drain line size

[PATheron]

Question for you guys. The bush Im working on right now is roughly 650 real nice taps. Im hoping to have them on pretty high vac so Im figuring they should run pretty good. What Ive done is I have a vac line that runs over to the remote releaser in the woods. There will be a releaser sitting right on top of a 325 gallon tote. Itll dump into that and then Im going to just plumb in a line out the bottom of it that will run gravity down to the road. I bought three quarter inch to do it. Do any of you guys think there is anyway with all those big trees it could be running in faster than it can drain out the bottom? Just wondering what your thoughts may be on it. Theres big time pitch on everything. Down at the road itll run into a 1500 gallon tank probly. Theron

[maplwrks]

I think it'll be fine, Theron. The only thing that may put a kink in the operation would be if that line were to freeze for some reason.

[vtsnowedin]

Here is a chart that might help. It looks like with any gravity head at all you can expect a 3/4" pipe to flow from three to five gallons a minute. It will take a lot of taps and rig to keep up with that.
http://www.wlplastics.com/pdf/WL121_0505_Flow_Head_Loss.pdf

[Haynes Forest Products]

VTS is right once that thing gets a good draw the GPM will go up because of the sipon action. Always check the tank because of the potential for ice to block the discharge. some plastic areas will freeze at differant rates so be alart.

[KenWP]

Well at 180 gallons a hour rate to empty you would need to get 540 gallons a hour fill rate in the first hour to over flow it. Thats almost a whole days worth of sap of that many trees. So there is no way it could fill faster then it drains unless it plugs or feeezes up.

[PATheron]

I figured that would be good just kind of wondered if I was messing up. The spot is in a bad place. Its a hard place to access but I really wanted the trees bad. The suck line goes over the hill to the releaser in the woods and the only way to access the releaser is with the 4 wheeler but I can do it. I thought of pumping back up over the hill to the sugarhouse but it would be a ton of pipe to have freeze ups in so I decided to just run it down to the road and pick it up. I think the volume of sap is going to be pretty good becouse Ive never really tapped trees that nice. I know a lot of them, probly most of them would fill a 4 gallon sap pail in a day on a good gravity day but Ive never seen numbers like that across the board with the vac. Fun to see what it does. Theres probly 100' of elevation difference to the road at the tank so the drain line should drain good. Thanks for the help. Theron

[brookledge]

If you have good slope then why not just put the releaser at the end of the line instead of in the woods? Then you would not need the 325 gal tote. One less tank to clean
Keith

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Keith,
It is because the distance from his vacvroooom supply would be even further. I think his solution will work well. I don't expect ice to be much of a problem because of slope. I think debris in the line poses the biggest threat but it will be easy to check for when he is checking the releaser and doing vacuum patrol.
Doug

[PATheron]

Keith- I could put the releaser down at the road if I wanted to run a remote gas pump but Im really trying to avoid that. I bought a 130 cfm pump for the 5000 taps Im going to have and I figure Ill run a lot of tube to a releaser before I take on the responsabiliy of another pump in the field. Im just trying to keep things as simple as possable becouse Ive got to be really efficient to run this many taps and still go to work. Even the way Im doing it therell be 4 releasers dumping at the same time. I MIGHT if I have time even go up to my other neighbor buddy and put another couple hundred real nice ones on a dairy pump and glass bowl and run it off his house electric then therell be 5 running. My policy with the releasers is they get checked every morning. Turns into quite a bit of work. This year my dads retired so thats going to be really great. Ill get up before work and check the releasers quick myself. Then hell come up and double check them and then around 11 am hes going to turn one of the ro's on and then he should be good to go. Im going to leave him my big pickup whenever Im gone and if theres a tank full maybe hell go get a load whatever he feels like and then when I get home should be about ready to boil. After all the work Ive been doing all fall I think season is going to be more like a break then a burden. Itll be tough but at least I wont be stringing tube every second. Theron

[brookledge]

Ok I understand now
Keith

[Beweller]

With 100 ft of head and a modest loss from flow, you have the basis for a "natural" vacuum system. With only 33 ft of available head, you can (in theory) develop as high a vacuum as you can get with any vacuum pump (limited by the vapor pressure of the sap a/o the naturat gas produced by the tree plus the in-leakage of air).

There doesn't seem to be too much info on designing for natural vacuum.

[802maple]

Theron, the only potential problem I can see is, you will need to make sure there are no sags in the line. It could air lock as I have seen this happen alot. I used to have a similar situation with 2- 1500 gallon tanks and I had my line run on the ground down a steep slope to the sugarhouse, when it got to the sap shed it had to rise about 4 feet into the tanks. Even though there was 100 feet elevation change in 800 feet of line, it would not push it up over the tank, even with both of those tanks full, until I shook the hose. It then would push the airlock out and everything would be fine