Sp 11

[backyardsugarer]

I have a sp 11 with a 3/4 horse electric motor on it. How many taps can I run with that unit and how much vac should I be looking for if I ran it on 700? Thanks.

Chris

[tuckermtn]

I think you would be pushing it to run it on 700 taps. I think more like 500 is max. For some reason I remember the SP-11 is rated for 4.5cfm, and there is the 1 cfm per 100 taps rule of thumb- though some folks on here think that the 1cfm/100 taps is not enough. I think the SP-22 or a BB-4 would be a better pump size.

[caseyssugarshack93]

You could do 700 with a really really tight system i think and probably woudnt have many inches

just my two cents

nate

[Parker]

some vacuum is better than none,,,but a sp-11 on 700 is a whole lot,,I think tuckermnt was right on,,,,

[markcasper]

Chris, I run an sp11 with approx. 580 taps. You get vacuum and certainly better than nothing. I have achieved up to 18" of vacuum at the end of this setup. 15" is the norm though at the end with constant inspection. You need a good tight system, but thats the case no matter what you use for a pump.

[backyardsugarer]

So am I better off running 350 taps on higher vac or 700 with only 14" or 15"? I could tie the 2 mainlines together as they are only 50 feet apart. Next year I will have a bigger pump for this area. Thanks.

Chris

[Haynes Forest Products]

In a perfect world there would be no vacuum loss on any size system so I would run the entire system on vacuum and spend as much time possible looking for the leaks. Out of desperation due to me burning up my big vac pump we put a small vane pump that was about 4 CFMs and it was pulling 12 HGs on about 600 taps. I think ANYTHING helps so go with the smaller pump and make your system as air tight as possible and it will pay off in the end. I think any system that works by gravity is going to work better with vacuum no matter how small that is.

[markcasper]

I would run the whole 700 taps. If you get at least 10" of vacuum on all of them you will MUCH further ahead in terms of yield. 700 taps is only 120 more than I have. One thing I forgot to mention.....I am running a gas engine about 1/3 speed. I have never checked the RPM's. My pump may indeed be running faster than the standard 1750 rpm's and standard pulleys with an elctric motor. This to me would increase the vacuum volume if it is running faster.

Last year I had 3 days where I had to shut the vacuum off on the one hillside(I am running 2 releasers, 2 sidehills off this one pump.)
I had to shut it off due to some major vacuum loss. The side without vacuum yielded very little, while the side with vacuum had at least 1 gallon per tap per day. After the 3rd day I finally was ablre to go into the woods and fix the problem and resume vacuum.

[caseyssugarshack93]

put the whole 700, Some vac is better than no vac.





Caseyssugarshack,nate

[sapsick]

while i agree that somw vac is better than no vac consider this. as you go beyond the capacity of your vaccuum( approx 450 taps) you are going to see a considerable decrease in vaccuum on all of your taps especially those that are farther away. in fact i bet you will have no vac on quite a few of them. if you can only pull 12-13" on your tank that value will only decrease at teh tap itself.
try this as an example. if you have a sprinkler trying to water your newly seeded lawn and find that one sprinklercant cover the whole area so you add another sprinkler. however once you add the new sprinkler you notice the area that the first sprinkler was covering is now smaller b/c the total amount of water coming from the water pump is now divided amongst 2 sprinklers. we could continue to add sprinklers because "some water is better than none" or we could just seed a smaller lawn and have it come in nice and green then seed the rest of the lawn later. these are my thoughts. by the way i work for Ingersoll rand on all sorts of air compressors and pumps.

[Haynes Forest Products]

OK now as we add sprinkler heads we also put smaller nozzels in them and as we increase the number of heads we decrease the volume of water going out the heads bigo bang increase the time per zone were good to go. I still think if the system is designed for gravity and help it along with whatever vacuum you can get your fine. I find it hard to believe that even a small vacuum pump wont over come the CO2 gas produced IF its in a tight system.

[markcasper]

Sapsick, The reasoning in your response seems logical. This is not a logical situation we are dealing with though. Chris has said this will only be in use this season, next year he will have a pump properly sized.

I am running 580 taps with my sp-11 and thats a fact. I have no dry lines, everything is 3/4 inch mains, with the longest main 1200+ feet from the pump.

No it is not right, but its not right that I am not getting ANY bids on my timber sale either. This will be redone and already have a sp22 for the future and can find scores of dairy vane pumps around here yet.

If I were Chris, or you were Chris, what would we do with what we have? For this season I would hook them all up. If the mains are only 50 ft away, you could experement and try both with, or only one set with vacuum. I can tell you this......when a bear pulled 3 spiles out about half way up the line, I was down to 4'' so fast..................... The key to making this work is constant inspection and monitoring of the vacuum levels.

I have a neighbor over the hills that has a great big blasted vacuum pump on wheels, bulk fuel barrel, the whole shabang. These people, no matter what they do, cannot figure out that if you do not fix the fence, the cattle will get out. What I am saying is you can hook up a 100 CFM pump, but if you do no maintenance, vacuum aint going to do you any good then. These people visited my one bush 2 years ago and could not believe seeing Bender releasers actually operating. They had tried the Benders in the past and said they were a joke. I know why they were a joke, its because they only go in the woods to tap and then not again til the next season.

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

I walk my vac lines everyday looking for leaks and repairing. If someone thinks that putting up vac and tapping they are done will be disappointed.


RICH

[sapsick]

i understand that we all do with what we have but what im trying to say is that more is not always better. i agree constant maint of your tubing is the only way something like that could work. that said lets say that we take the 700 taps and that every tap will produce 1 gal of sap on gravity alone. also each tap will produce 1.25 gals at 12" and 1.5 gals at 24". now if i run my pump on only 450 of these taps because rule of thumb says 1cfm per 100 tapsand i achieve 24" because of constant maint i can produce 675 gals of sap then get 250 gals from my gravity only taps for a grand total of 925 gals. now take the 700 taps at 12" at 1.25 gals and you get 875 gals. in this case no vac is better than some vac and maybe your pump will last another year and you have less potential leaks. good luck whichever way you decide.

[markcasper]

I had my surge dealer tell me one time that the sp-11 has 5.5 cfm. Its half the number of sp-11. Sp-22 has 11 cfm. This guy would know, as he and his dad dealed and fixed them and knows more about those particular pumps than all of us on here combined. I don't know where the 4.5 cfm came from???

Sapsick, I do understand your point of view and where you are going. I question the .5 gallon increase in yield going from 12 to 24"s of vacuum however. For one thing, the sp-11 will not achieve 24" of vacuum unless maybe you only have 10 taps hooked to it. One additional item that no one has brought up is line size. If the lines are undersized, or too many taps on laterals, that will have a big effect here too. I will admit that when the sap is running gang-busters, I am lucky to reach 12"s of vacuum, the lines are too full. I want the vacuum for the other 90% of the time when it would normally just be dribbling.

[backyardsugarer]

I guess I will experiment with it and put shut off valves on each 3/4 main line. If the vac plummets then i have my answer. If it only drops a little then I will stick with it. Thanks for all the input and I will let you know how it turns out.

[caseyssugarshack93]

Just run it and see what kind of " you get at ur last tap.

thats what id doo.