Check Valve adapters

[maple flats]

I'm looking to find out how everyone is doing with the check valve adapters. Do you have Vac? Has anyone else tried them on gravity.
I have all of my taps on gravity and I used the CV adapters this year. I am not sure my reduced production so far is weather or CV related and what % is the result from each cause. When I tapped i had OK but not good flow for 2 days and then the weather got too warm. Last night (early this morning) it finally dropped to 29-30 and I thought the flow would be fair but it was only about half of what I was expecting. My bigger bush of just over 400 taps only gave me about 75-80 gal as of 2 hrs ago, (it hit 60 today) I know it really needs a little colder overnight and might be it was down to 2930 for too little time but is anyone else seeing reduced flows when conditions might seem to indicate more? Am I the only one using the CV on gravity? Tonight might end up being a degree or 2 colder, I can only hope. What is everyone else seeing related to what you expect given the temperatures you get?

[lew]

We have 1400 on vac with check valves and 2 other woods totaling 950 taps on gravity. The gravity taps produced maybe 20 gallons total. The vac woods produced 2400 gallons so far today as of 7 pm. It is still 41 degrees out. I should mention that we went down to 28 last night. If we only had some sugar. We have beeen hit with catepillars for 3 years in a row now. Started out at 1.5 and is down to 1.2 now. Thank goodness we have an RO.

[gmcooper]

Our CV are doing well on vacuum. Quite steady production. The gravity tubing without CV has been very sporadic. There have been a few good days with gravity. We will use CV next year (new ones).

[wdchuck]

I put out the CV's on 2 systems- Northside got 900 of the 1300 there, Southside got only 200 of 1100. I also replacedd a lot of drops wherever they were getting really old and shmangy looking. Both systems are on vac, but South pulls higher levels. We just started to make dark amber yesterday, so I would say we are at the point of the season where the difference should be greatest. So far its been hard to tell what effect the cv's have had as we've gotten lots of sap under all conditions, warm, cold, windy and cool, no freezes, you name it.......We are easily going to have our best year ever- I'll post later what effect I think we're getting from the spouts.

[ennismaple]

We won't know until the end of the season. Some of our bushes run better at different times in the season but for now they're working out OK - after some minor user error getting them installed. None broke but a few weren't seated properly and the fingers were bent.

[highroadsyrup]

I put 700 cv's on gravity. Mixed results, the bush that usually dries up first has finally showing signs of quitting today. If my season is over, like I think, this bush will end up with 11.84 gallons spt. My biggest line that has great south exposure has treesaver taps, I think I missed most of the run, tapped it on Feb. 15th --- sap may have run in January??? Pulled a few taps there 2 day and the holes are still wet but not showing up at the tank. Another south line with cv's has been dry for a week. Some roadside 5/16 lines have run very well.
I have another small bush with treesavers thats still running. I'm still trying to figure all this out -- its making no sense -- weird year!! My highest sugar was 3% and my lowest has has been 2% -- 1/2 my production was light amber but I am down 50% from last year. Made some Grade B tonight --- haven't made any for years. Weather has been crazy here, lots of nights at 29-32.

May be time for some vacuum!!!

[themapleking]

If you guys read the study. C V are for vacume systems

[maple flats]

I fully realize the CV have only been "tested" on vac. I also read a study by Steve Childs, Cornel Maple Specialist, who did a gravity test with some off the shelf check valves before these were introduced. His gravity (that was all he tested) was a big success. Based solely on that I tested the CV adapters on everything this year. I am trying to determin if the CV are hampering my gravity flow on marginal days. I have been saying I will add an RO AND vac next year with a sugarhouse addition to add a kitchen and an RO room, heated of course with the addition and RO being first. My thoughts are changing, I'm now thinking I'll add the vac and try to add the others but I'm thinking I'd rather have too much sap and sell some than an RO without enough sap. If I can swing both I will, if not I'll be vac not RO for 2011, and add RO for 2012. For now my question is just about results of anyone using CV adapters on GRAVITY and compared to gravity without CV if you have both bushes.

[batsofbedlam]

Vacuum seems to make all the difference in the world, this year. 104 taps on gravity with CV adapters and I've gotten less than 200 gallons of sap at 1.9%. 340 taps on vacuum with CV adapters and I've gotten 5500 gallons of sap at 1.3%-1.8%. Most bucket people around here have already pulled their taps, my trees are still running. I've boiled down 950 gallons in the lat 3 days.
My only comment on the CV's is that in the big wind/rain storm a few days ago, several of the stubbies pulled out. Maybe a redesign with a twist lock could prevent that.

[maplemaple2020]

the cv's arnt for gravity there for vac. the reason is when you have a vac going the releaser fills up when the releaser opens for air that air is pusing the vac in the line back in the tree its called back pressure.

[themapleking]

I got 845 CV taps with 22" vac and I've been getting 1100 gals a day. The buckets have stopped for a week And guys without CV taps have been getting far less sap so far.

[mapleman3]

the cv's arnt for gravity there for vac. the reason is when you have a vac going the releaser fills up when the releaser opens for air that air is pusing the vac in the line back in the tree its called back pressure.

The CV is for once the vac is shut off the tree with a negetive pressure doesnt suck the sap back up the drop line into the hole and aid in bacterial growth. A releaser and properly set up vac system should not loose much vacuum when it dumps. check valves and the the releaser valves take care of that. otherwise you would have to re-create that vacuum in your lines everytime it dumped and you would loose that advantage over gravity!

[Homestead Maple]

The CV's keep bacteria laden sap from rentering the tap hole when the vacuum is off, thus keeping the tap hole fresher longer and helping to extend the season.

[Brian Ryther]

The final conclusion is still yet to be determined for me yet. CV's and regular adptrs. are running neck and neck right now. If there is to be a difference I do not think I will see it for another three to four weeks.

[maple flats]

The CV's are being tested on gravity by Vermont Maple Research this season according to what Dr Tim said at Verona conference in Jan. I thought I'd do the test along with him.

[PerryW]

PerryW's Comment from a month ago about the CV Adapters:


3) The additional syrup (from CV Spouts) is most likely lower quality or commercial syrup and will be worth less. Retail sales will be unlikely for this lower quality product.


Dr. Tim's Response:



This was not our experience. Because it ran harder through to the end, the syrup was good quality to the last day we boiled. Typically we will make some B syrup or even commercial at the end.....we didn't make any last year.

Even if more B or Commercial is made...what is the problem with it? There is a definite market for this stuff (it just isn't mostly retail) as a flavoring agent for all sorts of products. A good amount of maple syrup is sold this way.

Looks like the CV spouts will get you some nice fancy-grade bud run with the temps we are having now!

[sapman]

After looking for vacuum leaks today, I have to wonder about the effectiveness of the CVs. As I would pull the stubby off to tap the CV in some more (they have loosened up some), I tried blowing and sucking through several (yes, I realize I'm probably totally contaminating the holes by doing this when reinserting the CV). I would say 3 out of 4 times the ball would not "check". I know from trying on vacuum gauges that I can suck about 20" or so of vacuum. When the CVs were new and dry, they worked flawlessly. But now with sticky sap, and probably some tiny wood chips inside, they just don't really seem to be working. Sometimes I sucked some chips out, then they'd work. But who gets a perfectly clean hole after tapping?

I'm a little discouraged about the effectiveness of CVs. I really hope I'm wrong, and that someone can give me some encouragement.

Also, is there a best way to remove them after the season?

[KenWP]

I tried to remove the regular adapters the last couple of days and what a pain to remove out of a tree. The wings are so soft they bend before they pull out the spout.

[maple flats]

I pulled regular adapters with pliers around the barrel of the adapter. Try that.

[sapman]

That's what I'm afraid of, Ken. I guess pliers or visegrips are going to be the way to go. They should have made a tool for removing them by now, or change the design so a hammer will pull them. Maybe I'm missing something on the product line.

[Russell Lampron]

I bought a tap removal tool at Bascom's a couple of years ago. It works great and cost $12 at the time. It is sort of like a crow bar with an opening wide enough to go over a 7/16" spout between the 90 degree and the tree.

On the check valves that I have looked at while removing taps while under vacuum I could easily see where the ball was sucked back to close the hole. It has been warm here this season and I'm not seeing as much bacteria as I used to either.

[orser506]

I was thinking about changing to CV type but then i realized that they would prevent backwashing ...right?

[Russell Lampron]

The check valve is just the adapter that goes into the tree. You can still back wash when you pull your taps.

[ennismaple]

You can backwash as you pull the taps but you need the tees with the plugs and not cups. If you vacuum wash you pull the tap, suck water through and put the CV into the tee cup. When you tap the following year you take the old CV off, tap and then put the new CV in the tree.

[upsmapleman]

I know we still have some time to go on the season in some areas. I was wondering if anyone is getting close to the advertised gallon per tap? It looks like it is going to freeze here for a few days and I will know if they work or not. I put 1500 on 10 year old tubing where they were suppose to gain the most benfit.

Dale

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

i have the same observation as sapman. pulled 8 cvs that were on reds and 7 were stuck open either with small wood chips from tapping or sugared up. if i use them next year tap hole will need to be washed or blown out

[sapman]

A buddy of mine (who may actually read this) is VERY careful when tapping. He taps, with a pretty slow bit, hands off the drill, then cleans the hole with a twig. Probably takes 15 seconds or more per tap. He does 300+. I know I'd be tapping a LONG time if I did it that way.

[brookledge]

I'm at .25 gallons per tap and will in no way come close to a gallon per tap. The yr for me has been disaterous as I usually get no lower than .4 gal of syrup per tap. On the other hand I have made more per tap than others around my area. It is being reported as one of the worst yrs ever.
I have 1150 taps and to date have made 300 gal of syrup. Of the 1150 taps 800 are with CV and the rest is on another line with out. I did it this way to see if I could see a difference in flow. Well the last runs I got back on the 18th and 19th I got a little less sap per tap on the line without the cv adapter. But the real test will be in a few days the temps are suppose to go back to sugaring temps instead of 70s
Time will tell
Keith

[maple sapper]

I think if you used cv adapters or not, this year just was not in the cards for sap collection period. The year played out just like last year and was a total failure. To bad the clean up is the same for a failure or a good one. It just makes it feel even worse having to do so much cleaning of bucktes and tubing with no reward.

[danno]

[QUOTE=Russell Lampron;107168]I bought a tap removal tool at Bascom's a couple of years ago. It works great and cost $12 at the time. It is sort of like a crow bar with an opening wide enough to go over a 7/16" spout between the 90 degree and the tree.

I had the same tap remover and it worked excellent - unitl I lost it in the woods a couple of seasons ago. Amazing how the woods just can eat up your tools.

[maple flats]

I made my own removal tool. I bought a $1.88 wonder bar look alike and with a dremel tool using a small round sander wheel I made a notch for taps in the end of the short leg. I cost me $1.88 + 2 sanding wheels (@.25ea) and about 5 minutes time. It works perfectly. Those prices are from about 6 yrs ago. I still have it.
As far as the CV's I have not checked yet, but my taps started running again today. I went to wash tanks to get ready for tomorrow when I expect 26 degrees overnight. When I got there the tank at my 400 tap woods was running fairly well, but I am sure it had not run for too many hours. It was running at the estimated rate of 1 gal/3 minutes but I only had 80 gal in the tank. I dumped my wash water and collected the sap which was only very slightly cloudy in spite of being 5 days since it last ran. I am looking at weather that says I may get 7-8 days flow in a row with one too cold day on friday. If this comes to be I will more than tripple my years production. After finding this I checked my other woods by my sugarhouse with 175 taps and nothing was flowing. Must be cold air rose this time. My sugarhouse is at 475 elevation and my 400 tap woods ranges from 1040' on the lower end and just short of 1160' on top and all is on a slope of 5% to 55% with lots of place for cold air drainage to go off the side of the hill. I never expected it when I had mid thirties down below. This year is really confusing me.

[KenWP]

I so far for normal taps use a cresent wrench and it works great but those stupid adaptors are hard to get the wrench behind. Also I used a bunch of stubbies I had for taps and they work fine but they are tight against the tree. I know what idiot uses stubbies for taps.

[maple sapper]

I pulled a bunch of my cv's out tday and really like the wing dings on the sides. They came out so easy. Some I was able to pull out by hand with a twist. I am going to be sad when I have to pull out the old style I replaced them with that are just round. But if they give me sap this weekend I wont care.

[Randy Brutkoski]

Stubbies as spouts..... Did you have to use a 1/2 inch drill bit? You Canadians never surprise me.

[KenWP]

7/16 just like the regular spouts. They pound in okay and produce sap. I used a few of those goofy tube spouts also. Had to figure out how to pound them in the tree with out mashing the end the tube fits on. I fiannly used one of the tees from a drop line with the cup.Iit fits over the end and you can pound them into a tree.

[sapman]

Dave (maple flats), what road is your big bush on? I drove by one on an east facing hill sort of southeast or east of Clockville last year. Is that about right? Seems like there's a quarry nearby, or large landfill or something, too.

