pumping sap

[maple man-iac]

I have a woods I am interested in tapping. I am new to sugaring with not much experience. Last year was my third year sugaring, I put out 500 taps making 190 gallons of syrup. This year I want to either expand a bit or get all my taps in one woods. The woods I am looking at has very nice slope to it (for Michigan). The slope however runs to the farthest and least accessible point of the property. I plan to put these trees on tubing with vacuum. I have purchased a ss milk tank to use here for sap collection. The tank is the round type with the sealable hatch at the top similar to a zero brand tank. I have been told I can put vacuum on this tank with out the need of a sap releaser. I would like to be able to gather my sap at the top of the hill. Do I need a second pump and tank. I need input on how to set this collection system up. Thank You.

[Jeff E]

For what its worth, I am in a similar situation, and have opted to use releasers and then pump the sap back to the sugar house. This means I have to run vacuum to the releaser, piping for the pumped sap, and electricity for the pump. Seems like a lot, but I have heard that pumping directly from a tank under vacuum gets into a high maintenance situation, and those pumps are rather specialized-see expensive-.
Another option I considered was using sap ladders to bring the sap back to the sugar house. I have enough slope that I felt I would loose to much vacuum at the taps to do this. Also, the installation and maintenance of lines 10 ft in the air seemed rather daunting.

In the end, I decided to bite the bullet and spend more up from for a more conventional system, with proven success.

If I were you, I would put the stainless collection tank at the top of the hill, assuming it has all the capacity you need. At the bottom, I would use a releaser and a small tank for the releaser to dump into, and then pump with a float controlled (sump type) pump up to the big tank.

[Valley View Sugarhouse]

you could use a belly releaser with a built in pump.. Mine is made by Gilles Bernard, it has floats to run the pump, auto Vacum start etc. with this releaser you will not need a tank at the bottom, just the releaser and pump.
use the tank at the road for your collection point.

[Jeff E]

have you had good luck with the belly releaser?

[Valley View Sugarhouse]

nock on wood, 5 years and I have never had a problem...