Cleaning tubing

[adk1]

What does everyone do to clean their lines? Air, air and water mixture, nothing? Just curious. I have been doing the air and water cleaning the past three seasons, but haven't gotten it done yet.

[unc23win]

I do nothing.

[wnybassman]

I do nothing.

How do you find the time? lol

[Drew Pond Maple]

I flush my lines with 150 gal of water and 1 cup of bleach, with honda wx10. I did try air water mix the first year but didn't work so well.
Haven't had any snots in my lines in the last 2 years.
Thinking of trying the " nothing" idea in the future

[lpakiz]

I used water one year. Long boogers.
I used water and iodine. Long boogers and funny taste in syrup at first.
I used hydrogen peroxide and water this spring. So far, not a hint of anything nasty!

[nymapleguy607]

Run the vacuum while pulling taps, suck a little water through each tap as I pull it. Not the best but helps keep the lines a little cleaner.

[adk1]

haha, if I had vac! which i dont

[BreezyHill]

In or operation cleaning equipment is just part of maintance.
Over the past 40 plus years we have gone from vacuuming in water with a bactericide, to bleach and water, just water, a tubing washer with air injection back to vacuuming bleach mixture and to this past season using peroxide mix.

Per Steve Childs data and recommendation for what we are facing in our tubing as a result of squirrel damage we will be putting a peroxide solution into every drop this fall. In the spring we sucked in the same solution and saw good results but not perfect. In the last 18 months we have had a squirrel and rabbit explosion on the farm. One 25 acre bush has yielded 2 dozen gray tails and a handful of red. Another 20 to clean out after the leaves fall.

We have had great success with bleach application under vacuum while pulling taps for the last 10 years. With the high number of gray rats in the bush I decided to not tempt fait and got to peroxide. We still have a small amount of black spotting in one lateral and in the main after the lateral for a few feet. We will be using a back pack sprayer to inject the spouts and drops with solution and will flood the mains with the same solution on gravity slopes and the latters will be pump full with a 12volt pump on the atv.

The solution will set in the lines overnight and the lines will be vacuumed clear and rinsed the next morning. Don't forget that hydrogen peroxide turns to water when the extra oxygen atom is released. So there is no residue in the lines, no nasty odor, and is safe to spill on the ground or dump the wash and rinse on the ground. Just be careful when mixing the concentrate into the solution. It has a strong whitening affect on skin and hair.

I have been very impressed the way that the peroxide has cleaned a 10 year old atv tank to like new condition. During season, we wash down collection tanks and storage tanks every two days. The peroxide in the sprayer will be tried to see if this reduces labor and will only need a 1x rather than a 2x rinsing of the tanks.

I look at washing our equipment as a time saver and a pride builder. After the first initial runs of the season we often don't need to change the filter after the releaser, as all the tubing spirals and sawdust are removed...usually. When giving tours and we are checking lines for leaks I do not want to see any black spots, cloudy lines and absolutely no buggers in the glass releaser system. This is rather disturbing.

Never forget the 4 P's of production: Pride, Perception, Presentation, & Product.

When a producer has PRIDE in his operation, PRESNTS a clean production system and Quality PRODUCT; the Perception of the buying public is this is a clean and safe product to feed to their family and loved ones. It is a lot easier to say Thank You! than to reason away a mistake.

One boy of the 4-H group helped me bring wood into the sugar house last season. After lugging in wood for 20 minutes I grabbed the 18" squeegee and cleaned the concrete floor of our tracks. Just before he left he asked if he could clean the floor before leaving...I said sure, have at it. He did a magnificent job and didn't leave a spot. The next day his mom texted me. What did you say to him yesterday??? Well we talked about how many hours a day it takes to boil and we actual discussed why we cleaned the floor after bring in wood....Why I asked. Well he always sleeps in on Sunday...I awoke at 7 am to the vacuum cleaner running, so I peaked in his room and could see the floor for once; obviously I was dreaming so I went back to bed. Seems the boy had gotten up early and cleaned his room and vacuumed from corner to corner. Later that morning she texted back and asked if the boy could come over and help boil and clean the floors. I told her "he is always welcome!" They came a short time later and she hugged me and said thanks! Seems he found that work was more fun than playing video games and sitting in the house. I ran out of jobs for him to do that day.

There is still plenty of time before the bush freezes for the winter, to do some kind of cleaning of the tubing.
It may take a few hours to do a good job but the rewards are Great!
I think it helps us reach our goals of higher production and limiting expenses.

Ben

[unc23win]

http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/tubing_cleaning.pdf The highlights of the publication are below. Credit PMRC for the following as I copy and pasted.

Interestingly, although it is well known that tubing systems cleaned with air/water suffer rapid and steady losses in yield over time due to increasing levels of microbial contamination (Perkins et al. 2010), it remains the most commonly used tubing cleaning method. It is likely that the "no clean" and "dry clean" methods are no more effective at cleaning tubing as the "air/water" method. Therefore, according to these surveys, nearly three quarters of U.S.maple producers utilize tubing cleaning methods that are ineffective in terms of maintaining high sap yields.

In order for cleaning, either with or without chemical sanitizers, to be recommended, the net benefits of cleaning on sap yield and/or sap quality must outweigh the cost of materials, equipment and labor required to clean. Otherwise cleaning is wasteful both financially (money spent where it results in no net profit) and in terms of time lost that could be more wisely spent on other activities.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

According to Leader 95% of all tubing in US and Canada isn't flushed and this is probably accurate because majority of taps are huge producers and nearly everyone one of them don't flush.