Double saddles

[Maplewalnut]

Anyone have any pro's or con's on these. I currently have both singles and doubles in my bush.
Pro is that there are that many less holes drilled into your mainline and thus less chances for leaks.
Con-is that I am not sure if you have sap competing on both sides from two laterals if it doesn't decrease your sap per hole over the season. On vacumm if that matters.

[brookledge]

Likewise I use both singles and doubles.I think as long as you don't have a lot of taps on each lateral it won't affect the vacuum transfer since it is right at the mainline. See what others have to say
Keith

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

I use both single and double saddles but no longer purchase any new doubles. I agree with Keith that the key is not having too many taps (ie. too much sap) coming into the saddle. I think that more sap can actually enter the mainline with proper vacuum transfer from a single saddle. If sap is entering from 2 directions the flow will be more turbulent. Imagine 2 streams of water meeting and the resultant wave that might be created at the point where they meet...
My 2cents

[vermaple]

I use both singles and doubles, but I take a close look at the # of taps entering through the fitting. I try to keep the tap # to under 8.

[ennismaple]

I've got some doubles but once the bag is finished I won't get any more. I figure the two sides will compete for the vacuum somewhat so I now prefer to use only singles.

[Jeff E]

I have seen discusson on using quad star fittings, or 6 way fittings (usually used for sap ladders) for entry into mainline as well. The down side I remember hearing is that if you have a leak at one of your taps (say a hollow tree) all of the taps on that saddle will have significantly lower vacuum.

Having single saddles will reduce the loss of production from such a leak to a minor impact.

[Rhino]

Last year when we put a 400 tap expansion in, we used 5/16 barbed fittings with a 1/8 threaded pipe end. (black plastic) We ran our laterals over our mainlines, no more then 5 taps per line. where the laterals went over the main, we drilled the hole in the main, and threaded the fitting into the mainline, also used a little dap silicone for good measure. lateral just had a T pointed downward with a little piece of blue line to connect the T to the screwed in 5/16 barbs. The plastic barbs with the pipe threads I got at ace hardware, 50cents each, T's are around 20 cents. I used saddles before this method and with the cost I wont go back to them. If a branch/tree falls and pulls the threaded end out of the mainline, I just cut a piece of 3/4 mainline in half length wise and drill a new hole, screw it back in and use dap silicone and hose clamp it onto the existing hole that was rounded out from the force. Also works good on our 1/2 mainlines.