Tim

[maple flats]

Sounds like you saw mine. Going in one direction, up the road the main is black 3/4" and in the other direction going up thru the lower section of woods is all blue main. From one end to the other it is probably .4 mile. This is on Buyea Rd, about a mile or 1.5 mile past the county landfill, on the way to Peterboro. Last year I used 2 tanks, a 6' stock tank with lid for the black main and a 550 gal plastic forthe blue main. This year I raised the lower end of the black and went to just the 550 tank. This has 400 taps and is where I am adding vac for 2011.

[Brent]

I don't think the position of the red ball means anything when the season is over. The ball is supposed to be sucked back to seal the spout, when there is sap in the line and the vacuum is released. At the end of the season there are going to be days when you don't have the vac on and there will be a tiny bit of flow or wood gas that will release the ball. Sun beating on the black plastic will dry up the sap a bit and it could well get stuck. But by then the fat lady has sung and is off stage.

I would love to have some clear plastic ones so I could see the ball during the flow and see if it seats every night. At the end of the season, I don't care where it is.

I've got 600 on vacuum but I only had 160 on vacuum last year so my numbers won't mean much. So far we've got 6375 gallons from the 600. Southern Ontario has been a disaster. People on buckets had hardly been able to flood their evaporators. Without vacuum this year it's a wipe out.

[sapman]

Yeah, Dave, I did see it. Remember Buyea Rd. now. And are you located on Canal Rd. or something like that? I did a job near the canal last winter, and thought I might have seen a maple producer's place.

I hope you're right about the CVs Brent. Same experience here with buckets. I boil for my pastor, and normally he brings in 7-800 gal. in a year. This year he only dropped off 3 times for a total of about 300. Bad, wierd year around here!

[Brent]

I went out this afternoon and tapped in about 200 of my 600 CVs. Virtually every one went in 1/4" deeper. Hope to hit on the rest in the morning as it thaws and the run starts. Hope to see the vac up another inch too.

[220 maple]

Brent,

I don't believe the CV seat in the tree properly, I found many of the 870 I had out leaking vacuum at the tap hole. I tapped them in further to stop the leaks. I pulled one last week to look at the taphole. I believe they are working as promissed, because 4 weeks in the hole looked like I had just drilled it the day before. I have ran 11000 gallon plus from 870 taps in four weeks. They are still leaking slightly and are in need of a freeze that we are getting right now. If we recieve any more sap it most likely will be buddy. I like buddy syrup it helps pay the bills.

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

Freezing and thawing will loosen spouts or adapters over the course of the season, so you may not have set them into the tree enough when you tapped them. Nearly all my taps I can remove by hand at the end of the season, but I couldn't think about it after just tapping them.

[Brent]

I was talking to the dealer that sold me the CVs and he said he has been encouraging Leader to put rings on the taper to help them seal better. He has 3000 up on his own bush and is normally very defensive of Leader products. I think that says a lot that this is not unique to one or two of us. He showed me another spile, maybe a health spile that had rigs on it, a bit like barbs on a hose and said this would be the way to go.

I would support that modification.

[maple flats]

I'm playing the waiting game. It got down to 15 overnight and is going up to 42-45 today. I just got back from my sugarhouse and checked the buds. On Wed I detected some slight swelling of the buds but no color yet. This morning they tightened back up and look like they did a month ago. I checked several trees, all in southerly exposure and with hemlock backdrop, these always bud first. All were tight. Now I test the CV on gravity for results. If my extended is right I should get flow thru at least Wed and likely Thurs. I sure could use it. Right now I stand at .024 gal/tap This is the lowest I have heard from anyone. Yesterday's freeze with 15 this morning is the first cold I have had below 30 since tapping.

[wdchuck]

If I'm near the end of my season, then these things work as advertised! Had a gusher of a sap run on Thursday that looked more like midseason coming into the releaser. No problems with seating the spout or adaptor.....I'll weigh in with my final opinion when things are final.................

[danno]

If I'm near the end of my season, then these things work as advertised! Had a gusher of a sap run on Thursday that looked more like midseason coming into the releaser. No problems with seating the spout or adaptor.....I'll weigh in with my final opinion when things are final.................

Good to hear. How about you other CV guys - now would be the time to see if they performed as advertised. After a great freeze, my southern bush with older taps/drops is not running and my north facing taps on new taps/drops (not CV) is still running - but no gushers here. If the CV reports come in good, I'll put them on the south trees next year.

[220 maple]

Traders,

I went to Pa. Maple Festival Sat. Needed to pick up some glass to fill some orders. The dealer that I deal with buys syrup. He said he had called one of the producers he buys from in Vermont. The producer told him that by this time in his season he usually has 60 barrels of syrup, he had over 100 barrels so far and felt he had a very good week coming this week. He credited his suscess to CheckValves spouts. I believe with the right conditions they are going to perform as promissed. I will give my final report on the 870 I used this season.

Mark 220 Maple

[wglenmapler]

In my belief the CV's are helping. We are still getting flow in excess of a gallon and a half per tap. Too bad they don't help with sugar content although it sure was nice to see the sap a bit sweeter the last few days.

I'm glad I used all CV's-even though they seem to fall out easier than normal. My neighbors without them are not happy. It has sure been a tough year for most in our area.

[lew]

I put in 1,400 CV this season and believe they worked as claimed. We just didn't get good weather here sor syrup production this year. We boiled in the last of our sap last night. Gathered 1,400 gallons for a 24 hour period with no frost since Saturday night. Gathered 2,500 yesterday. Total of 20 gallons per tap for the season with horrible conditions. Our non-vac woods were dismal to say the least. Haven't gathered from them in at least 2 weeks, no sap. Our problems related to no sugar, started at 1.5 and went to 1 after just 3 days and stayed there the rest of the season. Also we had a heat wave that infected our tubing with large amounts of bacteria and we couldn't get the snot out of the line. Every gathering there was 10-20 gallons of snot on the bottom of the tank to be rinsed out and the sap was very cloudy. When you went into the woods, you could see "snowballs" flowing down the lateral lines. Tough season. Would have been no season without vacuum and the CV's made it better I believe.

[Mark-NH]

I my area I believe it was the perfect set of circumstances this season to show check valves work. Like most, we had warm conditions throughout the season with temps getting up to the 60's and no freeze for 5-6 days mid March. It dropped back into the high teens last weekend and warmed up beginning of the week.

We have one bush on cv's and one on health spouts. The bush on cv's ran well. The other bush produced nothing. Similar experiences with others in the area.

Ironically, this weird season fell on the first year of the cv's. If it was a conventional season I bet we would be debating the merits of cv's till the cows came home. After this season, I don't think there will be much debate. Tell Leader to order up a lot of plastic.

[ennismaple]

Yesterday was a good example of how the CV's work. Our CV's are on a 400 tap bush that is normally the first to shut down. The tubing is 8 years old and we put the stubbies on the existing droplines. Our main bush is newer tubing (3-4 years) and almost 1500 5/16" taps that have been used as many seasons as the tubing. Yesterday we got the same amount of sap from the 400 taps on CV's as we did on the 1500 health spiles.

After our season finishes today I'm curious to crunch the numbers and plot the gallons per tap for each bush.

[twobears1224]

i checked dads tubing for him yesterday.i also pulled four of those check valves apart..three out of four had stuck balls..it should be intresting to see how many out of 400 are stuck..i hope not 3/4,s of them.

delbert

[danno]

Anybody able to compare CV's to new stubby non CV taps in side by side bushes. Not asking too much, am I? Even if the CV ball is stuck open, it's still a new tap and should run better than an old tap. I put in a new section this year with stubbies and non CV taps. This section ran this week when the 5 year old drops/taps did not.

So, now we have to determine if the CV's are running better because they're CV or because they're new taps - or how much better because they were CV? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Brent]

Delbert
the real question here is not if they are stuck, but when did they get stuck.

If the hole stopped yielding sap and became dry, the ball would fall down and as it continued to dry, it would stick there.

We're still running a bit here, but in the last couple hours, so I'm going to go pull the plug on the vac and then pull a few fresh wet ones out and see what we've got.

[ennismaple]

I've got a bush that has a combination of about 60% new tubing with 5/16" spiles and 40% old tubing with new 7/16" to 5/16" adapters (not stubbies) that I'll compare to the bush with CV's on 8 year old tubing. I'll share my data when I get the numbers from the camp and run them through Excel early next week.

[220 maple]

Started pulling CV's yesterday, and flushing lines whether the large lady is singing or not. I should have made a video of some of the holes. All of the holes still had water in them, some actually was running water down the tree almost like a new tap hole would before a spile could be put in. All holes looked like the wood was very white, very little staining. I checked the water that was coming in before I started to pull spiles, only 1%, not good enough for us without an RO. Plus it's eating itself up in the tank. I believe from my experence this season I will give checkvalves two thumbs up.

Mark 220 Maple

[Brent]

Good news bad news

good first
I went to the bush and and it's still running at 11:00PM
It's still crystal clear
I found check valves that seemed to be working perfectly

Bad news:
I heard several peepers
One releaser was hung up on our best line

I turned off the valve to one line and released the vac
I pulled about 30 taps and found only 2 or 3 that I would say were working perfectly. The ball was free and moving. When I sucked on it, it seated and sealed.

About 6 or 8 had wood chips that I could see in the dark that had trapped the ball.
Two of them were sealed in the closed position. When I pulled the taps in those holes those two trees peeed like it had just been drilled.
A few others had stuck balls for reasons I could not determine.
Almost all of them would not pass the suck test. ie even after blowing and sucking back and forth a few times, the ball would not seat and seal

If people testing these things last year got the same items I got, and got the spectacular results that were reported. it was for reasons other than these things sealing and stopping the microbes from getting into the holes.

Our season is likely ending tonight or tomorrow so we'll never get a tail end to know if they are of any benefit.
From what I've seen tonight, someone will have to come up with a pretty new angle to get me to pay the premium for these next year.

That's the way I see it anyway.

[Jim Brown]

Brent; Great info thanks for the detailed report.We will be pulling ours CV's(300) this weekend. Will be taking extra notice as to what we find
Jim

[twobears1224]

the taps i checked are still running and every ball was stuck open.

delbert

[PerryW]

My 20 year old plastic and gravity system appears to be running strong still. Of course, I've only been tapped for 32 days, so they haven't had time to dry up. I did notice yesterday that 3 of my 50 buckets have dried up, but they were never good runners anyway.

[brookledge]

I began pulling a few today after work in a neighbors yard. I should have sucked on them to see if they would seat but I didn't. However I shook them back and forth and all of the balls would move back and forth. I only pulled 40 or 50 today so I will suck on a few to see when I pull the other 750.
The holes looked very clean.
Keith

[KenWP]

I can see this now the National tap succking contest. See who can suck the most taps in a day.

[Brent]

Actually Ken they make pretty good pea shooter. There's more than one little red ball in my bush this morning.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Dont even say it:evil: Ken

[Grade "A"]

I pulled some taps and found that 1/2 were stuck open. With that being said I made 74% more syrup this year than last. The check valve were the only thing I changed to help get more sap.

[gar]

Could it be the only suckers are the ones who bought the check valves???????????? :lol:

[Brian Ryther]

I have made my decision about CV's.

This years results

Buckets = 7.24 gal of sap per tap
New Drop Lines and or Spout Adapters = 17.36 gal of sap per tap
CV's = 24.69 gal of sap per tap


So 7.36 gal of sap per tap more. I averaged 65.6 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup this year. So .11 gallons of syrup at an average of $40 per gallon. I figure that the CV's made me about $4.40 per tap. Well worth the $.64 investment.

[KenWP]

Dont even say it:evil: Ken

Hanyes you take all the fun out of giving you a hard time. When you mention red balls the ball in a coffee maker if red also so they probbably are from the same source. The Denver little ball factory.

[trackerguy]

CV's are in for me next year - My trees are still running well in 80 degree weather with the VAC off, I'm sick of boiling, sap is 90 degrees when it hits the tank in this 80 degree weather and my day job prevents me from processing it soon enough before it clogs my RO and makes "C". No freezes next week. Made 115g from 330 taps - should have 140 but I tapped a week late and dumped sap on an RO mishap.

[markcasper]

My cv woods are still doing it, my regular leader adaptor woods is completely done as there was very little 2 days ago. Turned the pump off there yesterday. The cv woods is still hammering, but am throwing in the towel in the morning, will be dumping all that as I am sick of this season and need to get on with cleanup. No one has convinced me NOT to use them. My comparison and research is 2 thumbs up for cv.

[Bruce L]

Hi everyone,may seem like a stupid question,but will the sap run through on it's own when you shut the vacuum off?Also ,for washing up as we are doing today,how do you get the chlorine solution to go back through the spile as this is what the check valve is designed to stop?
Thanks,Bruce

[maple sapper]

I was looking at my lines today with the vac pump off. They were full. and the drops had 12-16" of sap in them. These things are working. I tapped right around valentines day. So I will be using them next year. My buckets that have cv's, I reamed last weekend. Today, a week after a freeze and they are still filling buckets. Got to love it. Keep in mind the weather was very warm here for most the winter. Had ice in buckets one day out of the whole season. Thats not good.

