Our first yr. Bought someone out. Tubing Q's.

[Mowin]

Sugar bush has 475 taps. 3/4" mainline on 5/16" taps, laterals, drops. Gravity, no vacuum.

My question is, how long of a 5/16 lateral can I run if I want to expand? Some are 150 yards. Can I go longer?

[maple flats]

With 5/16 laterals you will do best if the length is 100' or less and on gravity no more than 10 taps. Do you have lots of slope? If yes, then study 3/16 laterals, they can (with good elevation drop) be 1000' or more and 25-30 taps is good. I know, sounds backwards, but 3/16 can have more taps and longer laterals, but only if gravity is on your side. Ideal is 30' elevation drop after the lowest tap, but even 15' works better than using 5/16.
On the other hand, 3/16 requires more specific cleaning, both after the season and again in mid fall, plus the Tee, and any connectors need to be changed every year, but if you do that you will reap the results, compliments of natural vacuum.

[toquin]

No more than 10 with 5/16? I have a 200 feet+ fence line run with 47. over 70 gal. yesterday.

[Mowin]

The elevation is quite steep. Most of the laterals are far longer that 100' with some having 50+ taps.
Were new at this, and I'm assuming the laterals are 5/16 as that's the size drill and tap. Former user didn't mention anything about changing all the tee's and connectors every yr.
We taped yesterday, by the time we got back to the holding tanks, the sap was flowing out of the main line like a garden hose.
There's so much room to expand, so we were thinking about adding another 100 taps onto a couple of the laterals.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

The correct setup is what maple flats suggested, no more than 10 taps per lateral. We are redoing our bushes so they are set up correctly and are doing 5-6 taps per lateral. You can do whatever you want and it will work, but your production will suffer. We do have 1 or 2 5/16” lines that are 500’ to pick up some really nice maples. It didn’t make sense to run mainline for 10 trees so we ran 1 really long lateral. It’s really about taps per lateral for optimum production, not so much the length. Shorter lines are also easier to maintain.