Pumps

[themapleking]

I'd like to know what vacuum pumps everyone uses and the pros & cons. Conde', Sihi, Delaval, Water cooled vs oil cooled,

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

Post Edited

[powerdub]

I am running a sihi water cooled. Pros would be it is extremely trouble free as long it has a good supply of water. It can run a huge ammount of vacuum. Low maintenance. Cons are price, very expensive up front. Water can be a con for some people. Personal opinion having had both I prefer the water cooled over the oil cooled any day. I have seen what happens the oil cooled pumps if they get a slug of sap, not pretty. If mine gets a slug, who cares. The sihi is quiet, clean and doesn't have that oil smell. My pump is 20 years old and will still pull 30+ inches. When I am done for the season I drain it, and fill it with anti freeze and when the season hits I drain the anti freeze out, put the water in the tank and let her rip.

[mapleman3]

OK Vacuum pump Guru's
Check this out on ebay... could something like this be used on small(100 taps) system? if it's not a long run and such? would it be strong enough?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=26236&item=3859310220&rd=1

or this
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=46548&item=3860392813&rd=1



just poking around on ebay and saw this

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

Bid on it!!!

[mapleman3]

no, already have what I need for now, but just curious after seeing the vacuum pump chart, and seeing that for not many taps one doesn't need much cfm, thinking for the small guys like me, it may be a cheap alternative than getting one that will do 1000 taps or more, in the future though I just may try one, there seems to be alot out there at good price

[sugaring42long]

Yes, just make sure that the cfm you think the pump will do is at a specified vacuum such as 15" or 20". A lot of these pumps are rated at 0" of HG and will flow much less cfm in actual use. I am to lazy to look up the conversion from torr to inches of vacuum but thats all you need.
For the small producer these type of pumps are a real bargain and can get you into vacuum cheap! Most are 115 vac, perfect for the guy on the cheap.

[mapleman3]

interesting.. may be worth playing with, the problem with the "maple" systems out there is everything is for the larger guy, so if these typr pumps for 100 bucks or so, and a releaser like Kevin is designing, more small guys could do vacuum!

[brookledge]

Neither one will do you any good they are way to small. The biggest of the two only has a free air rating of 5.6 cfm so by the time you get to 15-20" you would have about .5 cfm. no good. A thing to remember is that even a small vac. pump for sugaring needs to have 1.5 cfm@ 15"per 100 taps or 15 cfm/1000 taps. Also usually a 2 HP motor or larger so when you see one with a 1/2 hp or 1/3 hp you know it is too small.
Keith

[mapleman3]

and that point well taken also :wink:

[saphead]

I picked up a model 1397 rated @ 17.7 cfm free air, should do ok for the couple hundred taps below the house(whenever I get around to tapping them). It's a two stage pump, low rpm (400),and designed to pull over 30" 24/7. They don't even require adding an oil mist recovery device unless you're pulling a constant vacuum of 29" plus. It'll be interesting because I have to do a couple of ladders as well.

[Mr Bill]

There was a question about pressure relationships and Torr etc.
1 pound-force per square inch (lbf/in^2 or PSI) is equal to 51.715 Torr.
1 Torr is equal to 1 millimeter of mercury (mm-Hg)
1 Torr would equal about 0.0394 inches of mercury (in-Hg).

Note that one must be careful not to confuse gauge pressures with absolute pressures.

The vacuum pump listed on eBay could reach an ultimate pressure of 1x10E-4 Torr. This would be 0.0001 Torr which would convert to 0.00000394 inches of Hg. Now that might sound like darn little vacuum when folks talk about running 20 in-Hg vacuums on their maple systems. The difference is the pump specification is referring to absolute pressure where the maple system folks are talking gauge pressures.

What is the difference between absolute (A) pressure and gauge (G) pressure? It is much like looking at a 6 inch tall pilsner beer glass in Germany which has a line marked around it about 2 inches from the top. The absolute height of the beer is measured from the bottom up. The gauge height of the beer would be measured from the reference line on the glass. So, if the beer’s level (not counting the head) is 1 inch from the brim of the glass, it would have an absolute height of 5 inches and a gauge height of 1 inch. After I down a couple slugs the level is now 1.5 inches below the reference line. Then the absolute height would be 2.5 inches and the gauge height would be –1.5 inches.