[220 maple]

Pulled more taps today, Holes have water setting in them, some ran water down the tree, video this time, and some pictures. I hope Dr. Perkins knows that the tree huggers will be picketting his house when they find out that the trees keep on running and it's all his fault. Lol.
I'm curious about staining since the holes are snow white when I'm pulling taps. Will they stain the trees like in the past?

Mark 220 Maple

[markcasper]

I started removing in the cv bush today and was disappointed to find out that many of the cv's were so packed with hard slime in the ball area that they would not even function. There were several where they were completely shut and though alot of holes were running sap, the sap could not flow out of the cv due to excessive microbial growth clogging the ball shut. And there was the flip side, so much hard packed slime that when sucking on the end, there was no movement of the ball, thus an open entrance for sap to backfeed into the hole.

All in all, I pumped a 3/4 tank onto the ground as there was still sap running. In a normal year, we would be maybe only 1/2-2/3rd's done. So what I am saying is that if we were to get a return of favorable sapflow conditions in the next week to 10 days, I am not so sure the cv's would be able to perform up to their expectations, based on what I observed while flushing lines. I was impressed with one thing, I witnessed every hole looking fresh drilled and only noticed one cv with slime on the end that fits in the hole.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Mark could it be that because of the long drawn out early season with its ups and downs hot then colds then hots that the season would have ended long ago? would you have pulled taps 2 weeks ago and never saw the slimy crud? Sounds like they worked so well they created a secondary problem because they worked so well prolonging the season past what it should have been. Sounds like the trees finaly took a dump out the tap hole like they do every year. The only differance is everyone with CVs was still waiting for 2.5% clear sap in 55 degree temps without a freeze in the last 5 days

[Gary R]

I helped Jim Brown pull his taps yesterday. 297 of them were CV's. We inspected all of them. His pumps have been off for 2 weeks. Most of them the ball moved freely while in the tree. Some of them were stuck closed. But define stuck. All you had to do was shake it in your hand or lightly suck from the tubing end and the ball worked fine. So with vacuum on it I'm sure the ball was sucked open. Very few were stuck open. All of those were due to wood pieces. Seems like they worked well.

[markcasper]

Haynes, Yeh, this year was a dumper for hot weather. I have no doubt that I was satisfied with the cv's, I'm just asking myself alot of "what nows" and "what ifs" and "why's" while removing them. I did dump a 3/4 tank and still had some sap coming, so in that sense they did perform as advertised. My non cv's slowed way down a week before.

[wdchuck]

SO here's my final say- I put in 1100 CV's out of about 2400 taps. That included a lot of new drop lines that were getting old as well. Last year, on a few less taps we made 500 gallons and were tickled to death with that- our bush just doesnt test that high. This year we made about 750 gallons of syrup and the side of the woods that had the vast majority of CV's was still running reasonably well when things just stopped yesterday. .........SO, I'm putting in the rest of the CV"S for next year- you just dont get an added 250 gallons worth of lucky- some of that had to be more than luck................And it seems to me that some of the naysayers would probably twist any results into a negative outlook. I cant see any negative about 250 gallons more syrup- that $10,000 will easily pay for those spouts and stubbies................just sayin.........

[markcasper]

The question I have been thinking is what percentage of the increase came from the new drop? And what percentage came from the cv?

[maple flats]

I had very few new drops, in fact I for the first time ever re used old tubing to make most of the drops that were changed. My tap holes still have not dried up AND I do not have vacuum. On the other side I'm wondering if the CV was too much restriction without vac and reduced my yield. Will not know because I used CV on all taps, except I did see one that was missed and had last years adapter and not a cv.
I have however stopped boiling. My last boil on Friday was real poor. The sap in the rear pan kept foaming big time and even 3 and 4x defoamer did not stop it. I had to raise the flue pan hood several times to skim the foam off the rear half of the pan and with this unending foam my boil rate dropped more than 50% and I ended up with C.
I believe the CV's kept things open and will definately use them next year at least on the section getting Vac, not yet sure about the gravity. I plan to put vac on my 400 tap bush and increase it to about 550 taps by use of 2 or 3 sap ladders.

[wdchuck]

Ok, I agree that the new drop could very well have contributed to my yield, and I'm not denying that it did. However that issue and the CV's have been researched very well and I'm going to give them some of the credit. In my situation, I had a lot of old drops that really did look bad and needed replacing. Yes, a 50% increase is quite a lot, and there are no doubt a few factors involved here. Just the same, I'm switching the 2nd half of my woods over to CV's next year...... And just for the record, I'm plenty familiar with research methodology, enough to make the switch. We'll see if I'm right in 3 or 4 years.

[Russell Lampron]

Just finished pulling all of my taps and washing the tubing. The old section of woods got new drops and regular adapters and the section that I put in last year got CV's. The sap flow didn't didn't stop in either section until the end. The biggest difference that I noticed was that the section with CV's didn't have as much bacteria slime in it. If the season had gone on for another week or 2 I probably would have noticed a big slow down or stoppage in the old section. For the extra money it won't cost me very much to use CV's on everything next season.

I did notice that more of the CV's that had red balls in them were sucked back to the tree when I pulled them. I washed with the vacuum on and sucked water from a pail through the spout. I don't know if more of them would have sucked back and sealed if the sap was running.

[gmcooper]

We will use the CV again next year. Even though we had a shortened season due to weather, yesterday I ran the vacuum pump to drain the lines and sap was still flowing. Bucket and gravity trees were dry over a week ago and didn't do much the week before that. CV trees even with buds open seemed to have a bit of sap flowing with vacuum on. I did not find any CV leaking at tree all season.

[maple sapper]

The cv's I have pulled have all looked really good in the holes. Some of them I pulled today still looked really good and were dripping still. I think this may have been the worst year to release a product like this especially for the skepticisim from the start. So, Id attribute alot of the low yeild on the weather pattern in general. If this thread was taking place after a "regular or average" season weather wise, Im sure there wouldnt be a person that would disagree that they function as the sales pitch describes. To think afew a week of warmth, and two days at 75+ and the holes are still weaping makes me happy.

[maple sapper]

I see a run of vac pumps after this years weather.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I think some might be missing the point of the CV. If they work they way the are supposed to for 75% of the season, then they have kept the hole like new and it will take a few weeks for it to shut down once they quit working. This year was probably not the best of years, but don't seem like anyone is seening anything but an increase. If they give you another 1 gallon of sap per taphole, then they have paid for themselves about 3 times the cost of the investment as a gallon of sap is worth aprox $ 1 in retail syrup and about 1.5 to 2 times in wholesale syrup.

I guess I am shocked to think that anyone would expect these things to look and function like brand new after being in the trees for 6 to 8 weeks or more.

[Brent]

whatever they did, they seem to have helped almost everywhere. I would still like to see clear ones so we could watch the balls.
Not many of mine were closing properly. We didn't get much of a challenge here with the weather but the holes were clean and white.

[PerryW]

If they (CV Spouts) give you another 1 gallon of sap per taphole, then they have paid for themselves about 3 times the cost of the investment as a gallon of sap is worth aprox $ 1 in retail syrup and about 1.5 to 2 times in wholesale syrup.

I hate to bring up an old topic that seem to rile the Doctor up but....

You must subtract the fuel and labor costs of gathering and processing the additional gallon of sap into syrup into the equation when figuring the cost-effectiveness of an annual investment in the CV spouts. A gallon of sap delivered to the sugarhouse is worth $0.35-$0.45 in my neck of the woods.

[markcasper]

Seeing as much slime in them as I did today, I would like to see them clear or white in color as the black to me just attracts so much heat which makes the bacterial growth more excessive.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Perry I'm confussed about your point. If the CVs are .35 each and you install them in 100 trees the cost with shipping and tax is about $40.00 if you get 7 extra days in the season at a gallon per day thats .35 to .45 per gallon of sap X 100= $40.00 X 7 days = $280.00 subtract the $40.00 investment leaves plenty of room for fuel and time. So why would that upset the very busy DR. Im thinking the Dr is out getting paid yes getting paid by an evil corporation to come up with new and improved ways to get sap from a tree made into 100% grade A Maple Syrup. I would also bet that all the info he gets this year will be free to the general public ASAP without a cost to you or me. Thanks for letting me rant:)

Now if I find out that he has been out perfecting ways to horizontal drill 1300 miles into my sugar bush and charging the cost to the school Ill go gunning for him myself. But I think he said his hobby is volunteering so I let it slide:rolleyes:

[PerryW]

I agree with your comment
subtract the $40.00 investment leaves plenty of room for fuel and time.

All I am saying is that you need to come up with a dollar figure for the "fuel and time" spent on collecting and processing that additional sap. Maybe it's only a few cents per gallon of sap to collect and boil it down and bottle it for your operation, but it needs to be considered.

As far as the Dr. is concerned, I respect his expertise and knowledge on sugaring, but he seemed to jump all over my comments in a response to my post about the subject, then abruptly leave this board. It has nothing to to specifically with the CV spouts, but has to do with any annual investment that would yield additional sap. The sap does not collect itself and boil itself down.

Gotta go wash out 600 taps on the side of the mountain.

[trackerguy]

Pulled the 1st 50 CV's this morning - after 4 days of 75 degree weather clear sap still drips from the holes on every tree when I pull the spout.

[Squaredeal]

Just something for you all to consider.
I experimented with the clear strait spouts from CDL -put in about 500.
These all had new drops, and new tees, but once they are installed, the yearly cost is 23 cents. I like them as they are clear and un-complicated and most importantly, still running from clean, white wood.
I think that it is impossible to judge overall effectiveness after only one season, but my feeling is the biggest results come from clean plastic and a vacuum system that keeps everything flowing away from the tree.
The theory of check valves is great, but IMHO too subjective to failure from slime, wood chips, installation error, manufacturing defects, etc when you have thousands out in the woods that have to operate flawlessly to achieve results. It wouldn't take too many getting stuck closed to diminish increased results from the ones that are working.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Squaredeal Well said. I didnt tap this year and have absolutly NO experiance with the CVs. But seeing how this subject gets discussed can really put a guy over the edge. I like your approch. I will be making up my mind for the up coming season based on the imput we read here.

HOW and WHAT is dicussed on this site WILL and DOES have an effect on even the smallest of producers. Im sure Im on alot of IGNORE lists but its not for dogging someone that is trying to improve the industry.

[Homestead Maple]

I agree with your comment

All I am saying is that you need to come up with a dollar figure for the "fuel and time" spent on collecting and processing that additional sap. Maybe it's only a few cents per gallon of sap to collect and boil it down and bottle it for your operation, but it needs to be considered.

As far as the Dr. is concerned, I respect his expertise and knowledge on sugaring, but he seemed to jump all over my comments in a response to my post about the subject, then abruptly leave this board. It has nothing to to specifically with the CV spouts, but has to do with any annual investment that would yield additional sap. The sap does not collect itself and boil itself down.

Gotta go wash out 600 taps on the side of the mountain.

The Dr. explained in his last post that he had so much to do to get ready for sugaring and would be busy enough during the season, that it would be difficult to for him to get to the computer while sugaring. I'm sure he will have lots of info to post on the Trader about Proctor's season and the different things they tried. He's always seemed very sincere about helping people on the Trader.

[Brent]

Two things to bring into this

First on the economics, we need to look at the cost difference between health spout and a CV spout, not just the cost of the CV spout. The health spout has become the milestone for comparisons.

Secondly, there has to be a point when we suck too much out of the trees and start to do harm. I have no idea how much is too much and we won't know for a few seasons. It may become a banned thing like tha parafomaldahyde of years ago.

[markcasper]

I pulled the last of the cv's and forgot to mention one thing. On many of them, after I pulled the stubby off the cv, the cv's were making screaching and occasionally squealing sounds with them still in the tree. So in essence the traphole was under vacuum and the ball was trying to shut as the tree was pulling it back in. The resulatant bacterial growth obviously was preventing 100% closure of the ball, thus resulting in air being drawn into the taphole.

Just one more observation in my research of this product.

[ennismaple]

We pulled our CV's and crunched the numbers on the weekend. In 2009 our one bush ran 20% better than the rest of our bush. This year, with the Leader CV's, it ran 56% better than the rest. The last 3 days we gathered (Mar 30-Apr 1) the 400 tap bush with the CV's produced as much sap as our 1500 tap bush with 3+ year old health spiles.

For argument's sake, the bush with the CV's produced 3 USG per tap more than another bush with all new tubing or 7/16 to 5/16 adapters.

I'm not overly worried about a few manufacturing defects in the CV's. I sometimes find defects in the health spiles too and they also get partially plugged with wood chips and grime.

[danno]

Would be interesting to know whether they plan to make any modifications on the CV for next season before the upcoming Sping dealer sales - assuming there are any CV's left over from this season.

[Brent]

Tonight I pulled 55 of my approx 600. Of that
11 seemed to work perfectly. The ball was free and sealed
11 the ball was stuck, totally closed, open or in between, but would not move
33 the ball was free but would not seal.

