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No more backin up so far . . . we kept gradient going down from the pump exit line and further up the mainline I adjusted the level. I noticed one place had sap in greater amoutns than others (a...

Actually, funny story about that. Our 300 ft of discharge line is 3/4" black water line, 3 chunks connected with hose barb connectors, but when he connected them, he didn't use hose clamps. Nor was...

ok, that makes sense. We did get a vac gauge up and it read 17", and that was off a lateral line 100 feet down. However, I did notice yesterday an area of line maybe 250 feet down that looked like it...

I'm wondering that too, the gradient seems to be very slight, but it IS a longer span between supports due to lack of trees. So maybe tying it off somehow to a far tree may help. I checked this...

"your sap will just sit there" that does answer another aspect we were pondering, especially in the evening when temps drop. Didn't know if sap was suppossed to get fully sucked out at night before...

This is our first year running lines, much less hobby vac.

We have a fully automatied shurflo 4048 set-up running solar with auto temp shut-off AND lightbulb heater during cold temps with two...

No, we have only run laterals so far, not put taps on it yet. In theory, we could run additional lines in tandem and split the taps along both lines.

Ok, so all the info I can find is for 3/16 systems runing down hills.

Our maple supplier told us to use 5/16 laterals on our shurflo 4048 pump with a 3/4" mainline. Our woods have a very minimal...

Skip harbor freight solar panels. Ebay has a whole kit much cheaper, and you'll need 2 panels for the 4048 (from what I've read regarding watts used). NEWPOWA on ebay has a 200 watt kit for $200 and...

This is regarding a shurflo 4048 vac system on a 3/4 mainline dumping right into a 275 gal tank run by solar and battery.

I understand some pumps totally close when there is no power to them,...

It all depends. As it happens, I am doing the VERY SAME THING and am on here looking up info on pumps. Considering the 4048, but trying to figure out if it lets sap through with the motor off or not....

why the manifold instead of the 3/4in mainline? So you are saying to just run all my laterals directly into a manifold?

I'm bumping this thread as I have the same question and not sure it was really answered.
ok, so we are putting in a small vac system for about 100 taps this year (trial run, new to vac), and I...

Hey guys, thought you might be interested in this, especially smaller maple makers.

We run a smaller operation of usually 200 trees but this year due to other time commitments (and the fact that...

Interesting. Maybe a bug got into it? I've had "blue" tinted sap and yellow tinted sap, and 9 times out of 10 the yellow sap was up to 4% sugar content (compared to 2.5 or 3). If it's just a few...

Jeez, I wasn't expecting so many replies, sorry guys!

And for the record, I'm a girl, not a guy ;)

We run 1in in all our pans.

I appreciate all the helpful tips! We have talked about making...

Okay, this is a question or a problem we had last year. We were running a 2x5 Smokey Lake hybrid evaporator pan system, over a homemade arch with a 14 foot stack. We had air under the fire.
...

We pulled our soft maples several weeks ago and moved the taps to our sugar maples further back.

Located in Midwest michigsn, north of grand rapids. Hadn't any flow for 15 days to speak of, then...

Silver maples have a butterscotch taste and tend to be lighter in color.

Also, if the syrup is not tightly closed in the fridge it will absorb flavor. I had a dish of syrup off my filters I was...

Same here.

Looks like our last week. I had a small run over the weekend while I was out of town, must have gotten warm enough one day as most of the buckets were spoiled.

Since it looks like...

How about we swap for a bit! I've tapped since mid February and only gotten very dark syrup! Started with 50% silvers too! Now all black and sugars as the silvers and c reds are flowered.
Doing...

Running again here!

Been up and down alot though, had to pull 75+ red and silver and move to blacks and sugars. 625 gal sap from 150 taps so far, 6 gal syrup. 3 batches burned, every batch same...

let me first start off by saying that this bottler did its job. We got the unit with the filtering tray in it, and we used 10 pre filters and one synthetic filter at the bottom. The resulting syrup...

How was collection this year? Here in MI many large producers quit after 2 weeks. Sugar content of some was 1.25% on sugar maples!

We've cooked 500 gal and gotten 3.5 gallons on our 2x5 hybrid....

Good advice, I ran out last night and collected from the most flowery silver I coyld find and also a black with no buds.

Collected 1/2 cup of each and threw into my electric water boiler. 20...