When talking pressures such as vacuum, water pressure etc. the reference line is the absolute atmospheric pressure, the pressure on the earth from all the air above us pushing down. The TV folks who wave their arms excessively talk about the barometric pressure being 29.51, 30.12 in-Hg or whatever -- note that this is an absolute pressure. Technically it would probably be more accurate to label it inches mercury absolute (inHgA) but they don’t, oh well, we know what they mean.

A “standard” day has a sea level barometric pressure of 29.92 in-HgA. This is equal to about 14.7 PSIA (pounds per square inch absolute). Therefore, if water pressure at your seashore beach home kitchen faucet is 40 PSIG, the absolute pressure would be equal to the gauge pressure PLUS the barometric pressure which would total about 54.7 PSIA.

Air pressure will drop with altitude, so the pressure the weather folk report is always converted to sea level. Air pressure drops roughly .001 in-Hg for each foot in altitude increase. If a maple guy lives on a small mountain at 3000 ft altitude, the “standard” barometric pressure at his home would actually be about 26.9 in-HgG. If he uses a reasonably accurate vacuum gauge to measure his vacuum system, it would therefore be impossible to read any vacuum greater than 26.9 in-HgG since that would mean the absolute air pressure was less than zero and that is not possible.

So, don’t fret if your pump or system can’t pull 30+ in-HgG of vacuum, it might likely be impossible.

Have fun.

[Mr Bill]

I have a question that takes a bit to get to.

In a fundamental sense, there are two primary ways to generate the vacuum for a tubing system.
A. Use a vacuum pump that pulls air out
B. Use a liquid pump that has good “lift” or suction and run the sap through the pump.

Vacuum pumps can typically achieve higher vacuum levels. Generally, they don’t want sap flowing through them and precautions/devices to prevent that are wise/needed. Sap releasers etc. are generally needed to get the sap out of the vacuum environment. So, these tend to be more complicated and more costly systems.

Liquid pumps on the other hand generally can’t achieve the same vacuum levels but they don’t need sap releasers or any of those complexities. They can just pump straight into a holding tank or even push the sap uphill to a tank with little compromise in vacuum levels in the mainline. There are many pumps that have a lift capability of 20-25 feet. This is roughly equivalent to pulling about 8.6 to 10.8 PSIG of vacuum or about 17.5 to 22 in-Hg of vacuum. That isn’t dreadful in a maple system.

Many diaphragm pumps can do even better vacuum wise, can run dry for days and days and are easy to clean. Diaphragm replacement kits are reasonably cheap. Diaphragm pumps are used in a lot of applications including many agricultural or nursery spraying applications in part because of the pressures they can also generate. This makes them plentiful and generally reasonably priced.. Therefore, finding these and easily mating a motor to them at a fraction of the cost in the maple catalogs is pretty straight forward. Hypo is a common brand and is one that has been used for some maple pump systems sold by the maple equipment suppliers

So, if someone wants to run 25 in-HgG plus vacuums, I fully understand the benefits of conventional vacuum pump systems.

However, I’m not sure I fully appreciate why folks would want to go the conventional vacuum pump route, when they advocate running only 15-20 in-HgG vacuums or run higher vacuums but then have sap ladders that compromise the vacuum significantly in the lower mainlines. These vacuums can easily be obtained with diaphragm pumps and even many self-priming centrifugal pumps. I know that a few folks even get by with cheap well pumps. The pumps can be located at the lowest elevations in a tubing system and the sap pushed uphill far higher than sap ladders. I don’t quite understand the appeal with conventional vacuum pump systems the way many people seem to be using them. Maybe I’m not understanding correctly how they are using them or I’m missing something that someone can explain. Why?

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

Post Edited

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

Found Lapierre's website and searched around and found the Vacuum piston pump i was talking about above here is the link= http://www.equipementslapierre.com/english/Catalogue/Fram_Cat.htm You will have to click on pumps on the left side of the screen and scroll down a little to it- Computers don't always do what you would like them to. It was the _ that messes things up in the highlighted line i think?

[brookledge]

Bill,
I like your comparison of absolute and gauge pressures, beer is something we all can relate too. to offer a reason why most people like conventional vacuum pumps is that alot of set ups use mechanical re-leasers. With mechanical releasers they can be out in the woods away from electricity or a controled enviroment ( heated building) And at night when the temp drops to say, zero there is no problem next day when sap begins to run again it works. If you have a diaphram or self priming centrifical pump and things freeze up you got problems. Also it seems that with all the old dairy farms in maple country getting a decent used vac. pump is easy.
Maybe someone else can offer other reasons I did not think of.