I just blew and sucked gently to test them. The reversal of sap flow as the vacuum bleeds down at night is quite slow, so it would not take much to stop a ball from moving and sealing correctly.

Percentage wise this is an improvement over the midnight test I did on 30 last week while the flow was still on.

So in my mind, with so many failures in the intended mechanical operation ... read "sales pitch" what is really going on?? Everyone seems to be getting better flows. Could we be getting extraordinarily good flow from the very few that work properly. I don't think that would make the difference. So I am left with the idea that they are working in a way that was unintended, but working none the less.

More results to follow tomorrow.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Brent,

I haven't used them but have read about everything I have seen about them and I think the difference is that they make in the first few weeks of the season when they are functioning perfectly as I stated before. During this period, they keep the hole clean and by the time they start malfunctioning, the season is getting about over and most of the other spouts have stopped or slowed and and some of the CV's are malfunctioning at this point, but they already done there job the prior few weeks and the holes are close enough to new it will take another couple of weeks to shut them down.

We are talking about a 35 cent piece of plastic with moving parts, not like it cost $ 5 @.

[Brent]

Brandon
from what I've seen virtually all my holes tonight looked as clean as the day I tapped them. It seemed all of them were still wet and juicy. Many of the taps were overhead and I got sap in my hair.

Also, and I need to get out the magnifying glass to check them, I think most of those that would not seal had wood chips. Hard to tell, but I have checked a handfull of brand new ones before I tapped and a fair number of them would not seal. I don't think they start off working and then somehow start failing. Can't prove that until next year when they ship some clear ones so we can watch.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I agree it would be pretty cool to watch the action in a clear one, but could you imagine this website if they were all clear. Everyone would be on here griping about they found 10 out of 1,000 malfuntioning when they tapped. Somethings are probably better left the way they are.

[220 maple]

Brandon,
You read my next post before I typed it, When I opened the first bag of 100 CV's I found one missing a ball, I may have installed one or two in haste before I discovered the missing ball. that being said I went thru the other nine bags before I went back to the woods, I found 11 bad CV's out of 1000.
I did not post at that time because the nay sayers would of came out of the woodwork for sure!

Mark 220 Maple

[Brent]

I wouldn't be griping if it was that good. I just took about 25 brand new ones that I never got into the bush and not one of them would seal.

Of the bunch I took off the trees this afternoon, I found a fair number had dried snot stopping the ball from moving. I think that only happened after the flow stopped in those particular trees.

A few others I stuck in a glass of water and sort of sucked water back and forth to flush them, then turned them around to see if they would seal. About half sealed and half still would not.

If the brakes on Toyotas failed at this rate ......

[markcasper]

Brent,

It seems your observations about equaled mine. Now we are back thinking that a certain portion of them did not work when they were new out of the bag? I never thought of that, but I guess it could be so.

As far as wood chips go, I have always shot my holes out with rubbing alchohol and have never had any spouts of any kind plug up. I noticed not one single cv plugged with shavings as there are none after shooting them out. The only thing plugging them was bacterial, microbial growth. Brandon is right in the sense that those with the worst deposits may have already shut down several days prior. I also observed (and to no surprise) that the ones with the worst slime buildup were on the south side of the tree.

[Mark]

I pointed out to a Leader guy that you could suck water past the ball. He said that the ball was hard enough that you could do that, but it was designed for higher vacuum and the ball had to be hard to work. If they put in a softer ball so that you could not suck on it and get it to leak it would get stuck when you put a higher vacuum on it. He said they put a lot of work into it to find the right density ball that works with high vacuum. So they will leak if you suck on them.

[Brian Ryther]

[QUOTE=markcasper;109703]Brent,

It seems your observations about equaled mine. Now we are back thinking that a certain portion of them did not work when they were new out of the bag? I never thought of that, but I guess it could be so.

You guys seem to be micro observing the CV's. You need to look at the big picture. The question is ... did you see or did you not see a production gain from the product? That is the bottom line.

[Brent]

I pointed out to a Leader guy that you could suck water past the ball. He said that the ball was hard enough that you could do that, but it was designed for higher vacuum and the ball had to be hard to work. If they put in a softer ball so that you could not suck on it and get it to leak it would get stuck when you put a higher vacuum on it. He said they put a lot of work into it to find the right density ball that works with high vacuum. So they will leak if you suck on them.

So the simple answer is that they are not check valves. They leak. So what is the action that is giving many people increased yields.

[Mark]

They seal if you are using vacuum and if the vacuum is lost there is a strong pull back into the tree. For a none vacuum system I would think they need softer balls.

[Brent]

Now we're getting into an area of things I don't think we can test. Maybe at Proctor.

How do you know they seal ? With a high percentage of the balls in my sample that would not move, even after beening jerked out of the tree, the slow reduction of vacuum on a system and eventual reversal of flow is not going to make them move.

After sticking them in water and sucking and blowing alternately several times, about half of the ones that would not move, freed up, and only a few of them actually sealed. I could still suck water through lots of them.

This may be like so many technological breakthroughs, and something totally unintended comes out of it that works, and the consensus here seems to be that they are working. I'm just trying to understand how. I'm pretty sure next year I'm going to take one of portable compressed air thanks and strap it on my back when I tap, and blow out each hole. I thought I was doing a pretty good job with a good bit, but the number that were not working because of operator error, ie chips left in the tap hole, was pretty high. But then again if they produce results regardless of the chips, why bother.

Lots of questions and not many answers, except that we got results and made a little more syrup with them in a lousy year.

[markcasper]

I pointed out to a Leader guy that you could suck water past the ball. He said that the ball was hard enough that you could do that, but it was designed for higher vacuum and the ball had to be hard to work. If they put in a softer ball so that you could not suck on it and get it to leak it would get stuck when you put a higher vacuum on it. He said they put a lot of work into it to find the right density ball that works with high vacuum. So they will leak if you suck on them.

Nowhere on the instructions, or in any information that I read, did I observe that these were required for ONLY high vacuum to function properly. If thats the case, then at what level does high vacuum begin and is not considered low vacuum?

[Mark]

Maybe I should not have used the word high. But there is no way you can suck on them as much as a normal vacuum system. I hope not many people use them other than me.

[Brent]

Instructions ?

What instructions?

I made 4 trips to my local dealer and the only instruction I got from him was to throw a cup of water in the bag to help them "cure" so they would not be so brittle and break

[DS Maple]

I haven't read this entire post word-for-word but just thought I'd add that I was very impressed with how these check valves worked. Temps in the 60s shut other trees right down, but the trees tapped with the CV spouts (on Lapierre stubbies) kept on running and running. There is no question we will be upgrading everything to the CV adaptors for next season.

[markcasper]

There were instructions in every bag of 100 that I bought.

[Haynes Forest Products]

You can tell if the have been cured the instructions are SOGGY:rolleyes:

[gmcooper]

My 10 bags all had instructions in them.

[ziggy]

So how many of us got the 40 gallons of sap per tap that we were all talking about before the season started?

[danno]

Also, if you look at Proctor's research on this, it looked like the CV's performed equally or slightly better than comparison taps during the fist few weeks of the season, and did not begin over performing other taps until the first 3 weeks of April. The table I saw proctor using for advertising showed sap flows remaining high through most of April (of whatever year), while other taps quickly faded.

So, why did the CV guys do so well for a season that only lasted a month. I had no CV's, but a bunch of new plastic and moderate vacuum and my good sap runs ended by mid March with the first real warm up. I think the CV's with high vacuum help just kicked in earlier this year. Can't really see any other explanation. Can't ignore the importance of high vacuum and wonder how those did with high vacuum and no CV's.

[Parker]

I started pulling some of my check valves today-a bunch were all munged up-ball not moving-some you could not suck thru all the slime in them,,,but they ran great foe me,,,I wonder when all this grime build up occured?? bet it was at the very end of the season...

[maplwrks]

Here I go again---How many of you that put in CVs this year, replaced 3,4, or 5 year old or older spouts with the CVs? If you did, do you think that new plastic stubbies and adaptors had anything to do with your higher yield, or do you think the stuck ball in the spout had something to do with it? I would challenge any of you to buy regular adaptors this next year. I bet you would have the same results. Many of you saw improved flow and made more syrup with them, for this, I'm happy for you. By reading this thread though, it has proven to me that I don't want them.(Maybe I would try them if somone gave me 500 of them!)

[wdchuck]

Time for me to chime in here- On my system that had 900 of 1400 cv's I ran a max of 18" of vac and later had to back it down to 15 or 16. Late season sap flows still were double the other side of the woods. It seems that the first warm up slowed the flow on the non cv side, which generally is cooler, but the cv side held strong and outperformed the non cv side 2 to 1. I made 50% more syrup (on 1.5% sap) than I've ever made before. If you all dont believe me, you can come count the barrells. ........That kind of increase cant all be luck can it?.

[Brian Ryther]

Mike,
My set up allowed for a good side by side study. Almost all of my tubing is two to three years old. The area that got the CV's is all three year old tubing and drops. They all did get new stubbies and of course CV's. The control bush was two and three year old tubing and they got new adaptors. The results were as clear as they could be. 7 gallons of sap per tap more on the CV's!

[ennismaple]

As I've said before I got 25% more sap from my CV's on old tubing than from another bush that was all new spouts and/or adapters. The CV's produced 50% more sap than other bushes with older spouts. I believe my numbers.

[jordy95]

do you people that have tryed the cv's think they will work on gravidy as well as vac thanks.

[PATheron]

Seems to me this is a simple deal. The check valves stop backflow. I seem to do good in my area running high vac, as high as I can keep, and using new adapters and running my pump all the time the trees are thawed out. If you can do that by running an electric vac pump and leaving it on I dont really see how the check valves are going to help. Im sure I have some instances of back flow with leaks here and there and maybe variances in freezups that kind of thing but over all I dont think I have much back flow. My numbers werent great this year but if you compare them to gravity in my area they are pretty remarkable. Id say if you dont have that situation where you can or are willing to leave the pump on all the time the checkvalves probly help a lot. If you turn the pump off evenings becouse its gas and that makes sense and things arent froze up I guess its going to backflow and contaminate the holes. So if you arent keeping constant suck on the trees it sounds like it would be good to use them. Hey, if they help and it sounds like they did for some guys what the heck, run them. Thing is though this sounds like the perfect year for them to really shine, bad temps, to warm, etc. It doesnt sound like it was any silver bullet to me though to just run them and get a gallon per tap. Remember when everyone said this was going to be a deal where if everyone ran them syrup wouldnt be worth anything becouse we would make so much of it. I dont think that that is the case. Its probly a good help for people and its another tool to be used but seems to me its still pretty hard to make a lot of syrup. Im wondering about them myself becouse if I thought it would make a big difference the way I do things Id buy them immediately but I just dont see how it would when theres always suck on the trees. If thats not a persons situation though I can see how they could really make a difference. I guess everyone needs to evaluate how they are doing things and if they think they are going to help in their situation, go for it. Theron

[lew]

Theron

I installed CV's this and am not sure if they helped or not. Like you I keep my pump on all the time there is a chance of a tree being thawed out. However, I had 4 times where my releaser failed and I had no vacuum to the woods. I don't why or how long the releaser failed, but it did. Did the CV's save me? I don't know. I know vacuum itself did, but not sure on the CV's. I made 20 gallons sap per tap in a crappy year. Not shabby. Non vacuum woods ran about 4 gallons per tap. My 2 worst days were .6 gallons per tap. Every other day that the woods were thatwed out they ran at least 1.6 gallons per tap. The .6 gpt came when we needed moisture. Got some rain and the volume jumped up. I did not notice any decrease in flow from day 1 to last day except when we were lacking moisture.

As far as CV's plugging, We noticed several that were leaking when we washed, but that was when I was putting 60 psi behind it pushing all the snot back towards the ball. I'm sure they weren't designed to stop that.

Our season was over with in less than 4 weeks. So I am still up in the air about their effectiveness. I think they were designed for making a NORMAL season longer. This season was far from normal, but season ever is normal. We just didn't have the weather. 1.5 weeks of upper 50's to mid 70's with nominal frosts. No solid freeze up up at all.

Like i said earlier, I'm up in the air about these, but I do think they helped and I will try them again next year to see how they fair.

[Brian Ryther]

My pumps ran from first sap flow on feb 25 to last sap flow on April 1. I did have releaser problems but they were on the CV lines. If I had not had releaser problems I know that the CV lines would have had an even greater advantage over non CV lines. I have a hard time understanding why some of you would not want an 20 - 30 % in crease in production. Is it brand loyality?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I think ONE big issue with the CV's that is not being said openly is that they are being sold and manufactured by Leader. I think if it was Lapierre or CDL, the comments would be more positive.

[maple sapper]

Help me understand. So your saying leader is not a "FAV" in the business?

