Real-time data from the NEK of Vermont.

[HowsItRunning]

Hi All...I wanted to share my website, https://howsitrunning.com now that I'm tapped in. It will show the flow rate 24-7 over the entire season. There is a lot of content showing the impact of weather on the flow rate, for any weather geeks. There is also a lot of content on each gather and boil throughout the season for those who may want to following along and compare our season to yours. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Here's a sample graph from the first run during this recent warm up [for 10 taps]. I didn't tap-in until 4pm, that's why there's no flow before then. In this case the sap ran at about 0.25 gallons per hour for the entire run, which yielded 4.4 gallons of sap [the sugar content was 1.9%, all sugar maples].

I'm looking forward to the season getting into full swing after this cold snap...

22630

[hogisland42]

That's pretty cool. Nice Job!

[Maples Maple]

Neat idea. I took a quick look at your site and I am trying to figure out the 'value added'.
At first, it looked like you are hacking an Acurite 0899 for the data. The one location with any details says the unit is an ecowitt.

Is this a COTS part with a custom UI? The website lacks details about any hardware or software (I am engineer. Details!).
What you are actually selling?

Suggestions:
A page with hardware and software details
Very hard to tell without hardware/software spec but it seems to show high resolution data that might not be valid if you averaging multiple taps by just multiplying by 10 or 100x (rolling average, boxcar, etc)
A page with a live or semi-live display showing the UI and live or semi-live data instead of just fixed images.
'Contact us' is never good for hobby level equipment. At some point add pricing to the webpage.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

[HowsItRunning]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not selling anything, that's why there isn't any pricing, lol. I'm just putting the data out there for anyone interested. Since the sap isn't flowing, there isn't any animation, but sap will flow in the picture with the tap and bucket. The Contact-us button is there for people who want more information on how it's done, etc...

[DrTimPerkins]

Having done monitoring of this sort at UVM PMRC for many years, sometimes publicly available and sometimes not, one thing you might want to be aware of is that the tipping bucket in that style of gauges is quite susceptible to getting gummed up with microbes. It does not impede the movement of the tipping bucket, but does throw off the calibration over time. At the beginning of the season when all is cold and microbes are very low, there is no real effect. During the middle of the season the effect starts to build up. By the end of the season the effect is severe and it takes only a few drops of sap to tip the bucket, so you register really good flows late in the year (incorrectly). You can ameliorate the impact by cleaning/sanitizing the bucket mechanism periodically.

The real fun begins when you put that bucket into a vacuum chamber to see sap flow under vacuum. https://mapleresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/SapVac.pdf (see pages 19-21...this was from 2010 season). Have done that (many times) and doing it more this year (in a couple of different experiments), and probably a good bit more in the next few years.

[HowsItRunning]

Since the trees are taking a few days off, it gives me time to look at the data from the last run during the heat wave. I put a reference line at an interesting point. The flow shot right up to 0.6 drops/sec and leveled off, even though the sun got stronger and temperature kept increasing. I guess that's all the tree had to offer...the ground is still frozen and covered with snow. The sun almost seems to have a stronger influence on the run rather than temperature. As the temps continued increasing, you can see the run start to fizzle out.

https://howsitrunning.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/plot_1t.jpg

[Vtmaple2]

I have noticed that also over the years. The sun seems to have a "stronger influence on the run rather than temperature". While you normally don't have one with out the other. Seems like sap flow is stronger on sunny days.