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

I'm sure price and reliability has some play in there?(how long will the rubber diaphram's last?-Look at how old the milker pumps are? and still running many decades later.Freeze -up is the big one- Nothing to mess with after freeze-up. Like they say 1" Hg is 1 Ft. lift.

[Parker]

I am not an expert on vacume but I think I understand the jist of your question ,,,,,this is my understanding,,,,,,,I know a fellow that runs a "GUZZLER" diaphram pump,,he says it will crate 15 hg and works well with 300-400 taps,,cheap to buy,,no releaser involved,,the problem is that if the pipeline gets a hole and you start sucking atmospher into the pipeline the guzzler has a very low CFM rate and all the vacume is lost on the entire system,,,,if you have a rotery vane pump (like my surge 76) and have a couple of holes in the system you can maintain some vacume caus you are sucking so much CFM,,,I think you cannot just look at the HG your trying to pull,, the CFM is also a big factor caus you never have a perfect pipeline with no holes,,,,,,,,much easier to find the hole with high cfm ,,just listen,, Parker

[themapleking]

Good point Parker.
Remember vacuum draws the sap out of the trees, and cfm gets it down the lines to the tank.
Thats why they are now recomending to increase your mainlines one size bigger. A 3/4" main should not be longer than 300 ft with 150 taps max on vacuum. If your pump is 30 cfm on a dry line. Than with it 1/2 full of sap your cfm with drop to 15-10 cfm.
If you install a next size larger main with the same taps and pump your now running at 1/3 full of sap and increase your cfm for 1/2 to 2/3 i.e. 30 cfm pump now at 20 cfm in the line with sap flow.
That increase will get the sap out of the lines faster. Less time for the sun to cook it in the lines.

P.S. use bigger mains and more of them. Shorten up your latural lines under 100 ft, 75ft better. 5 taps per line.

Joe

[mapleman3]

Hmmfff Back out into the woods..... gotta get this right!! :roll:

[saphead]

I found my conversion chart: 760 Torr=1.0 Atmosphere,14.7lb/square in.,29.9 in. Hg-Absolute =0 in.Hg gage. 300 Torr=.395 Atmoshphere,5.80 lb/sq. in.,11.8 in Hg.- Absolute= 18.1 in.Hg. gage. 0 Torr=0 lb/sq. in., 0 Atmosphere, 0 in.Hg.-Absolute=29.92 in. gage. Negative Torr is vacuum higher than 29.92 gage.

[michaelh05478]

Question??? I'm building my own moisture trap......Any tips???

[themapleking]

I just use a water filter, moisture trap that they use for deisel fuel tank pumps. just connect it between the releaser and pump. It has a petcock on the bottom to drain the water. Works good for me only cost $35.00.

[michaelh05478]

Thanks for the Info...I was going to use around 30" of 3" pvc pipe with a plug on the bottom.....Would this work???

[themapleking]

That could work, You might want figure out a way to see the water level. Also the outlet side to the pump build a steel cage around hole, and have it hang down into the pipe about 4" and install a plastic or rubber ball that will cover the hole tight. That way if the water fills up the trap the ball will plug off the hole to the pump. That way you will not get any water into the pump. It will kill the vacuum to the lines but your pump will be saved. Have a vacuum regulator valve at the pump so it doesn't get damaged.

[brookledge]

What ever you build make sure it has a ball inside to shut off the vacuum if it fills with liquid. The easy way to think of it is like a wet/dry shop vac when the tank gets full of water the ball floats to the top and shuts the vac. off. Also you need a regulator in the line so that it will open and not burn up your pump. Having just a filter in line will not stop liquid from entering the pump which will ruin most pumps.
Keith

[mapleman3]

maybe someone can post some pics of their moisture traps in their album?

[michaelh05478]

Great info guys...Thanks....Iwouldn't of thought about using a rubber ball for a plug....I am going to put a swinging check valve on my line between the pump and releaser.....Should I put it between the trap and pump or between the trap and releaser......Thanks again.......Mike......OH yea, A friend of mine's brother is looking for a used 4x12........Thanks

[brookledge]

Mike
there is a 4X10 oil fired for sale in mass.4 yrs. old says boils in excess of 150 gpm.
I can post all of the info if a 4X10 will work
Keith

[michaelh05478]

Keith, Ill pass the info on to my friend...If he's interested ill get back to you...Thanks.,Mike