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IPAKIZ and Jim Brown,
Ladders are new to me this year too. Been looking at lots of threads,asking lots of questions and looking at pictures. Brian Ryther has some good pictures of his. Sure hope they work as planned because I am going to be dependent on them for about 650 taps.
Guys- Didnt get much done yesterday maple but did get a bunch of buckets and got a load of barrells up to the house. Other day did get the lines ran across the road through the sluice pipe so now I just have to run them on down the hill to where the tanks will be and thats done. Biggest thing left is just placing the tanks then its all putter work. Trying to figure out the feasability of running 1100 buckets and Im thinking Ive got that about figured out too. Hopefully about 3 more weeks and Ill be ready. Then all I have to do is do a bit more wood and I should be all set. Would like to get a months break before season. Hopefully it doesnt start running in January. Like to see it start in Feb. Like to hear about everybodys adventures. These prices are really bringing out the taps. Fun to hear about what everyone is doing. Theron
The taps are coming out bigtime all over the maple world. I highly doubt that the price of bulk syrup will fall below $3.00 a Lb. no matter how many taps are placed/due to the fact that the packers have been building up these foreign accounts overseas and to keep up with a 5-10% increase in the use of syrup world wide almost means in my mind that the market could handle that in an increase of taps each year now?.
You may see the $3.00 a Lb in the spring?? but the packers like to do that as they know the farmer has to pay his or her bills and needs some quick coin on hand so they got them over the bung hole in the beginning/But if everyone trys their best to play the game and sit on their crop the price will rise as it usually does towards the fall.
With the Federation forming in canada there was a lot of high tension from the packers and some canadian producers in the beginning and no i doubt that some of the canadian producers are sad about the fact that the price is 3X higher then it was from about 6 years ago when the packers were only paying $1.30 a Lb for Light Amber/Fancy and .90 Cents a Lb for Commercial.
Right now the producer is singing the song by Bon Jovi "Loving every minute of it-Come on". So the tip of the day is play the game the best you can and sell in the fall while the bulk price's are higher.
Tim & Jim,
We've got 2 sap ladders that were installed a few years ago and they each use one 6-way star and lift 8 feet. One of them has only 20 taps on it, the other has about 45. I've been told that 60 to 65 taps is the max you can put on a 6-way star. More taps than that and you use 2 stars.
The sap ladder we were finishing on the weekend is a double vertical pipe ladder. We've got 2 mainlines coming in on the bottom, one with 70 taps the other with 103 taps. We'd need 3 x 6-way stars for this number of taps but instead we're trying 2 x 3/4" vertical pipes. I'm joining the 2 mainlines together at the bottom with a pair of 3/4" tees to even the flow out from the two sides. I have 8' of 3/4" pipe for each vertical. At the top each vertical turns via a 3/4" to 1" 90 degree bend and they connect to the upper mainline with a 1" tee. I'll take a picture of it when it's completed. Worst case if it doesn't work I'll put in 3 stars.
Our flood oil pump max's out at 21" Hg and the sap ladders work fine. Before we got that pump the old dairy pump would only pull 15" or 16" Hg and the ladders still worked.
It takes 1 inch of vacuum to lift a column of sap 1 foot. Adding a little vacuum leak at the bottom of the ladder helps lift the sap too.
We ran another mainline and are working on adding about 50 more taps.
That means we'll be fully tapped on the hill.
We still need blue tubing and stuff to do the laterals, but the order is in.
50 taps shouldn't take too long.
Some of you guys do that before breakfast!
ennis; Thanks for the information we have a couple of places in the new bush we would like to taps some really big sugars but they are below the 1" main line. I was thinking about the ladders to bring them up to the 1" We would not be able to tap the lower part of that bush for a couple of years and don't want to let those big babys to go untapped for 2-3 years. When we open up the lower part of this bush we would be talking 3-600 taps and then they would be included running down hill at that time.
Thanks
Jim
Jim,
Brian Montgomery has 3 ladder's in his line. Maybe give him a call and you could see his. If you go, let me know, it was dark when I was there and would like to see it again.
Good Luck!
Thanks Gary I'll give him a call and runover I'll call you before i go!
Jim
Hi guys,
You guy got me wondering about ladders.
So on my way to Bascom's this morning, I stopped to check one out.
Looks pretty simple and up front.
Amazing little contrapsion.
Just my observation.
Dave