Vaccum

[The Maple Men]

so as feel the the year is comming in to its final week or so i think( not long here this year) we tapped 500 taps all gravity and only got 37 gallons so far. i have severe nightmares at night thinking i did something wrong with the tubing but i have walked my lines almost every day since i tapped the 27th of fed. and i am sure they are right so i narrowed it down to the hill side i tap is east south east facing and on the nights it got good and cold the hill never really warmed enough during the day to let loose and most nights it only has gotten to 28 or 29. so to make a long story short i will never be able to afford a vacuum at this rate so i was thinking what i good bussiness opportunity for some of you bigger guys vacuum rental for the season to us smaller one who need it but are yet able to affford it on our current production. my focus now is how i am going to get a vacuum for next year.

[220 maple]

Maple men

I read this post several times and I am still unsure how to reply, hopefully others will help, My first thought is your trees will run before the season is over. they have only been open 3 weeks if they don't go thru a major heat wave like we have had in the south you will get sap and you will make more syrup. They can stay open 6 weeks beyond that you can consider yourself very lucky if you get a good run. Is their any other camps near you, how are they doing? If they are doing real good then you most certainly have problems, I just think it's too early for you to feel that you season is over.

Mark 220 Maple

[The Maple Men]

i sure was thinking the same thing. but it seems as though i am just not getting what i should. i don't feel as though my hole are closing. just the trees are not wanting to produce.. i am very very sure everything is right. i have study this site almost daily since i started this adventure back in july. i did have one day the the 14 were i got3/4 gal per tap but the rest of the days it ran have been 1/4 gallon or less per tap thats why i feel i have narrowed it down to the weather at my bush is just not what it needs to be there is another syrup maker about a mile dowm the road who has been getting great runs with the same number of taps he tpped a week later. the only other thought i had was to much bacteria in my lines caused my hole to act funny. the best i can tell as i do not have much info on this operation we took over the lines were not cleaned the last time they were used then have not been touched for 5 yr but we replaced 90% of the taps and poured some peroxide and water down each and every tap before we taped. i think just to test the theroy i may try to freshen taps tommrow and see if i get a noticable difference on sat as the weather is acting like it shoud be a great run. Anyone else have any thoughts on this. or is it just one of those years.
which for what i accomplished and learened i am not to disapponited

[Dave Puhl]

One thing to try is take and tap one of the trees on your line and put a drop to a bucket...measure what is going on ..it could be alot of things weather/ location of the trees ....hang in there...

[Russell Lampron]

I am in Loudon which is not to far from you. Here it hasn't been a good year for gravity systems. Yesterday I collected 15 gallons of sap from my 83 buckets and 425 gallons from my 550 taps on vacuum all from the same 24 hour period.

The weather for this weekend looks good with the exception of being a little cold overnight but with your trees facing the sun first thing in the morning it should thaw out early and give you some decent runs.

[VoterVale Farm]

I really need to get into tubing and have access to 100 trees. Where do I start with tubing?

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

MAPLE MAN

what size taps did you use 5/16 or 7/16??

RICH

[The Maple Men]

rich

Wew use 5/16th why do u ask? do you know something i don't:)

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

Yes In My Experience 5/16 Taps Dont Give Up Sap Like 7/16 Unless You Are On Vac

Rich

[PerryW]

I am up to 30 gallons from about 750 gravity taps (so far) which is about 30% of my expected yield, but I'm hoping there is a lot more season left. We usually make more syrup in April and the cold trees have not yet given me a good sap run yet.

You should not have any significant problems with tapholes drying up until at least 4 or 5 weeks, and most should still be running at 6 weeks. It is NOT generally recommended, but (if they dry up) you can yank the tap and run the drill bit in and out to ream the hole out and they will run again for a week or two.


I know Antrim is a lot farther south than I am but I expect you will get better flows in the next few days.

RE 5/16: The 5/16" Health Spouts are a recent invention. Supposedly they will yield 90-95% of the sap that the old 7/15 tapholes yield. I used about 50% of each on my trees. I tap the bigger ones w/ 7/16 and the smaller ones w/ 5/16.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I usually don't start getting my best sap flows until about 21 days after I have tapped. I usually tap around Feb 7th and my best sap flows usually start around March 1st. Wait until the season is over and then go from there. Thru yesterday, I am at 4200 gallon of sap off of 525 gravity taps and aprox 89 gallon of syrup when it is all boiled and this have been one of the tougher weather years to make syrup I have seen with it going from one extreme to the other nearly every week. The biggest bright spot is that we had the cold extremes nearly every week for the past 6 weeks, so even when it did warm up to 50's and 60's with no freezing, I got a run for 2 or 3 days nearly every week.

Give it a week or two, it only takes one good week to make an entire season. I got 2400 gallon of sap last year in 5 days not including what ran on the ground and made close to 50 gallon of syrup from 5 days run which was half of my season's total and nearly half of the taps had been in for close to 4 weeks.

[The Maple Men]

so the last few days i have been reguvinated i have done a ton of research on the operation we took over and also attempted to visit eer shack we could find within 30 mi of us. the first piece of info we found out talking to people about our operation was almost everyone that knew of it there first comment was geez the hill never realy ran much(good now i have another task this year make that hill run, vacuum vacuum vacuum) i think the first problem is very very long main linewith not much pitch. so this year it will all hit the ground and be re routed(if anyone could offer advice on how to accomplish this while building a house and still stay married i will need it.) next while travling to sugar houses we got to see some vacuum systems that my partner had never seen vacuum before (this is his first year at it) his second comment was who that is simple i could build one of those no problem.
so my final question is how active does this place stay during the summer as i am sure i am going to be looking for a fair ammount of advice.:D

[VtSugarhouse]

This stays active even in the summer. My word of advice to you is to do lots of research and above all (mandatory) get a good vaccum pump.
We run around 25 inches of vaccum all the time and the difference between low vaccum and high vaccum is like a quart to a 1/2 gallon.
Good quality installation of lines and good vaccum is important.

Good luck!

[sapman]

This dropped vacuum is my problem. Right after tapping, I had 25-26" at some of the furthest tapholes, but a week and a half into it, only about 20". I checked 2 mainlines of 6 tonight, and found several leaking taps. I'm hoping that finding all these little leaks will amount to a lot once I've found them all.

Tim