First attempt at tubing

I put my first 3/16" line in today, seven taps and a 30' foot drop down into the swamp from up where the trees get more sunlight than the woods trees near my house. I decided try that instead of I built my own tubing tool and it worked pretty well. It's too time consuming to use for someone who taps a lot of trees, but the $cost was low. The labor to build the tool was about six hours. The time to splice each tee into the line was about ten minutes. Of course I came away from the experience with a list of modifications I want to make to the tool, but it really performed better than I expected. I didn't actually tap the trees yet, but the drops are all assembled.

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An easier way for a few fittings is carry a thermos of hot water with you. Dunk the tubing in the hot water for a few seconds and it will slip on the fitting. Don't overheat the tubing, and give the completed connection a minute to cool before tensioning it. Have fun!

Your going to need an RO with all of those taps! Cool tubing tool too!

Go spend $8 on a 12oz thermos and put boiling water in it. I installed 4 runs of 3/16 with over 100 taps over 5 hours until it wasn't hot enough to put on fittings.

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Originally Posted by jmayerl

Go spend $8 on a 12oz thermos and put boiling water in it. I installed 4 runs of 3/16 with over 100 taps over 5 hours until it wasn't hot enough to put on fittings.

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You use hot water on 3/16" without a tubing tool? My tubing is Leader 30P. Very stiff. Is that what you used?

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Originally Posted by Maplebrook

An easier way for a few fittings is carry a thermos of hot water with you. Dunk the tubing in the hot water for a few seconds and it will slip on the fitting. Don't overheat the tubing, and give the completed connection a minute to cool before tensioning it. Have fun!

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I can't get my mind around the idea of dunking the tubing in hot while the sapline is already routed and under tension. I tried pushing my tubing (3/16" Leader 30P) onto a fitting with very hot water and no tension and it was very hard to grip the tubing. I could easily do 5/16" tubing, but this was way more difficult.

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Originally Posted by FDA

Your going to need an RO with all of those taps! Cool tubing tool too!

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Seven taps on reds? You gotta be joking.

I can't speak to leader but I did 7 rolls of cdl and 2 rolls of D&G. I string out lateral somewhat tight from top to bottom, then go back to top and tension the end tree. From there I go down and mark 5-7 trees while holding the lateral tight. When I get to where I want to stop I simply drop the line and go back and cut the drops in from where I dropped the line. This gives me just enough slack to be able to dunk the ends in my thermos on my tool belt. It may sound complicated but it seems to work well for me. I had 250ish drops on 9 runs that I did. If I was more than this amount I might have made a tubing tool but havnt seen a need yet.
FYI- cdl tubing has been great to work with, D&G much harder and to flexible, I thing it would make good drops though.

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Originally Posted by jmayerl

FYI- cdl tubing has been great to work with, D&G much harder and to flexible, I thing it would make good drops though.

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The Leader 30P is cheaper than I've seen the CDL. I guess the convenience of cutting into a line that's already taut also appeals to me.

On tubing size: All my tubing was D&G 5/16", whatever grade my local rep had in stock. Not sure if the 3/16" would act differently with the hot water trick or not.
On dunking a tensioned line: I made a tool to grip the lateral and pull slack so a drop line could be cut in after the lateral line was in place and tensioned.

Tool description - 2 pair of small Vise Grips with teeth ground off. Replace adjuster bolt in said Vise Grips with an eye bolt. Thread a clothesline ratchet tensioner onto 2' of poly rope. Join Vise Grips at eye bolts with said 2' of poly rope.

Tool use - unwind tensioner and clamp lateral in the Vise Grips either side of your drop line location. Wind tensioner to pull slack in lateral. Cut lateral to install drop line.

Cool looking tubing tool by the way!

I didn't want to just dismiss the idea of using hot water and ropes to cut tees into a taut line. I did a 16 tap line today using the method. It helped that the top of line was a four stem clump maple and the next in line was also. The rest were all 2 stem clumps. I still prefer cutting tees in with a tubing tool, but I was at least able to join the joints and build the droppers in situ.