5/16 vs 7/16 Spouts

[Amber Gold]

I'm expanding next year and will most likely be buying 50-70 buckets and spouts. I'm not sure if I'll be able to put tubing up on my neighbors property and be able to keep it up all year. Access is fairly good, so I thought I would go with buckets which are not site specific. I've only got a hand full of spouts now so I want to make sure I start off on the right foot as I start expanding. Should I go with the 5/16 or the 7/16 spouts and what are the pros/cons of each?

Thanks

Josh

[hydrogeo]

I have about 60 taps on two runs of tubing (25 on one and 35 on another), using juice drums as tanks. I take the tubing down and stash it away off-season because I don't feel like looking at it every time I pull into the driveway in the off season. It really is not that bad as long as it is coiled up carefully when put away. Believe it or not, its pretty easy to figure out where the tubing goes. What effort it does take to untangle it and hang it back up is still tenfold less than gathering from buckets for the whole season. I use the 5/16 spouts on the pipeline. I hang a few buckets with 7/16 spouts on isolated trees as well and the tubing holes seem to heal quite a bit faster. I am going to replace my 7/16 bucket spouts with 5/16" spouts next season to protect the health of the nice trees around the yard. Others could probably speak better to the spout size debate. I haven't noticed a difference in sap yield between the spouts, but most of my trees are pretty lousy performing red maples.

[Amber Gold]

I have vehicle access to the top and bottom of the run, but not in between, and the run's approximately 300 feet long. The trees are on both sides of an old wagon path. I could install a temporary mainline out of a flexible line (3/4" PEX? maybe) on both sides of the path and just take it down at the end of the season. The two runs could feed into their own 50-gallon plastic drums. Would the drums be large enough? I think one run would have about 40 taps on it and the other about 20. There's a guy down the street from me and has a yard full of food grade drums and I bet they're fairly cheap. There's about 60-70 taps in this run so you're probably right, the amount of time that I'd spend at the beginning and end of each season I'd more than make up for collecting out of buckets each day.

I guess for ease of swapping tapping bits I should probably just use 5/16 all the way.

Thanks for the info.

[Russell Lampron]

I switched over to the 5/16" bucket spouts a couple of years ago. The sap yeild has been pretty close to what I would have gotten with the 7/16" spouts. The biggest difference that I noticed is that the tap holes don't dry up as fast with the smaller spouts. If the sap yields are less with the 5/16" spouts thay make up for it by running later in the season.

[Amber Gold]

If they run longer that would be great because 1/2 of mine dried up about 2 weeks ago and the remainder last friday. I would've thought that I'd still be running at least until the end of this week.

5/16" it is. Thanks a lot.

[Brent]

I have a mix of everything out there I think

Old style 7/16 stamped and formed with the gap on top. They're the worst. Leak
a lot and fall out. Hard to roate the bucket on them so you've got to lift off almost every time

Some cast 7/16 aluminum or zinc. Don't like them at all. Always coming loose.

Got some white plastic 7/16 very bad also, keep falling out

Put in 100 new blue 5/16 this year with buckets. Like them.

Put up 55 bags this year, some on 7/16 aluminum spouts and most on 5/16 aluminum spouts.

Like the 5/16 aluminum and bag combo the best. They don't leak and almost never come out.

I couldn't tell you if the yield is any different. Too many variables.