vac booster needed?

[1metzger]

Hi Guys,
At what distance is a booster needed in the bush. We just got our vac hooked up and have checked for any obvious leaks the way some of you guys suggest and haven't found any. We only have -6 at the releaser. We have about 600 ft of distance before we hit laterals etc. Our wet line is 1" and dry is 1 1/2" with 1500 taps. When we purchased the vac system we told them our set up and this is the vac system they recommended, but a booster wasn't suggested, but perhaps they assumed we had one. Or is there something else that we are missing completly that isn't right.
Thanks for your help

[Jim Brown]

1metzger. How do you separate the wet and dry lines in the bush? This is were the booster is supposed to go,between the wet and dry lines. Wet line carrys the sap to the releaser and the dry carrys the vacuum up into the bush
so it does not have to try to get passed the liquid in the wet line.

Hope this helps
Jim

[1metzger]

We have a dry line all the way up along with the primary main line, but not on the smaller mainlines that come into the big mainline. Is there a distance where you don't need a booster, or do you always need one?
Thanks

[royalmaple]

Your getting 6 inches of vacuum on your system? What kind of pump are you using. Sounds pretty low.

At some point your wet and dry lines need to be terminated and inter connected to your system via a booster. Where your branch mainlines vac/sap run into the wet lines you'd have a booster there to connect the lines. As far as just a long run of wet and dry, most people go 1000 -1500 feet then add a booster if there is nothing else joining the two along the way inbetween. Otherwise your just running a pipe with vacuum in it to the end of the bush.

My 1" wet and 1 1/4 dry run almost 1/2 mile before they tie into the first booster and there isn't 1 inch difference in vaccum from the releaser to the closest tap near the booster.

[Jim Brown]

1metzger; I agree with royalmaple if you only have 6' of vac either you have one heck of a leak some where or your pump is too small. We had the same problem the begining of the season and we added a dry line 300 feet up into the bush and put the booster there. Our main is only 700 feet long but was only3/4 line and we had 500 taps on it. We were sure that the sap was plugging the line and not making room for vac. We added the wet line and booster added a small 5cfm pump to the 6cfm that was there and we can now pull 22 inches at any of the taps!
Send me a PM and I will discribe a in-expensive booster that works great and won't break the bank!

Jim

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[1metzger]

thanks for all your input. Yes, the wet and dry are connected up in the bush, but I will have to go over and get the specs on the vac system, as I'm not sure. I believe the 2 lines, wet and dry, go about 6oo' before the first taps come in, and then continue another 500' or so with smaller mainlines coming in all along the way. I will get the vac specs today and post them later.
Thanks again

[maplecrest]

what are you useing for a releaser? put valves on lines at releaser and valve check there and see what you have for vac there. last year i bought a cdl releaser that would not seal and that was where my problem was. could not get over 6. new releaser no problem had 24 inches. size of pump does matter. but does not matter if system is not tight. are your spouts tight? been so cold here frost has pushed a lot of mine out. spent last week putting back in to bring vac level back up.

[1metzger]

The releaser is a new Lappierre, and the flapper at the botton sucks really tight, so I don't know if that would mean that isn't the problem. We were wondering if the leaks may be at the pump, where you can't really hear leaks, but again, would the flapper on the releaser be so tight if the problem was before the releaser? The Pump is a 3 HP, also Lappierre, but I can't seem to find much of any other specs on it. Now this may sound like a dumb question, but on the vac gauge, there are 2 dials, a red and black. We had been going by the black outer dial, but the red inner one reads -21, I don't imagine that is the one that we should be going by, is it?
Thanks again.

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

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[1metzger]

there is only one dial and one needle, but 2 sets of numbers, like on a dial type speedometer with mph on the outer side and kph on the inside.
Thanks again

[brookledge]

The outside # are in inches of Hg. The inner ones are k Pa. In our industry most refer to inches of mercury and with a dairy type vac. pump will run 15" to 20" but with a liquid ring most run 24" to 25".
Keith