Using vacuum to bring sap to sugar house

[Windy Acres]

I've heard of a couple people doing this, and I'm looking for some information on it, our tanks are approximately 2500 feet from the sugar house and it would be approximately a 50 foot rise

[Haynes Forest Products]

Are you able to get to the collection tank and pump it the 2500' to the shack. You could install mainline wire and run a 1" -1 1/2" transfer line and pump it up and let it run/pump back to the shack tank.

[Russell Lampron]

I'm assuming that the collection tank is at the bottom of the 50' rise. I believe Lapierre has a vacuum powered sap pump that might do what you want.

I have a similar situation where my collection tank is 1500' from the sugar house and there is a 50' elevation change. I ran a 1.25" pipe from the tank to the sugar house and used a 2" gas powered pump to pump the sap up the hill. The biggest problems with that are that if it's below freezing the sap will freeze in the pipe before it gets to the sugar house and the pipe holds about 125 gallons of sap. It takes about a half hour for it to drain back. I got a bigger tractor and pump the sap into a tank on a trailer and haul it up the hill that way now. It turns out that I can haul two loads up to the sugar house faster than I could pump the sap up the hill and drain the pipe.

[Windy Acres]

That's what we are currently doing now, and from talking to a few people I think that is the way to keep doing it, I dont have any power down in the woods and we are using all 3/16 so there isn't any vacuum down there either, was just trying to save some time

[TheMapleMoose]

Generator and deep well submersible in a pvc vessel, that is how we are doing it. Not as much distance, we only pump 1600'. There is a thread on long distance sap pumping where I picked up some info when setting ours up. There is another on pumping into vacuum also I believe. Our vacuum pump is at the sugarhouse so we could use the vacuum to assist our pumping, but we don't have the spare releaser....and figured for $1000+ we could buy a generator and a pump. But lots of guys are doing it.

[Windy Acres]

Do you have any pictures of your setup?

[TheMapleMoose]

Took this one last year, and it's the only one I have currently. I'll take a few more next time I'm at the sugar House

[wiam]

Generator and deep well submersible in a pvc vessel, that is how we are doing it. Not as much distance, we only pump 1600'. There is a thread on long distance sap pumping where I picked up some info when setting ours up. There is another on pumping into vacuum also I believe. Our vacuum pump is at the sugarhouse so we could use the vacuum to assist our pumping, but we don't have the spare releaser....and figured for $1000+ we could buy a generator and a pump. But lots of guys are doing it.

What hp pump are you using?

[S.S.S]

18569With this mes releaser we pump sap 2800’ with a 60’ rise.

[unc23win]

Took this one last year, and it's the only one I have currently. I'll take a few more next time I'm at the sugar House

Does that work on a float switch or do you manually operate it?

[Windy Acres]

Maple moose, what size line are you pumping through, and what size pump are you using/ size PVC vessel/ generator size?

[TheMapleMoose]

We pump 1600' with about 50' of rise. the first 150' of pump line is 1" 160psi, and from there its just 100psi 3/4". We went 3/4" because it holds a lot less sap, we just run about 120psi at the pump head due to the smaller pipe. Bought all the parts for the pump at Lowes and Tractory Supply. The pump is a 3/4hp 10gpm deep well submersible, and we run it off a 6500watt generator. the Vessel is just 6" pvc with a furnco to access the pump. 1-1/2" bulkhead fitting in both end caps with camlock fittings, and we drilled the cap and glued in a 1/2" fpt adapter to screw in a cord gland. It isn't on a float switch, because I haven't finished assembling it yet, but its not a huge issue in our case. We have a wireless ip camera here so we can tell how much sap is left in the tank. Usually we can just figure out how long the pump will be based on the amount of sap but if the sap is still running it can throw that off a bit. As soon as we are done pumping I hook onto that 1" camlock over the tank and either hook it onto the releaser and suck the sap back from the line, or run it out into a tank and haul it back to the sugarhouse.

[Windy Acres]

How long would you guess it takes to pump 1000 gallons?

[TheMapleMoose]

How long would you guess it takes to pump 1000 gallons?

100 minutes, it is a 10gpm pump

[sugartree310]

We pump 1800 ft and 90ft in elevation , we use a 1hp Goulds deep well pump , run it with a 6500 watt generator , it's layed flat in the tank with a float. Get a little over 400 gallons per hour through a 3/4inch pipe , works great !