Our New Sugar Bush

[ennismaple]

I've uploaded a bunch of pictures I took yesterday of our new sugar bush to Photobucket. Hopefully the link works for everyone.

http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r155/ennism/2007%20New%20Sugar%20Bush/

My father formed the pad last week and poured the concrete by noon on Thursday. When they came to strip the forms Friday morning there were bear tracks all over it. Luckily the concrete was mostly set so there's only surface marks and no structural damage.

Dad built the road by placing about a foot of field stone from the rock piles in our sugar bush to use as a base. He topped that with a layer of sandy loam that was excavated from the basement of a nearby cottage and used 2" crusher run limestone as the surface course. The road was so sturdy that the concrete truck drove right down to the pad with a full load on and never spun a tire. Two pitches are likely about 10% slope but our tractor should handle the loaded 525 gallon collection tank no problem. We hope to get the building up before the snow flies so we can get the 2-1200 gallon tanks into it when they arrive later in November. We'll install the mainlines and tubing over the winter.

I'll try to post more pics as we progress.

[PATheron]

Ennismaple-Really nice looking woods. Can you give us some specifics on your plans for the bush. Number of taps, if using vac, how your laying out the tube, sugar shack etc. Itll be fun to watch it come together. Do you hope to be using everything this spring? Theron

[royalmaple]

Looks nice, you got some taps there for sure.

[ennismaple]

Theron:

We've ordered 2-1200 gallon SS tanks and a double manual releaser for the tank house. The releaser will have 4-1" fittings and 2-1.25" fittings to connect the mainlines. The 5HP (50cfm) flood oil electric pump will be half a mile away where we've got electricity at another tank location with a 1.25" dryline to the releaser. Most of our mainline will be 1" with a couple future runs being 1.25".

We own the bush so we can do whatever we want in it. We'll likely only get about 500 taps in by this coming spring. Ultimately, we guestimate there's 2000 or more depending on how far we run the mainlines. We've got maples as far as half a mile away that we may be able to tap if we run a mainline along the side of a steep slope beside a cedar swamp. The timing on when we tap the rest depends on when we can thin the rest of the bush. We need to get the oak, ash and basswood out before we run out lines or else it's impractical to thin it later. Since we boil with wood we use the softwood we cut from the bush each winter to evaporate the year after (cut in winter '07, burned in spring '08). The hardwood we sell as firewood.

I'll lay out the mainlines myself so we get the proper spacing. We're using the translucent blue mainline. I plan to use more mainline than we have in the past to keep the lateral lengths to 75' if I can and number of taps per lateral to 7 if possible. We'll only use SS fittings where absolutely necessary and will use saddle manifolds to connect the laterals so we minimize the restrictions in the lines. We've ordered 30 rolls of 4-seasons tubing and 1000 health spouts and cup tees to start. We'll use 1/4" guy steel to support the mainlines as my father feels we can get more tension on it than with single strand #9 and the guy steel won't break when a limb goes over it.

[PATheron]

Ennismaple- I used the blue tubing too and I used the #9 single strand and it seemed pretty heavy duty to me. Its strong enough to be pretty hard to cut with a pair of lineman pliars. I just used it becouse thats what the maple pro guys suggested. I used lighter gage wire for side ties figuring it would be like a fuse link if a tree fell on it. My lats probobly average75-100' with 7 or 8 taps average just guessing. I kind of did the best I could with my woods. I have a lot of slope and big line so I think im good. Ill just wait till sap season and put a vac gage on things and see how im doing. I thinned mine pretty good too before I tubed for the same reason. Your going to have a beautiful setup youll have to keep us in plenty of pictures. Itll be interesting to see in the spring how they perform. How many taps so you think youll have total in the spring? Theron

[fred]

i use 12.5 high tensile wire , the #9 seems to rust outby the 10th year.