[mountainvan]

I love the leader rigid gray tubing. boiled on a lightning for years. great evaporator. every company has its good equipment, it just takes awhile to figure out who does what right. price is a consideration also. the cvs didn't help much down here. I made more syrup,2 cvs, than another producer with 2,000 more taps, with cv's. weather just sucked! too cold then too warm, felt like goldilocks. in a normal year they might work quite well, and seem to have for a couple guys. the two I had did run faster longer than the regular taps, but not the antimicrobial. I'm looking forward to Cornells results, they tested everything

[KenWP]

I guess the discussion will go on and on. With out controlled studies the debate can go on for years. I find some numbers hard to swallow any ways. I know from useing the little round ball in another part of maple that it does work really well so most likely works on the tree also. The one thing that confuses me is the talk about the price of them. A normal adapter isn't much less money anyways.

[markcasper]

Theron, I respectfully disagree with you saying you don't have any backfeed, or there is a way around it by running the pump all of the time. Everyone will have to shut down vacuum from time to time to check oil, change it, etc.... And you will get lots of backfeed and where does that end up? All it takes is a drop.

I had both cv's on one bush and regular adaptors on the other. The last 2 gatherings the volume off the cv's were simply double per tap. It was clear to me that the cv's were doing it.

I did not get done tapping my non-cv's until March 14th and by April 1st I was done.

[wdchuck]

And I dont mean to pile on, but wherever you have a leak. you'll have some backfeed in that area as well.

[PATheron]

I dont have to turn my pump off becouse of it being a liquid ring. It just keeps running. Be honest with you my sugarhouse releaser never failed that I know of and it was my poorest running bush. Across the road that one did fail once but it was one of my highest performers. It was a cold bush and my two cold bushes far outran my warmer behind the house bush. The other thing is the colder bushes are tubed better with shorter laterals. Im not sure what to make of it all but I do know this. I was tapped in by the end of January and had good sap flow even with hardly any freezes till April second. Im not sure you can improve much on that. I really dont have any brand loyalty other than I buy my stuff from Richard. Like I said they probly help, Im not against them at all I just dont see how they can do much if the pump is always on. Thats all Im saying. I still think you have to do everything right to make good numbers. New plastic, high vac, proper tubing, all the basics. Theron

[Russell Lampron]

This season wasn't a good one for having things freeze up. When you leave your pump on all of the time and it does freeze the lateral will freeze near the mainline first and the vacuum in the tree will pull sap back into the tap hole. I watched it happen while I was in the woods at sun set. I had 23" on the mainline side and that didn't stop the unfrozen sap from first coming to a stop and then going the other way. This is where the CV does it's job.

[maplwrks]

Sorry to keep things stirred up!!!! My point is this.....Many of you changed your old taps for CVs. I think you would have seen a huge difference with anything new, regardless of who made the spout or adaptor. To say that the ball in the adaptor (that many of you found stuck) made the difference just doesn't add up to me. I really think that you can attribute most of the success of them to the fact that new plastic makes sap. I agree with Theron, I run my pump all season long, with no breaks and keep constant vacuum on the holes, therefore, I feel that they would be of no significant value to my operation.

By the way--you guys posted the problems with these spouts, not me. Spouts that break while tapping, check balls missing, check balls stuck, check balls in the releaser, don't sound like they are very reliable to me

[trackerguy]

As Mark Twain said, a difference of opinion is what makes a horse race.

[lmathews]

I pulled my taps on Mon. the 5th.When we pulled them we left the stuby in the cv and pulled them out hooked together.My last collection was Sat. the 3rd When we pulled the cv 95% of them were still working properly.The cv's that failed had wood chips in them.I still am not a believer in them as all my stuff was new.I will say I do not like the little fingers that hold the balls as they bend over and create little vac leaks at the tap and allows the ball to end up in the line.I made 90-95 gallons on 410 taps all on 23" of vac.That's not even a quart per tap.So in my case they did not help.I will try them again next year,maybe things will be diff. and maybe not.We will see.

[cropseyvillemark]

I am curious, has anyone figured out what it costs to run the pump 24/7? If the price difference between a new adaptor and a cv is .20, how does that compare to the savings of running your pump 1/2 as much? I also wonder how people can find it cost effective to pay .25-.35 pergallon to buy sap and turn it into syrup, but not worthwhile to spend the same .35 and get 7-10 gallons of sap. I do realize that there is still the cost of running the pump added to that.

[Brian Ryther]

Cropseyvillemark,

I figure it cost me $.22 / hr to run my 2 hp pump.

[cropseyvillemark]

Well that is certainly cheap enough to warrant leaving it run 24/7. Does your pump have any compensating mechanism or vari-drive or just on/off? Do you know what the KWH rate is in your area?

[Brent]

let's give the pump cost equation a try

A decent sized vac pump would draw about 30 amps on 220 volts that is about 6.5 Kw. Run that for an extra 12 hours and you have 78 KW Hours at 10 cents per KWH and you come up to $ 7.80.

Up here power is only 6 cents a KWH from the grid. If you are running a gen set in the bush, it will cost a fair chunk more than 10 cents KWH.

If that vac pump is sucking from 2000 taps, you don't need much overnight sap to justify it.

And then the next step is that it should keep your tap holes cleaner and that really blows the equation away in favor of continuous running. Even if the lines are frozen, some sugars stay in solution and will transfer the vacuum to the tap hole a lot of the time, at least until it gets really cold.

How much benefit would anyone get with CVs if they ran the pumps all the time, who knows.

I'm still in the camp that they do not work mechanically correctly a very high percentage of the time and that we are still seeing significant improvements and do not understand why. This is going to be interesting.

[heus]

I would think that Dr. Tim should be back from his time off of the trader to chime in. He's the one that developed them, right?

[danno]

[QUOTE=maplwrks;109875]Sorry to keep things stirred up!!!! My point is this.....Many of you changed your old taps for CVs. I think you would have seen a huge difference with anything new, regardless of who made the spout or adaptor.

Mike - I would have thought the same, but it sounds like at least a few guys ran the CV's in one bush and new plastic on another, and still got much better results with the CV's. So far, I think I've only read one post from a CV user who is not yet convinced.

[parkerfamilymaple]

i put 5000 cv in on new drops and 5000 in on 5 year old drops with new stubby and got the same amount of sap from each.(30 gal) tapped 10,000 with 1 to 5 year old tree saver drop lines and got 17 gal of sap per tap. the cv lines were in my warm bushes and they ran 7 days longer than my cold woods.

[Randy Brutkoski]

They didnt turn me on.

[sapman]

So Mike, did you install any new drops without CVs? I would love to see the stat on that, with your large sample size.

[sapman]

I'm probably 2/3 done pulling taps, and I'd say 50% or less of CVs "seem" to be in good working order. Most common complaint for me is not sealing, followed by ball falling out (sometimes sucked down to multi-fitting where it plugs up), and then sometimes reduced flow. Now I'm hoping that these were non-issues during the season. My year was so lousy that I can't tell if they helped or not.

Has anyone tried cleaning them out of a multi-fitting, or does the whole thing just need replacing?

Tim

[parkerfamilymaple]

new drop lines always run good for a year or two, then by the time they are 5 they only run 60% of there potential. i have on installation that was new this year that i did not put cv on but did put stubby and got 2o gal of sap from it. the trees are smaller and not as healthy there so that is probably where the lower flow came from.

[wglenmapler]

We put 12000 in this season. I thought I would pull my hair out the first week as the highest trees kept pushing them out when it froze fast and hard. We didn't start tapping till the last week of February. We lacked 5000 taps when the big storm came. That set us back several days as everything had to be done on snowshoes and about 40% of the tubing was under the snow.

Ending season thoughts-4200 cv's on a new installation=23 g/tap; 3900 on new droplines with 5 year old tubing=23 g/tap; 3900 on one year old installaiton with just new stubies installed=23.5g/tap.

We were still getting a gallon of sap per tap plus last Friday when I shut the pumps down. On Tuesday morning we had leaves on the maples. My belief is the check ball valves helped enough to more than pay for themselves. We do run 25"+ of vacuum so that also helps. Those around here had an aweful year-we got right at .3g syrup/tap. We only had one ball stuck in the multifitting-not bad.

[DrTimPerkins]

I would think that Dr. Tim should be back from his time off of the trader to chime in. He's the one that developed them, right?

Hi Folks,

Good timing on that question....I am just back this morning. Haven't yet begun to read the hundreds of posts, so it'll take me a bit of time to catch up.

Again, my apologies for not keeping up with the list. I worked pretty much every day from mid-January until the end of last week (including Easter Sunday). It just wouldn't have been possible for me to do my research, do my volunteer activities, and answer all the questions on the list (I do like to sleep occasionally).

I'm sure there are people here that had good experiences with the CV adapter (we've heard from a bunch), and some who didn't. We definitely had some issues of breakage early on. We had three people tapping. One of them had far more problems than another. Personally, although the adapters were somewhat brittle, I think part of the problem was the shape of his hammer head. Couldn't get him to give up his favorite hammer though. Leader did make us a batch with "impact modifiers" added to the plastics batch, and that completely solved the problem.

It is not possible to write up a detailed summary of all of our research on CV spouts and other topics pertaining to the 2010 sugaring season at this point. We have a huge pile of data to deal with. I will go over the highlights at the follow Open Houses:

- Goodrich (Cabot, VT) - Fri, April 23
- Leader Evaporator (Swanton, VT) - Fri, April 30 & Sat., May 1.
- Bascoms (Alstead, NH) - Fri, May 1 & Sat., May 8

It was a very strange season.....very freeze freeze periods, yet some decent extended runs on vacuum. If there ever was a year to convince people of the importance of vacuum in making syrup....this was it.

Just a few tidbits however:

1. The CV spouts outperformed other treatments in every experiment we did this year. The best treatment didn't break the 40 gal sap/tap mark, but came pretty close at 37.1 gal/tap (on 10" average trees).

2. We shut our pumps off only 1 time this season during a 2 day solid freeze period, although we did have two unscheduled power outages when the pumps did go off. The rest of the season the pumps were running.

3. We didn't have more than one day of good strong sap flows. It was pretty much all low-moderate, but constant flow, largely due to vacuum.

4. The record high temperatures that ended the season did cut short the benefit of using CV adapters just at the time when they were really kicking in, although there still was sufficient benefit to make it economically worth it.

5. We got some wonderful data on flow rates of sap (under vacuum) from individual trees, groups of trees, and entire mainlines. It may not sound exciting, but to my knowledge this hasn't been done extensively (under vacuum) before, and will help us to design better tubing systems.

6. Similarly, we got some great data on vacuum transfer in tubing systems (at 1 second intervals) during the season under different flow conditions, pump start, pump stop, leaks, etc.

7. We put in a section of clear pipe and have some great video of how sap flows through a dual-pipe mainline system and manifold. Again, perhaps not real exciting to many folks, but gives us a lot of information on how sap is actually moving through these systems.

8. We ended the season making 0.58 gal/tap on 2,653 taps.

Too many other things to talk about now. More as the data is analyzed and presented in various places. One little teaser though.....UVM filed three new patent applications maple sap collection techologies and methods (none of them change the spout adapter though) as we seek to optimize sap collection. None are licensed, as we have not yet begun to talk about them in public. There are more coming, but that'll be a few more years down the road.

Finally, although I'm sure you all have hundreds of questions, please excuse me if I don't answer your posts or private messages right away. I have a lot of data to analyze, and a few grant proposals that have to get out the door in the next couple of weeks. So, although I'll be trying to catch up with the list when I can, my response time may not be immediate.

Sincerely,

Dr. Tim Perkins
UVM Proctor Maple Research Center

[DrTimPerkins]

[QUOTE=maplwrks;109875]Many of you changed your old taps for CVs. I think you would have seen a huge difference with anything new, regardless of who made the spout or adaptor.


Several years of research has shown that the "new adapter" effect (on vacuum) is typically on the order of 10-15% increase in sap production after the tubing system has aged beyond a few years.

The "new dropline" (including new adapter) effect is typically on the order of 15-50% (on vacuum, the effect is larger under gravity)....most frequently on the lower end of that scale (15-20%) unless your tubing is very old.

Depending upon how you calculate it, the "pure" CV effect (beyond the new adapter and new dropline effect -- if droplines are replaced) can range from 10-75% (depends upon a lot of variables), but again, you need to add in the adapter (and perhaps dropline) effect to get the "true" impact of how much sap increase you will see.

[DrTimPerkins]

I still am not a believer in them as all my stuff was new.

The CV adapters will not "improve" the performance of a new system. It is designed to "delay" microbial-induced closure of tapholes. With a new system, you shouldn't expect any increase in sap yield (but those types of improvements are coming down the road in the next few years) due to CV adapters.

Three phone calls this season struck me as being funny so I thought I'd share them. I'll leave out names and locations to protect the callers.

A sugarmaker called and got me on the phone. He asked, "What kind of magic are you putting in those spouts?" I asked him to clarify what he meant. He said all his other taps had quit, but the CV spouts were still running, so he wondered what we put into them to make them work. I said, "...the secret ingredient is called science."

