How much do you loose with ladder!

[red maples]

How much vacuum do you loose with a sap latter?

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Ilose about 1/2 inch or less. Have one line with 8 ladders. Vacuum at far tap is 2 inches less than at releaser. I do not put in pinhole leaks so I can see the sap climb. They seem to work well without. I can get all the minute leaks I need without deliberately putting some in the system.

[sapman]

Doug, do you have all star ladders? Any two pipe? One day this week it seemed like some of my ladders wouldn't work unless I made a small leak for them. Lines were just sitting there full.

Tim

[Russell Lampron]

Delete this one Please

[Russell Lampron]

I introduce a small leak at mine because the sap will sit there at times and block vacuum transfer to the rest of the woods. All it takes is a very small leak to keep them working. The vacuum loss is minimal.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Russ,
I haven't had a problem with vacuum transfer that I know of. I do make sure that there are lots of stars. I'd rather add an extra one and be more than adequate than save the $10 an extra set of stars and tube will cost me.

[red maples]

thats good. I do want to add in 2 latters this year one at the sugar house so I can raise up my tank and not have to worry about floods:) Like this year!!! and the first 150 ft or so is very flat so I can get a better slope and better sap flow through the mainline and also increase the diameter to 1 inch for the first 100 ft. My system is very tight. and I can pull 27" Hg on my little bb2 end to end!! but don't like to put that much pressure on the little vac so I like to run it at 24" and I get better sugar that way too. on 250 taps. on 1000 ft of main line.

do you put a small collection container to catch sap that leaks at the vent point or is it minimal ? because since the vacuum is on when the line are thawed I wouldn't think there wouldn't be much to leak.

[Maplewalnut]

To confuse you even more I do a combo of Thompson and Russ. I over do stars. Rule of thumb is one star point for every 10 taps but mine is like 5-6 taps. However I also intoduce an air leak using a ball valve just downstream of the star. Not even audible, just watch the sap, you'll know when the sap jumps up that you have cracked it just enough. I also lose minimal vacuum. I loose a half inch from relaser to mainline end almost 2300 ft away. Is that because of the ladders or other air leaks? The world may never know!

[Acer]

I have 10 2 pipe ladders and seem to lose about 1/2" of vac per foot of lift.

d

[sapman]

I also often crack the ball valve for air. But in the swamp, I worry about high water levels so I loosen a tap instead. But that isn't the best way, either.