3/16 vs Ladder

[rhwells2003]

I know, I know this has probably been talked about but I just searched for about 30min and couldn't find anything. I have a piece of my woods that wraps around my house that I currently have 20ish taps on a ladder connecting to vac system. 100' before the ladder I have a gauge and regularly have 20" or so of vac. My ladder is about 12-14' which I think is probably pushing it with only 20" of vac, but for 20 taps I didn't think it was a big deal. I'm talking with my neighbor and he may let me put 40-50 trees of his onto this section too. Makes me nervous babysitting a questionable ladder for 1/5 of my taps. Here's the kicker, I could run 3/16" up from the road with a small tank and disconnect all this from my vac system, and basically have two separate systems. The upper most taps would be 350-370' from the road and probably 90% of the taps are about a 40' drop to the road. I'd also pick up another 10 or so taps on the way up to this section.

So my two scenarios are continue the ladder with 60-70 taps, or disconnect from the vac system, run 3/16 with a separate tank on the road, 40' of drop and 70-80 taps.

What would you guys do?

[maple flats]

3/16 vacuum would be my answer. Gravity never breaks down, run for free, 24/7 all season. Just don't put too many taps on a line. While 3/16 will work with up to about 40 on a line, you are far better off running a line for each 20 or so taps.. For one thing, it's easier to leak check and if you do get leak in a line, you don't lose as much sap production as if you had a much higher number of taps on it. Sounds like, the way you describe it, all but those few taps near the bottom will have max. vacuum. Even those lower ones if they still have some drop will have some vacuum too.

[GeneralStark]

I would go with the 3/16 and ditch the ladder. You could also add a small shurflo type pump and get even better production...

I will be doing a similar thing with about 75 taps below my sugarhouse and pumping from the tank below up to the sugarhouse.