Another producer called and was a little irritated. He'd only put in a few hundred of the CV spouts and all the rest (a few thousand taps) were other new adapters. He was upset because although he did have some sap, he couldn't boil as he didn't have enough sap since he hadn't put CV spouts in the rest of his woods.

One person called and said they had a question about spouts. I told them I'd try to help. Their problem was that they'd reached 0.5 gal/tap of syrup, and all their neighbors taps had stopped running long before, but their sap was still coming in. So again, I asked what the problem was. They were wondering if they should stop (they'd never made that much syrup before) since everybody around them had. I told them as long as they were still making good syrup and wanted to continue they should keep going. The last comment just before the conversation ended was, "We're using those new check-valve spouts this year. Do you think they might have made difference?"

[Brent]

Dr Tim said
"2. We shut our pumps off only 1 time this season during a solid freeze period, although we did have two unscheduled power outages when the pumps did go off. The rest of the season the pumps were running."

How can a check valve do anything if the vacuum system is on 100% of the time. The flow will never reverse and the ball will never move ( or try to move if it is stuck)

[Haynes Forest Products]

Sitting back reading all the posts on the CVs Sounds like the biggest problem is the balls coming out of the baskets.

1) Is the ball being inserted by hand causing one or more of the fingers in the retainer basket to be slightly bent causing loss of ball?

2) Inserting the ball before plastic is cured lead to the finger/prongs losing their memory leading to loss of ball?

3) If the ball is seated in the closed position and ice forms around the ball could it force the ball out of the tap?

4) Could a sudden surge of gas or sap from the tree when mainline valves are opend suddenly causing the ball to pop past the retainer ends?

[DrTimPerkins]

How can a check valve do anything if the vacuum system is on 100% of the time. The flow will never reverse and the ball will never move.

Leaks, power outages, repairs made to the tubing system, leaking spouts (and reseating them), releaser tips all cause some amount backflow. The amount of backflow is related to several variables. You'll have to take my word on it for now, but the vacuum in a tubing system is not very static....rather it is very jittery and shows some interesting patterns under different conditions. It just happens on a time scale that we can't readily observe using a vacuum gauge sitting in the vacuum line in the sugarhouse or out in the woods.

This season I measured vacuum at 1-sec intervals in 6 different places within the vacuum/mainline/tubing system this season, including the vacuum line after the moisture trap (close to pump), in the upper stage of a mechanical releaser, in a mainline about 25 ft above a manifold of a dual-line system, at the end of the same mainline, and near two spouts (4th tree on the lateral line in each case)....one with a normal spout and the other with a check-valve (we modified it so that the vacuum sensor was AFTER the CV adapter). We used high-accuracy (error of +/- 0.25% FS, most regular dial gages have errors of +/- 2% FS at best) data-logging vacuum gages in this work ($750 per gage). To my knowledge, this is the first time measurements of this accuracy, resolution, and time-frame have ever been made in maple tubing systems. VERY interesting data....but the patterns are far too lengthy and complex to begin to explain here. But believe me....vacuum at the taphole is not constant. Since 1" Hg = 13.6" water (or sap), it doesn't take much for sap to move one way or the other. A change of 0.1" Hg can result in sap movement of more than 1" of sap. You'd never even see that happening on most gages (an error of +/- 2% translates to movement of dial on a vacuum gage of 1.2" Hg).

[DrTimPerkins]

Sitting back reading all the posts on the CVs Sounds like the biggest problem is the balls coming out of the baskets.

1) Is the ball being inserted by hand causing one or more of the fingers in the retainer basket to be slightly bent causing loss of ball?

2) Inserting the ball before plastic is cured lead to the finger/prongs losing their memory leading to loss of ball?

3) If the ball is seated in the closed position and ice forms around the ball could it force the ball out of the tap?

4) Could a sudden surge of gas or sap from the tree when mainline valves are opend suddenly causing the ball to pop past the retainer ends?

I havent' read through all the posts yet, so am not sure exactly what the reports are. We did hear about this happening BEFORE the product was even out there (rumored stories of all the balls ending up down in the releaser, which couldn't actually happen). Before I took a hiatus from the list I did hear of one producer who tapped under vacuum who had a ball come out when he broke the cage putting on the stubby and it got sucked in the tubing system.

It seems far more plausible to me that the balls are coming out when the adapters are tapped into the tree or the stub put on the adapter than afterward. If you break them with a hammer, the ball can definitely come out.

We've not once had the ball come out of the cage at Proctor due to vacuum or due to ice (that I'm aware of). We have had some come out during tapping when the cage is broken. In that case we pull the broken one and put in a new one. We do NOT tap with the vacuum on.

If you have personally had the balls come out of the cage (not simply heard the rumor that it happened to the buddy of a friend's uncle's sister) because of something other than you broke the adapter when tapping, please contact me off-list at: Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu and give me some details of what happened. I'd like to know what circumstances it happened under so I can understand what the issues are.

[Squaredeal]

Dr Perkins: I was wondering if there has been any thought given to producing a check valve adapter that hooks directly to the drop in a way similar to the Lapierre or IPL clear, straight taps. I think that such and set up should be easy to manufacture, and eliminate potential leakage at and having to purchase and install the stubby.

[Brent]

From my experience lost balls are operator error. I never found one CV that came with a bent finger either.

The bent fingers and loose balls were self inflicted when I did not insert the stubby correctly.

[DrTimPerkins]

I'm curious about staining since the holes are snow white when I'm pulling taps. Will they stain the trees like in the past?


Yes, the staining will occur, but just later.

Everyone should keep in mind that the CV adapter isn't doing anything terribly unusual. It doesn't PREVENT microbial contamination....it simply DELAYS it. Any new adapter will do something similar....just not as much. Same with replacing droplines....they'll help in a similar way by delaying microbial contamination to some degree, more than simply replacing a spout adapter....but again, not as much as the CV adapter will do.

As for the reports of finding stuck balls at the end of the season due to yeasts...at that time of the season it doesn't matter. They worked when they needed to, which was at the beginning and through the middle of the season. At the end of the season, any backflow that occurred without CV spouts has already done its damage and the tree is already gunking up the taphole to close off the wound in response to the microbes being present.
Thus, preventing backflow contamination at the END of the season isn't critical.....preventing it early on and through the middle season is the important thing in terms of gaining sap at the end. So the reports of stuck balls at the end of the season has almost no relevance at all on whether they worked or not.

I do readily admit that some of them may get clogged by wood chips and not operate properly. It is a mechanical device. No mechanical device is ever 100% effective. We merely need to have most of them work most of the time in order to see increased sap yields.

And if you can suck 20" Hg....you've got some mightly good lungs.

[DrTimPerkins]

Dr Perkins: I was wondering if there has been any thought given to producing a check valve adapter that hooks directly to the drop in a way similar to the Lapierre or IPL clear, straight taps. I think that such and set up should be easy to manufacture, and eliminate potential leakage at and having to purchase and install the stubby.

The "concept" of a Check-valve adapter can be implemented in many ways. One of the drawings I made some time ago is of a clear-straight-through adapter with a CV built into it. There are no impediments at all to manufacturing a spout adapter of this type.

Leader Evaporator is the sole licensee of the UVM CV patent (pending), however it is possible for any of the other manufacturers to sublicense the patent from Leader (we wrote the agreement to specifically allow this). If another company does sublicense from Leader (and I believe there have been some discussions of this already), I am quite willing to work with them to develop and test the product, the same way that I did with Leader.

[DrTimPerkins]

Here I go again---How many of you that put in CVs this year, replaced 3,4, or 5 year old or older spouts with the CVs? If you did, do you think that new plastic stubbies and adaptors had anything to do with your higher yield, or do you think the stuck ball in the spout had something to do with it? I would challenge any of you to buy regular adaptors this next year. I bet you would have the same results. Many of you saw improved flow and made more syrup with them, for this, I'm happy for you. By reading this thread though, it has proven to me that I don't want them.(Maybe I would try them if somone gave me 500 of them!)

When we do our experiments, we do compare new adapters, new droplines, CV and other things. We report them as such. There is definitely a CV effect that is real and signficantly above-and-beyond the new adapter (new plastic) effect.

New adapters add 10-15% (on vacuum) compared to 1+ yr old used adapters.
New drops add about 15-50% (on vacuum, more on gravity) compared to 1+ yr old used drops.
CVs can add substantially more beyond that, PLUS you also get the new adapter effect (assuming you don't wash/reuse them - which is not recommended).

The solution (for you Mike/Maplwrks) is obvious....don't buy them if you don't want to. Nobody is forcing you and it doesn't matter to me one little bit. For those who did try them and liked them, I'm happy for you. That was our goal....to help sugarmakers overcome this pernicous problem of reductions in yield as a tubing system ages.

When we started this line of research was to find a strategy to offset the microbial contamination related losses in yield in vacuum tubing operations. We feel we've done that, and the results that we and many folks have had in past years, and even this year in a season that ended prematurely due to RECORD high temperatures seems quite favorable. Mostly the people who used them made more syrup. True...part of it is the new adapter effect, but there is definitely a substantial and positive CV effect as well. They cost a bit more than other adapters, but so far they have proven to yield more than enough sap to justify the cost. Using a CV adapter is FAR cheaper and easier than replacing drops each year.

Happy to explain all our research (in due course), and I'm sure there will be naysayers and this debate will go on for a long time (there are still those who doubt vacuum and health spouts), but really we're on to bigger and even more promising avenues of sap collection technologies. I'm certain the discussions that will arise about the things we'll have coming out over the next several years will be even fiestier than these have been. I look forward to it.

[ennismaple]

As always - we appreciate your contributions to this site Dr. Perkins. I anxiously await the reports on this year's research projects.

[Brent]

Dr Tim

Very interesting work.
Your explanation of how far sap "could" move with a change in vacuum put a whole (hole) new light on this.

So you figure there is enough vacuum within the tap hole in air space or wood gasses or whatever that sap and microbes would get sucked back into the taphole without the presence of a mechanically functioning CV ??

That would make me think the cage for the ball should be as short as possible so the ball would seat asap at the slightest reversal. But then you have to have fingers long enough to flex to allow the ball to be inserted in the first place. Hmmmm.

[DrTimPerkins]

So you figure there is enough vacuum within the tap hole in air space or wood gasses or whatever that sap and microbes would get sucked back into the taphole without the presence of a mechanically functioning CV ??

That would make me think the cage for the ball should be as short as possible so the ball would seat asap at the slightest reversal. But then you have to have fingers long enough to flex to allow the ball to be inserted in the first place. Hmmmm.

Vacuum gets extended into the tissues of the tree fairly readily. Sap will absolutely be sucked back into a taphole and into the wood under certain circumstances. The sap moves back into the wood vessels until the vacuum is satisfied (pressure in tubing equals pressure in tree), but the microbes are pretty much filtered out and end up lining the inside of the taphole. They don't get sucked into the wood of tree very far.

The geometry of the cage and ball, as well as its composition, hardness (at the proper temperatures in question), mass, buoyancy, etc. are fairly important...as are several other factors. For such a simple device, there are lots of things that needed to be considered. We didn't just find the right combination in a day or two.....it took many months of work to determine the right combinations.

[Amber Gold]

This is something I caught in one of Dr. Perkins comments: 0.58 gpt of syrup and 37 gpt of sap, that's a 1.34% average sap sugar content. How did you manage to get so much sap? I managed to get about 13 gpt of sap and 0.20 gpt of syrup on high vac. and 90% CV spouts. It seems like most producers, at least in this area, had a below average year even with vacuum.

[DrTimPerkins]

This is something I caught in one of Dr. Perkins comments: 0.58 gpt of syrup and 37 gpt of sap, that's a 1.34% average sap sugar content. How did you manage to get so much sap? I managed to get about 13 gpt of sap and 0.20 gpt of syrup on high vac. and 90% CV spouts. It seems like most producers, at least in this area, had a below average year even with vacuum.

Apples and oranges comparison. The 0.58 gal/tap is an overall average of about 2,653 taps from the entire production operation. Some of those taps had sap production rates of less than 20 gpt of sap, others had far better. The 37.1 gpt I cited was from a research project where the sap doesn't actually make it to production (yes, we dump it on the ground). Our average sugar content over the season varied considerably (low after a long thaw, higher early on and after the few freezes we had), but averaged about 1.9% overall.

0.58 gal syrup per tap at 1.9 Brix with 2,653 taps equals ~26.25 gal sap/tap. Some did worse than that, some quite a bit better. In the treatment that had over 40 gal sap/tap last year we had 34.4 gal sap/tap this year.

[themapleking]

I used the CV this year. 845 taps 22" vac. End of season #'s 17271 gal sap 20.43 gals sap per tap. The last 4000 sap of sap I didn't boil because the sugar % was 1.1 I still ran vac just to see how much more sap would flow. I pulled the taps on 4/3/10 and most of the holes were still running. I didn't have any problems with the cv leaking around the hole or the stuby spouts. I use a 2lb plastic dead blow hammer for seating taps . Its the best hammer I found for tapping.
These taps work. I have a wet line only system. 5yr mainlines and 3yr lateral lines.After the horrible season we had in western NY. 20.43 gas of sap per tap. Find someone who did better on regular spouts.