[ennismaple]

We've got lengths of 1/4" guy steel that's been in the bush over 20 years and we've never had it break - not even when all the trees and limbs went over it during the ice storm. It doesn't rust either. It's the same stuff used for guy wires on hydro poles (Dad builds hydro lines for a living). It will break at the pre-form where we join lengths together or where it`s anchored at the ends. I`ve suggested No. 9 single strand but sometimes you can`t teach an old dog new tricks! If anything it`s overkill but I don`t see any drawbacks using it.

We hope to have 500 taps or so online by spring. I`d love to get the entire thing tapped right away but there`s too much thinning to do. With the terrible prices for wood in logs or pulpwood right now we`d rather burn what we thin as evaporator wood over multiple years.

[PATheron]

Ennis- I think I know what your talking about, It sounds like what I call guy wire. They use it for guying utility poles. If thats the stuff you mean you cant beat it for strength. If you can get that cheap what the heck. I know what your saying about the thinning. You have to balance whether you want the immediate benefits of the thinning or the longterm source of firewood. I thinned my woods out pretty good before the tubing but I had a lot of big old half dead trees that would have been hard to remove later. I still have a young stand of maples to thin but I think Im going to do that like your saying. Ill go in there every year and just finetune and thatll be nice wood for a while. Hows the slope on the bush will it be hard to run it all to the tank house? With that large vac pump you have have you ever checked vac levels at the tree on varrying length lats with different numbers of taps. Im curious to know how it performs for you. I bought a 35 cfm liquid ring pump and am hoping for high levels of vac at the trees. My longest mains are probobly 1000-1200' 1" is the smallest and I did the best i could with the lats. Im not sure about boosters. The mains are very lightly loaded with taps due to the trees being spread out over a large area. If you have any info that youve found in the field pertaining to the vac levels much appreciated. Theron

[ennismaple]

Guy wire, guy steel - same stuff. Since my father builds hydro lines for a living he gets it wholesale. I'm sure it's more expensive than single strand but I have no idea how much since I don't pay the invoices!

The bush was orginally thinned in 1998 after the Ice Storm. We dropped any diseased or badly damaged trees and took out some of the mature non-maples. Now we need to do the final thinning.

I have no idea what our vacuum levels will be. The pump is still being manufactured and we've never used a flood oil pump before. At 50 CFM it's oversized for what we'll tap in this bush but we wanted that since we have to run such a long dryline from the pump to the releaser. We run dairy pumps on our other bushes and can get 18" Hg at the tank but I've never measured at the tree.

The slope for the first 200 feet or so going away from the releaser will be pretty good as we've put the building down in a bowl beside a cedar swamp. Some sections up above that may be a bit flatter but we'll get the transit out when we build it to at least get 1%. A few areas that have a bunch of taps we'll have to pick up with a sap ladder. It's not ideal but is better than not tapping those trees. Initially we won't have any mainlines that exceed 1000' so vacuum boosters won't be required. Two future mainlines will be fairly long so I'll use the 2-pipe system for them.

[PATheron]

Hows the new bush going? Theron

[ennismaple]

No time for stretching lines - too busy huntin' the sugar bush! We got 10 last week during the rifle season but no big bucks.

[ennismaple]

We've got our tank house mostly built now - too bad we got 6" of wet snow before the roof went on! The 2 side walls (front and rear) are 24' long and are 2x6. The end walls are 16' long and 2x4. The rafters are 2x6 and the strapping is 1" red oak with 18" of pitch from front to rear. We got the rafters finished and all the strapping completed on Saturday. Sunday we got all the steel on the roof and finished the front wall using 1x8 pine boards. We've got old windows for all 4 walls to let natural light in since there's no electricity where we've got the building. The 2-1200 gallons tanks are supposed to arrive this week. Once they're in we can finish the end wall we left out and get the boards on the rest of the building. The one thing we're proud of is all the lumber in the building came from our property. I meant to take pictures but didn't remember the camera.

[PATheron]

Ennismaple- What did you go with for tanks? Theron

[ennismaple]

Twin 1200 gallon SS open top tanks. They're 16'x4'x3.5' so we'll have about 7' of space at the end and 7' in between them so we can get around. We'll likely only use one this year since we won't have enough taps to justify using 2400 gallons of storage and washing both tanks every day would be a pain.