height of mainline

[homefarm]

how high do you guys hang your mainline off the ground without snow on the ground im thinking 4to5 feet off the ground i'm 6feet tall what do you think.....Chris.....

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Homefarm,
In my woods, there is great variability in height of the line due to the uneven ground. Some places it is only a couple of inches off and in a few places you work on it from a ladder. I find optimum height for ease of working to be about waist high. If you are in an area that accumulates a lot of snow, you may want it higher as buried lines will have sags and freeze ups. If your main line is too high, it will force you to tap your trees higher.

[Dave Lister]

I kept my mainline around 4-5 feet off of the ground, with the lowest sections around three feet. That was the lowest I was willing to go. Don't want to have to dig out a couple hundred feet of line on snowshoes. Its just not fun.

Tim

[ennismaple]

Digging out a couple hundred feet would have been a pleasure in 2008 - we dug out miles of mainline and laterals.

Height of mainline in our bush depends on topography. In some places it's really low to keep the height down further along. If you've got all kinds of fall on the mainline and you don't get crazy amounts of snow I'd put it in at waist high - it makes it far easier to work on.

[red maples]

good question.

mine starts out about 2-3 feet but for the first 150-200 ft its very flat swamp so it gets a little high once you get to the edge. I only have about 2% slope to it but once I get into the woods comes down to around 3-4 feet again with 4-6%slope it. which works out good because the snow pack is usually anywhere from 1-3.5 ft by mid feb. depending on how much snow we get. Farmers almonac says cold dry winter for New England so we'll see.

[Amber Gold]

Start at your tank and work back from there. That'll ultimately govern where your mainline is. If you have vacuum don't worry about have it too high, you can have your laterals come up into your mainline, or you can just put in sap ladders.

[brookledge]

I think everbody pretty much covered it. The one thing I'll add is if you have plenty of slope it is nice to keep it about waist high as you go. Then when your laterals are done and you raise the drops up to tap it is about head height. And that is comfortable for tapping.
Keith

[220 maple]

Woodfarm,
I'm going to a tubing seminar tomorrow, this is suspose to be a hands on event. So putting up mainline is part of the seminar. I attended one back in August 2002. By Feb.17 of 2003 I wished my mainlines was installed like I had been shown at the seminar. The reason being I got 35 inches of snow on the Valentines Weekend Storm of 2003. Brad Gillian of Leader suggested that all Mains be waist high to chest high and run with a 3 percent slope around the hills,ridges,Mountains and connecting to the Wet/dry Main that runs straight up the Mountain from the Vacuum pump. All tubing runs straight down hill to the 3 Percent mainline and connects by multi fittings in the top of the line. If my Sugarbush would have been built that way I would have set records that probably would have never been broken. I didn't make alot of syrup that year because my mains was buried and frozen. Some places the snow became so heavy as it started to melt that it pull the tubing which then pulled the spiles out of the trees. Oh the trees really ran that Spring they just ran on the ground in many places!


MArk 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I agree with Thompson, I have some that you have to reach with a ladder where they start to running to a few inches off the ground. I don't have much of a problem with snow and if I did, I would dig them out but it has never happened. I know the 4 to 5 feet sounds ideal, but it is not reality unless you want to take the bulldozer and move dirt and change the contour of the land.

[homefarm]

thanks for all the info i think i'm gonna run them chest height (4 ft ) because we can get snow 2-3 feet deep here plus drifts the first year that i was tapping they were only 2 feet and i had to dig out a lot of line certainly no fun not to say what it does to sap production (freeze.... sag)......Chris.....