin with. A good time was had by all.

[Fred Henderson]

We ended up in ST Albans at Maple Pro. They had a wood fire setup in the loading dock area and were boiling water. It was wood fired and forced draft with air injection at different points in the fire box. D&G also had a similar setup but it was not in use. With all the controls that was on it just to run the blower I thought that I would have to go and get my operating engineers licence to use it. Or maybe another year of college.
The tube machine operator did tell me that the machine cost 70 grand which I thought was pretty cheap.

[super sappy]

I dont think that I saw you.It would have been nice to meet you. I may be back to the, trader Verizon had a backhoe out today and my phone line is working better.I hooked up at 12.5 bps. YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH Hyper drive. This computer is so slow that I had to drive a post into the ground to see wich way it was moving!!!--SUPER SAPPY

[cncaboose]

The guy at the tubing machine at Leader today told us it made 70 feet per minute and that they run it 24 hours a day under normal conditions. You can do the math as to how many miles of the stuff they can crank out in a year. Watching another machine cut out stainless mapleleafs and seeing tigwelding on a flue pan were impressive too. I thought it was a great open house. Anywhere you can get free doughnuts, hotdogs and Mountain Dew is OK by me. With maple syrup, they're some of the basic food groups.

[tuckermtn]

I also made it up for the Friday open houses...liked the ask the experts session at Leader...I asked a question about how many taps on lateral tubing runs and Glen Goodrich's response was that it was more a function of overall length of laterals that was important- no more than 150ft. and ideally 6-10 taps per run. I was curious what they would say based on some of the reccomondations on this forum that people are finding success w/ 20-30 taps per run. Despite Glen's reccomondations, I may try a few runs that are longer with 20 taps or so in the future.

Didn't get much out of the Lapperier open house...seemed kind of scattered. Whet to a good vacuum discussion at MaplePro and had a chance to catch up with Chirs from the Mapleguys. The Maplepro rep was talking about trying to get 24" of vac. to the taps...but did pick up a good visual of how to set up a simple oil reclaimer for the surge I'm picking up from Parker.

Not sure I fully have it out of my system yet, so I think I might hit Bascoms next week...

[royalmaple]

Glenn's talking about vacuum, and on here the discussion was more towards gravity. And trying to get natural vacuum from overloading the lines.

[Mike]

Hey Tuckermtn, Mind if I ask how the oil reclaimer is set up! My vac pump doesnt have one and would like to put one on it...Thanks...Mike

[tuckermtn]

The oil reclaimer I saw up at Maple Pro was a pretty simple set up....it was on a Masport pump that has the oil drippers on either side of the housing.

There was a 2" galv. pipe coming off the breather on the pump that went into a filter/breather canister similar to what would be on the side of a Peterbuilt hood. The canister had a vent on top that would let the filtered air out. There was then a drain on the breather/canister bottom that ran via a hydraulic type hose to a small hydraulic tank. The tank then had an outlet on the side with a spin-on hydraulic filter unit that then went into a hose that ran to the two oilers on the pump housing. They had also ported out the pump near the suction side and "T" ed it into the hose that was feeding the oilers on the side of the pump...this part of the set-up I was a little fuzzy about but I think it was just to allow more oil into the pump vanes.

Oily air comes off the pump, gets filtered out of the air in the canister, drips to the bottom, goes into the tank, gets filtered and returns to the pump drippers. I think thats how it goes...but I'm sure other Traders could tell you their set-ups.

-tuckermtn