[Uncle Tucker]

I was wondering, if the CV’s were installed in a downward angle the ball would be against the fingers and in a normally open position and there would have to be a big surge to seat the ball. If the CV,s are installed in an upward angle the ball would be in a normally closed position and vacuum would have to pull sap out but it would seat faster. I would assume that freezing and slime would impact angles in different ways. Witch position would be preferred and why?

[troes30]

hey maple king...u coulda brought that sap up to me and id have boiled it into 50 gallons of syrup, if u have too much

[DrTimPerkins]

I was wondering, if the CV’s were installed in a downward angle the ball would be against the fingers and in a normally open position and there would have to be a big surge to seat the ball. If the CV,s are installed in an upward angle the ball would be in a normally closed position and vacuum would have to pull sap out but it would seat faster. I would assume that freezing and slime would impact angles in different ways. Witch position would be preferred and why?

Either straight out, or with a slight downward angle outward (standard tapping practice) is preferred to reduce the tendancy of sap to pool in the taphole and frost heave the spout out of the taphole. Personally I prefer to see them put in with a standard slight downward angle. The ball is buoyant, so it floats when the sap runs through it. Running sap causes the ball to rotate around a bit, to keep it clean (until the end of the season, when the slime really builds up and can clog it in the open position. A slight downward angle will also help small chips to clear out of the device.

[Brent]

Dr. Tim

That brings up another issue I mentioned previously. I had to re-seat the CVs 4 times to maintain a decent leak free vacuum.

My local Leader dealer says there has been some discussion with Leader about putting rings around the outside of the taper, like some other spiles on the market, to help reduce the loosening. I've never tried a plastic ringed spile but I would vote for anything that would reduce the 4 trips to my 600 trees in a short season with very few freeze cycles. I guess if it had been a good season I'd have been making the rounds more often.

[DrTimPerkins]

Dr. Tim

That brings up another issue I mentioned previously. I had to re-seat the CVs 4 times to maintain a decent leak free vacuum.

We reseated most of the CV spouts in our woods once (only had 3 good freezes after tapping) and had a few leakers here and there otherwise. In the same time period we reseated clear straight through (CST) spouts (won't mention which type) 4-5 times (reseating is far more difficult and time-consuming with straight-through designs in my opinion), and still felt we were getting some leakage.

In a couple of experiments we did, we felt that the leakage from CST spouts negatively impacted the results, which basically means we have to repeat the entire experiment another year (but it'll be done WITHOUT using CST spouts).

Personally I think all spouts require periodic reseating, but some seem to be better than others (and it varies sometimes from one year to another). I'm not totally against the CST style of spout, as it does have some real advantages, but a good method of reseating is an issue that needs to be addressed better.

I have no real sway on what Leader (or any other manufacturer) does with the shape or configuration of the spout or taper, but do agree that it is a problem for all spouts....and some more than others.

[sapman]

Dr. Tim, great to have you back! I had some issues with the CVs. I am reassured that you mention that being stuck open is probably a result of being late in the season. Though many were hindered by wood chips, which was a concern of mine from the beginning. As far as balls falling out, I suppose it is a result of tapping the stubby in to the point of flexing the fingers inward, thus weakening them and allowing the ball to come out when taken apart. Any idea if the plugged multi-fittings need complete replacement now?

On the topic of back and forth sap movement, I have a LOT of ladders in my bush. In several of the laterals closest to the ladders I witness the sap column jumping around, almost like there's a leak, but I don't believe there is. I can really imagine the CVs working a lot (hopefully seating properly) in those situations.

FWIW, I did try sucking on a gauge, and it seems I was able to exceed 20". My dad was always impressed by how far away from a candle I can be and still blow it out :,)

All the best,
Tim

[Brent]

I'm not familiar with the CST spouts. Do they have rings on the taper ?

[DrTimPerkins]

As far as balls falling out, I suppose it is a result of tapping the stubby in to the point of flexing the fingers inward, thus weakening them and allowing the ball to come out when taken apart. Any idea if the plugged multi-fittings need complete replacement now?

If you were bending fingers when tapping them in, you could definitely cause problems. Stubbies should only be "lightly" tapped onto the adapters. You'll either need to replace the multifitting, or take it apart to get the ball out.


FWIW, I did try sucking on a gauge, and it seems I was able to exceed 20". My dad was always impressed by how far away from a candle I can be and still blow it out :,)


All I can say to that is....man, you suck. :)

[DrTimPerkins]

I'm not familiar with the CST spouts. Do they have rings on the taper ?

There are two main types I am aware of. Neither have rings on the taper. Relatively few spouts do. My crew uses lots of different types of spouts in the various studies we do. I'll ask them what they think about the spouts with rings. Might be a few days before I get back to you about it.

[Squaredeal]

On advice from a fellow sugarer in Quebec. I used a claw hammer rather than my usual wooden tapping hammers to tap the cst spouts. I found that due to their design and material that you could drive them a little harder and have a better reading on when they were fully seated with the steel hammer. As a result, we never found any suck-by leaks at the taps and we able to keep vacuum @24" (at and above 2000' elev). I also found that once seated, you could pretty much climb the tree using the spout and drop.
As usual, I think that the real art is in the tapping and that a good tapping crew can make or break the season (and seasons to come).

[DrTimPerkins]

On advice from a fellow sugarer in Quebec. I used a claw hammer rather than my usual wooden tapping hammers to tap the cst spouts. I found that due to their design and material that you could drive them a little harder and have a better reading on when they were fully seated with the steel hammer. As a result, we never found any suck-by leaks at the taps and we able to keep vacuum @24" (at and above 2000' elev). I also found that once seated, you could pretty much climb the tree using the spout and drop.

Our three tappers do all use steel hammers (we've never used the wooden or plastic mallets). I can guarantee that the spouts were driven in far enough. The problem is that you couldn't drive them far enough in to prevent leaks from returning, so you'd tap them in a bit more. Next time around checking for leaks, tap a bit more, then more, then more. Kept leaking the entire season to some degree, although small. They were definitely in firmly (and not easy to pull out), but they leaked nonetheless. Before anyone asks, we did use the correct bit for the tap as well.


As usual, I think that the real art is in the tapping and that a good tapping crew can make or break the season (and seasons to come).

Absolutely.

[trackerguy]

I tapped on a warm day, Used both a leader and DG tapping bit (sharp, well cared for) , depth stopped my drill at 1.75", tapped the hole almost level - maybe 5 degrees drip-out tilt, and let the sap dribble out any wood. Holes were clean and round.

Seated the CV using the handle from a cheap jack - probably an 8 inch long, 3/4 onch dia, 6 oz tube. seated until it bounced and changed tone - 6 or 8 light whacks. Most of the time sap splashed when I was done seating. Seated the stubby until it changed tone also, about 4 light taps.

Ran vac 24/7 for 4 weeks, shut down / drained vac if it was below 20 degrees because I was afraid I would crack my electric releaser pump. It ran 25 inches at 1200 feet on 75 degree dry days, 25 degree nights, rain, snow, what have you - I didn't think my system would ever do that. I'd have 26 if (when!) I got rid of the stupid vacuum regulator.

Didn't have to go up into the bush at all. Never re-seated a single tap, not one, zero. In the past, using plain leader health spouts both with and without Lapierre adapters I had to and re-seat, swap out, and generally fiddle around to stay above 21 inches.

Seems to work for me.

[Squaredeal]

Our three tappers do all use steel hammers (we've never used the wooden or plastic mallets). I can guarantee that the spouts were driven in far enough. The problem is that you couldn't drive them far enough in to prevent leaks from returning, so you'd tap them in a bit more. Next time around checking for leaks, tap a bit more, then more, then more. Kept leaking the entire season to some degree, although small. They were definitely in firmly (and not easy to pull out), but they leaked nonetheless.

I am not sure which CSTs you used, but I checked out those from bith manufacturers ans found that ones spout was far more tapered than the other. i went for the one that was less tapered and I believe had good luck as a result of that choice.

[Brent]

I let my wife tap the holes for her buckets this year. This experience re-enforced my thought that the biggest error in tapping is not keeping the drill in alignment and making the hole oval. No spile will seal in an oval hole.

[DrTimPerkins]

Everyone please understand....I'm not trying to diss any one manufacturer's product (which is why I didn't say which we used). I think that all spouts will heave to some extent at times...some more than others. A good part of it has to do with the particular weather conditions you get.

We've found that some years one type will heave, then the next year that brand will be absolutely fine and it'll be another type that has issues. Hard to figure out.

Perhaps there needs to be a research study on this?

[ennismaple]

As usual, I think that the real art is in the tapping and that a good tapping crew can make or break the season (and seasons to come).

I can't agree more - that's why I'm very picky about who taps. Too often we've let someone else tap so they can try it or because we wanted to get done faster only to find tapholes right beside last year's (sometimes sucking air through the old hole!), oval holes, taps in dead wood etc... It's better to spend the extra time to do it right yourself and let the part-time help tap a few to get the experience and then get them back on the hammer or tank washing duty!

[sapman]

Dr. Tim, just experimented with a gauge I brought home today. Wife says 25". I think I'm using my tongue as a sort of diaphram pump, or something.

OK, enough of the nonsense!!

[Russell Lampron]

I never tap on the stubby when putting it into the adapter. Just a slight twist seats them so that they won't leak. I/we also use steel swing presses (hammers) when we tap and choke up on the handle to properly seat the adapter. You don't drive them in like a 16 penny nail!

Every tap hole is potentially a quart of syrup or more. Taking care to tap good wood and tapping away from an old tap hole is very important. I go 180 degrees from the old hole when possible and 90 degrees if the tree has already been tapped at the 180 position. I also move up and down the tree so that I'm not forming a line of tap holes at the same level around the trunk.

I tap with the vacuum pump on so that I can flag leaks and go back and fix those first.

[Squaredeal]

We had the first freeze last night in almost two weeks, and since the sugars have not budded out here yet I decided to turn on the vac for kicks.
Just took a woods walk and observed that the only taps running were the CSTs that we were trying this year -and they were running pretty good too. Absolutely nothing from health spouts.
I'm amazed that those taps are still running after so long w/o a freeze and with temps as high as they have been.
Too bad I didn't have more out -with the forecast we have I could probably make a lot more syrup in the next week.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Thats cool Sapman............NOW if you can get up around 10 CFMs KenW will want you up in Canada around March of 2011:o

[802maple]

My local Leader dealer says there has been some discussion with Leader about putting rings around the outside of the taper, like some other spiles on the market, to help reduce the loosening. I've never tried a plastic ringed spile but I would vote for anything that would reduce the 4 trips to my 600 trees in a short season with very few freeze cycles. ]

I would personally be concerned about having rings on the taper. I would think that when you removed the spout there would be a chance it would want to separate the bark from the tree and cause more damage to the tree itself

[Haynes Forest Products]

I hope they do what ever they are going to do so that I can get my order in before the season. I have a feeling they are going to be in short supply just like Vacuum pumps.

[Brent]

"Didn't have to go up into the bush at all. Never re-seated a single tap, not one, zero.'

Maybe if we could all run 29" 24/7 the spouts would suck themselves into the trees and none of us would have to re-seat.:D

[Brent]

I was in the bush today cleaning tubing. I loaded the Gator with a couple tanks of clean water and took the Honda pump out. Connected it to the 3/4 mains one at a time and just let it idel. I was just perfect pressure to pump all the way up to the top.

So as I was pulling the CVs out, it was a great check to see how many leaked. I was pleasantly surprised to see that well over 50% came out of the trees and did not leak a drop. Mind you the snap when they came out may have helped the ball do its thing. Several came out with air in the lines and hissed a bit until the water got there and then they sealed. About 10% never sealed and pissed. Even when I separated the stubby and put reverse flow on it and then put them back, the ball stayed stuck.

The best news is some trees were still running. Not many but some. And all the tap holes looked like the day I drilled them.

[DrTimPerkins]

So as I was pulling the CVs out, it was a great check to see how many leaked. I was pleasantly surprised to see that well over 50% came out of the trees and did not leak a drop. Mind you the snap when they came out may have helped the ball do its thing. Several came out with air in the lines and hissed a bit until the water got there and then they sealed. About 10% never sealed and pissed. Even when I separated the stubby and put reverse flow on it and then put them back, the ball stayed stuck.

The best news is some trees were still running. Not many but some. And all the tap holes looked like the day I drilled them.

The CV spouts were designed to operate under vacuum, not under pressure. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy to see that most of them sealed once the water hit them....even at the end of the season when they are gunked up. They do seal FAR better wet than they do dry.....they're made to prevent liquid from moving back in the system.....not air. Thanks for the info Brent.

[802maple]

Dr Perkins, Do you remember the old 7/16ths spout that had a sealing ring, I can't remember who made it but it did separate the bark from the tree when it was pulled. Do you think this could be a problem for the smaller spout also. It might be before your time, as I remember it also was in the form of a thread that a cap could be put on in the off season.

