Just tapped some 3/16 line. Current sap yields?

Hello to anyone in the central NY area. My brother in law and I just tapped a line of 3/16 yesterday, very big slope down hill, and it seemed to be gushing. We have 105 taps on 5/16 line that I tapped last Monday and Tuesday. We attempted a test boil of our 2x7 this past Friday night, and we then attempted an actual boil yesterday. Of course we ran out of sap. We have been scrambling to get stuff completed (mainly sugar house) so the late winter helped us in that respect. To get back to the thread issue, has anyone compared the output of the 3/16 line to 5/16? If we had not waited until after we tapped the 5/16 we could have made a decent comparison, but we just finally fit in time yesterday to put this 25 tap run in last night after we realized we would not have enough sap to continue to boil to a draw off. We started running the line at 5:00 p.m and rushed to get it done with the two of us tramping up and down the hill numerous times. Due to the daylight running out, I went back to the top of the run and started tapping while he was still running the line at the bottom and installing drops. The 3/16 taps started to pull large streams of sap out, not similar to the dripping of the 5/16. About 10 taps in the line was pushing s steady stream down hill, and when I reached the bottom where we were going to tap into the main line, it was running like a faucet between a drip and good stream. It did let up last night when the weather turned colder but, ran a lot better than the 5/16 initially did with considerably more taps as well. Anybody who has used 3/16 line have any pros or cons that they would like to share I would love to hear them. Also, anyone in the area of Madison, Chenango, Oneida or Onondaga Counties experiencing lower than expected sap yields so far this season. We are new to this and do not have any prior experiences to compare it to. Thanks for any help. I enjoy reading the forums, lots of encouragement,m new ideas, and shared knowledge.

Chris A.

My 3/16 is way outproducing all the others. These 10 taps nearly filled a 55 gal drum in about three days, while the others have been slow (above freezing temps). Search for Tim Wilmot's article "High Vacuum in Gravity Tubing" for the details on 3/16 testing by UVM. It has the flow comparison between 5/16 and 3/16 as observed in their tests. Very interesting stuff.

As GHs stated above look for that article but sounds like you have a great slope to work with and if that 5/16 is on a good slope to your going to wish it was 3/16 as it will way out perform the 5/16.

Go to http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/ and along the right hand side, under "Recent Publications", look for 3/16" Tubing articles.

I observed strong sap flow into my drops at the upper portion of my 3/16" line and basically no flow into drops at the bottom portion. I realize vacuum is much lower on bottom portion but I expected to see some flow. I don't know anything about this Bernoulli guy but wonder if sap flow from the line above is restricting flow on lower trees. Has anyone experimented with connecting 3/16" tubing to 5/16" tubing part way down the slope to "open things up" where there is less vacuum but a lot of sap coming from the top?

The last run we had on Thursday through Friday we got I little over 2 gallons per tap of sap I have 80 trees on 3/16 ! at 2oclock I fig. that I was getting 18.75 gallons of sap an hr from those 80 trees it averaged 13.75 on that run all together I think that is is working like advertised.

My 3/16 is flowing amazingly well compared to the 5/16. It's incredible. If I had the slope I would run 3/16 on everything, as it is I only run 5/16 on the level sections of my sugarbush.

Watching the bubbles chug down the line is awesome. And it keeps running long after the buckets and 5/16 have quit.

First time using any tubing this year and I'm already convinced. I have a run of 21 taps on a 3/16 line and several buckets, all in the same area. Maybe 10-15' of drop total. On one run the 3/16 taps averaged about a gallon per tap (filled a 20 gallon drum), while the buckets averaged a pint. The tubing keeps running longer when buckets freeze up. I'm sold! And have swapped the 20 gallon drum for a 30 gallon drum :)

Dave

An update on the 3/16 line. The warm weather Monday and early Tuesday kicked our 3/16 line into high gear, 30 taps were flowing almost as much sap into our main line as the 100 plus we have on 5/16. Enough where I we decided for this year not to tap anymore trees until next year when we can finish out a good rotation for boiling. We have a 2x7 made with a front pan from a Leader half pint, a flat rear pan and pre heater. The rig does really well as the arch the original owner made for it is excellent, very strong draft. It would probably keep up with 200 or so 5/16 taps, but we would be wasting sap and needlessly tapping extra trees this year with the time we can set aside to boil. When it comes time to change the 5/16 lines in a year or two, we will probably do so with 3/16. I am only worried about the deer and squirrels at this point (the sugar bush is part of a buck highway.) Once see the results of some squirrel damage, or lines ripped apart by deer crashing through we will know for sure. The tubing we picked up seemed really flexible, similar to the most flexible 5/16 line. The fragility of that stretched over long distance is what has me concerned. Thanks for everyone's comments and help.

Chris A.