My big question is "how much weight can a plastic bucket tap support?" If you drill the hole near the top you are asking the tap to hold over 40#, that sounds high. Some metal sap buckets were 4 gal, but they were made to be held by metal taps. The extra gal weighs over 8# more. Since I don't know your sugar % the weight can't be given, but water is 8#/gal, then you need to add for the dissolved sugar, plus the bucket weight too. I'd think that would be too much for plastic. Remember, plastic will deform if pushed in the same direction for long enough, this deformation may cause the bucket full of sap to fall on the ground. Murphey's Law will make it spill most of the contents most of the time.
Dave Klish, I recently ordered a 2x6 wood fired evaporator from A&A Sheet Metal which I will be converting to oil fired
Now have solar, 2x6 finish pan, 5 bank 7x7 filter press, large water jacketed bottler, and tankless water heater.
Recently bought another Gingerich RO, this one was a 125, but a second membrane was added thus is a 250, like I had.
After running a 2x3, a 2x6, 3x8 tapping from 79 taps up to 1320 all woodfired, now I'm going to a 2x6 oil fired and a 200-425 taps.