[driske]

We must have had more time those days. What a bunch of monkeying around to get that cap on right with cold numb hands.
I'm relatively certain it was an old IPL style,( that never gained great popularity.)

[DrTimPerkins]

We must have had more time those days. What a bunch of monkeying around to get that cap on right with cold numb hands.
I'm relatively certain it was an old IPL style,( that never gained great popularity.)

That is right. I was an old IPL style spout. I don't have any first-hand experience with them, but from what I've heard, they were not a great success.

[lew]

Yes, they were IPL. WE had 2,500 of them and they were a bear. Very difficult to remove from the tree even if you didn't tear bark off with them. My experience with them was that in the best case scenario, you pulled the spile and the grooves or rings or what ever you want to call them would be plugged with bark that never came off before the next season so i doubt if they were of any use after one season. In the worst case scenario, i remember tearing off a piece of bark (right down to the sap wood) about the size of a catchers mit. Needles to say, I wasn't very happy with those spiles.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I have all Leader and Lapierre health spouts in my woods and they all have rings on the spout and I think they do help the spouts seal better and would think they would help the check valve adapters also. No problem with any damage to the bark when I remove them either as I have used both brands for quite a few years.

[DrTimPerkins]

Hi Folks,

I have constructed a survey on the 2010 Sugaring Season and invite you all to participate. It is designed to give us some basic information about the practices that maple producers employ to maximize sap yields, and to get some feedback about the new Leader Check-Valve Spout Adapter. In addition, it asks for suggestions about new research projects and provides you a place to give us feedback.

You are under absolutely no obligation to participate. You do not need to provide your contact information, but if you have questions and do provide an email address, I'll try to answer. Your contact information and your individual responses will NOT be shared with anyone else. Only the compiled results, without identification, will be shared.

The survey is located at http://www.kwiksurveys.com?s=KIONKG_c3f8cb68 and should take about 5-10 minutes maximum. Please feel free to pass this link along to others in your area or in your local, State, or Provincial Associations. The survey will expire on April 30, 2010.

If you have any questions, please contact me at Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu

Thank you in advance for helping.

[caseyssugarshack93]

just took it tim!

[Ridgeland Farm]

I pulled about 5500 cv's out this past week. overall I'd say they did pretty well. some were stuck and did have a few that actually stuck closed so there wasnt much vac to the tree but it was only a handfull. Every one I pulled looked as clean as day 1. as far as sap yield goes most all the tubing was new to 1year old on those that I pulled. However at the farm up the road that I was working with had older tubing and did very well. The orchard that is always the first to run and the first to dry up was runing sap as good as the rest of the setups right until the end. I had 775 of my own and ended up with 18.5gal/tap. and that was with missing the first week and a half of the season and a week at the end of the season and then pulling the plug while the sap was still runing. I was still getting about 500gal a day when I called it. The only reason we called it up here was because the syrup developed an off flavor and the sugar was to low to make it worth it. If I had been up and runing the whole season im sure I would have been over 25gal/tap. and that was with an underpowered deleval 73 dairy pump! So all in all I think the cv did a great job and deff. extended the season for us.

[sapman]

I just ran my #s. Looks like only about 14 gal/tap. Lousy season, too many ladders, and started too late. Looking forward to next season, and using CVs again. I'm not afraid to tap early with them.

[Whitfield]

I replaced just over 5000 5 year old health spiles with the new leader adapters, including new drop lines and tees this spring. This year was a lousy year for production in our area. We were plagued by weather in the 60 F range for several days in a row, with no frost at night early in the season. Last year was a great production year in our area. Yet I produced 20% more syrup this year than last and my yield per tap was about triple other producers I have talked with.

I am totally sold on the CV adapters and will replace 1400 CDL 3 year old adapter spouts next year.

[maple flats]

I used CV's on all 575 taps, mostly old drops, only replaced ones that had issues. I pulled taps this week and many were still clean holes and still wet. However I was gravity and I wonder if the adapters restrict too much without vac. I only collected 1355 gal sap on 575 taps (about 2.36 gal/tap (sap). The weather was real poor, once it warmed up enough to get sap flow I only had one morning that it got colder than 30F. I find that it takes at least 28F to get a decent flow with gravity. I do have about 300 of my taps on steep hillside for some natural vac but I need real vac.
As a comparison, last year I got just over 9 gal/tap and 2 yrs ago I got 15.5 gal/tap (my best ever)
With this all said, based on the fact that the holes looked clean and fresh when I pulled the taps, I think they work but are of no use for gravity. My plans for next year are to add vac on 550 taps (400 current + 150 new with sap ladder) in my biggest bush. My other taps, 175 current and about 200 new in another location will just use health spouts.

[DrTimPerkins]

Hi Folks,

Thank you to all those who have done the 2010 Sugaring Season Survey so far. For those who haven't yet done it, the link is at:
http://www.kwiksurveys.com?s=KIONKG_c3f8cb68 Please feel free to send the link to others who are not on the list.

The survey will close at the end of this week (Sunday).

Someone asked about publicizing these results. I fully intend to publish all the results on MapleTrader as well as use them in some of my presentations. It may take me a week or two (or more) to pull together, so please be patient.

Several people also asked questions. Unfortunately it appears that there is no way for me to match the question to the person who asked it, so I cannot answer you privately. I will attempt to address as many of these that I can when the results come out or somewhat afterward.

Thanks also to those who made suggestions for research projects. There are many very good suggestions. Some of the suggested studies have been completed within the past decade or so by UVM PMRC or some of our other maple research colleagues. While we cannot possibly do all of those that remain, we may integrate some of these into our research program in the future (maybe I'll even let those on MapleTrader vote on projects...don't hold me to it yet...just a though). As is typical in maple, some of these projects will require major effort (and resources) over several years. All of our work is dependant upon funding, and that is the primary thing that dictates the work that we do. However as we have time for other projects and available funding, we will undoubtedly work on some of them.

Again, my sincere thanks to all the "Traders." I appreciate the willingness of those on the list to participate and share their experiences.

[DrTimPerkins]

Hi Folks,

Thanks to all those who completed the survey. It is now closed. There were 93 respondents from across the maple producing region. I will be analyzing the data over the next few weeks, and using some of it in presentations at upcoming Open Houses. Eventually (hopefully within a month) the results in their entirety will be posted on MapleTrader.com

I'll also try to answer some of the questions or remark upon some of the suggested research topics in later posts.

Again, my sincere thanks for your assistance in this survey.

[DrTimPerkins]

Thanks to all those who completed the survey. It is now closed. There were 93 respondents from across the maple producing region. I will be analyzing the data over the next few weeks, and using some of it in presentations at upcoming Open Houses. Eventually (hopefully within a month) the results in their entirety will be posted on MapleTrader.com

As requested, the results of the survey I conducted on MapleTrader and MapleChatter earlier this year have been posted to https://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/ Look at the right under "Recent Publications".

There are two parts:

1. Survey including all respondents.
2. Survey including only respondents who used 10% or more CV in their maple operation. This allowed me to only examine those people who actually tried enough CV adapters that they might see results.

Thanks again to all of those who completed the survey. I greatly appreciate the information and assistance you provided.

In addition, the presentations I gave at some of the equipment manufacturers are also posted there (PMRC Research Update 2010 & Sap and Vacuum Dynamics).

[Brian Ryther]

There is a report from Stephen Childs in the new issue of the Pipe Line. His research concludes similar results as posted by Dr Perkins using cv' w/ old drops, vs using old drops and old cv'd with vacuum, new drops and silver spouts with old drops . For those with questions about cv effectiveness with gravity systems there is study showing positive results for the cv's effectiveness, all be it a small one (less than 1 gal of sap per tap, or %18.) I checked the Cornell link and it does not have the study posted there yet. Hopefully it will be posted soon so every one can read it. I would like to hear from some of you that still dismiss the effectiveness of the cv's after reading a third party scientific study.
Brian

[mapleack]

Check this link out, the check valve spile was first patented in 1955!!! http://www.google.com/patents?id=UdZIAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=maple+sap+spile&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q=maple%20sap%20spile&f=false
Neat!

[DrTimPerkins]

Check this link out, the check valve spile was first patented in 1955!!!

A similar overall concept to the current CV spout adapter, which did not work at the time. Most likely it resulted in reduced sap yield. The suction created by the tree under gravity (in this case, with buckets) is not great enough to fully seat this type of ball valve (ball is too heavy). When the ball is seated, the added pressure caused by the weight of the ball if anything probably reduced sap flow during times of low weeping flows.

Paradoxically, vacuum is really both the problem, and the key to solving the problem. This is because vacuum creates a much higher pressure differential, which in turn increases the possibility and extent of sap backflow, but at the same time allows us to use that potential energy to pull the ball back and seal off the taphole very effectively.

This patent was not the first time valves were used in spouts. Dr. James Marvin (one of the founders of the UVM Proctor Center) was experimenting with valve spouts years before this 1955 patent came out. Again, this was only with gravity flow, and all the different types of valves that were tried reduced flow (but did manage to reduce microbial taphole drying as well).

This was just one approach to solving the the problem of taphole drying that was attempted at the time. Research elsewhere on another approach, chemical taphole sanitation (paraformaldehyde tablet) proved to be more successful at controlling microrganisms than these early valve spouts did. Lots of different types of substances were tried. PFA worked the best and was thought to be relatively innocuous. It wasn't until some time later that PFA was found to cause significant internal damage to the tree, leading to the banning of PFA use throughout the maple industry.

The current CV spout adapter was designed to work with vacuum. That, along with an improved design and materials, allows it to work properly by decreasing taphole drying and thus increasing sap yield. It is also an improvement over the former gravity valved spout designs in that the ball is very light-weight, and floats, so essentially almost no back-pressure is created, yet because of the light weight, the ball can move back during even small changes in suction within the tree (during water uptake when the tree freezes), so there is a benefit even in operations where vacuum is not employed.

[ennismaple]

Yes PFA damages the tree but I understand it is also a known neurotoxin so there are other reasons for it to be banned!

[DrTimPerkins]

Yes PFA damages the tree but I understand it is also a known neurotoxin so there are other reasons for it to be banned!

Yes. Nasty stuff. Doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure that out when you see the skull and crossbones on the bottle.

[jgrenier]

There is a report from Stephen Childs in the new issue of the Pipe Line. His research concludes similar results as posted by Dr Perkins using cv' w/ old drops, vs using old drops and old cv'd with vacuum, new drops and silver spouts with old drops . For those with questions about cv effectiveness with gravity systems there is study showing positive results for the cv's effectiveness, all be it a small one (less than 1 gal of sap per tap, or %18.) I checked the Cornell link and it does not have the study posted there yet. Hopefully it will be posted soon so every one can read it. I would like to hear from some of you that still dismiss the effectiveness of the cv's after reading a third party scientific study.
Brian

What is this '' new issue of The Pipe Line '' is it a magazine for the maple sugaring industy? And if it is where and how do I subscribe to it. THANKS

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

"The Pipeline" is the New York State Maple Producers magazine/newsletter. It is part of the perks of being a member and you do not have to be a NY resident to become a member.

[DrTimPerkins]

"The Pipeline" is the New York State Maple Producers magazine/newsletter. It is part of the perks of being a member and you do not have to be a NY resident to become a member.

If you watch/listen to Steve Child's webinar at http://maple.dnr.cornell.edu/web/schedule.htm, near the end the same basic report is provided. Far as I can tell, you've got to watch the webinar to get it, although you might be able to skip to the end (I didn't try).

[DrTimPerkins]

For those with questions about cv effectiveness with gravity systems there is study showing positive results for the cv's effectiveness, all be it a small one (less than 1 gal of sap per tap, or %18.)

As I have frequently said, the CV was developed for vacuum systems. The same process of backflow prevention and taphole contamination reduction will work in gravity systems, but the effectiveness will be considerably lower (as will yield under gravity). At the UVM PMRC, we have not tested it on gravity. That said....an 18% increase (1 gal/tap) for a $0.35 investment still yields a positive economic benefit.

[Brian Ryther]

For the sake of even #'s I like to think that a gallon of sap = $1. That is if it took 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup and you sold that gallon for an average of $40.00. So yes it is a smart investment of $.35 for a $1.00 return.

[Mark]

If the concept was patented before how can it be patented again? This might give someone the ability to produce them. What would a producer have to do, promise not to use them with vacuum?

[DrTimPerkins]

If the concept was patented before how can it be patented again? This might give someone the ability to produce them. What would a producer have to do, promise not to use them with vacuum?

You can't patent a "concept" alone....rather, what is potentially patentable is a certain claim or set of claims about a particular invention.

You could produce a spout from this specific patent (I would imagine patent protection has expired at this point)....just keep in mind...it didn't work. Secondly, if you were thinking of producing it....you'd either want to produce it exactly as described in the patent, or would want to consult an IP lawyer first. The typical answer you'd get is....it might or might not infringe a certain patent or patents. The real answer however is only an opinion, and if the patent is challenged, is usually decided through a lawsuit, which either settles, or is decided by the court system.