Sap ladder configuration

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

Ogdens,

Do you have more pictures of your ladder? Can't quite make out the connections on top & bottom.

sap ladder.jpg

I apologize for such a long delay on getting back to you, Today the wind took a tree down and when this was laying on the ground i remembered this post

[lew]

Breezy, why do you suggest installing your air breeders 50 feet from the lifter? Why not right at the lifter?

[keill4]

We are trying to lift 600 taps 14 feet using a two pipe system. We installed 2 - 1/2" risers on a 1" mainline, we have puddling and vacuum has dropped after risers. We are not sure what we did wrong. Should we install another riser or what suggestions can you provide. Thanks

[BreezyHill]

For a 1" main you need 4 1/2" risers. to get the sap up the ladder and the vac past the ladder.

4 1/2" are nearly the same square inches as a 1".

[BreezyHill]

Lew, sorry didn't get a notification on this one.

You want to force the sap up the ladder. If you put it to close then the bubbles will not force the sap up the riser on a bubble, just the bubble will rise up the ladder.

[rhwells2003]

So I PM'd back and forth with Breezy a decent amount in January about two small ladders around my house, and I thought I'd share my set-up and some results. So both of these spots are small. One ladder is 14' and lifts 25 taps, and the other is a 12' ladder that lifts 30 taps. The 30 tap ladder is all 1" mainline, and the 25 tap ladder is a 3/4" main below the ladder and 1" above it. I also run a gast 1550 pump that usually gets me 23.5"Hg. So I set my ladders up like breezy does with 1/2" ladders. He was concerned with how few taps I have that the ladder might struggle with the smaller volume of sap. So both of them I installed two 1/2" lines in the ladder with one of them having a 1/2" ball valve incase I didn't need it. My set-up was the main coming from the trees to the bottom of my ladder, with (2) 1"x0.5" tees or 3/4"x0.5" tees, then up the 1/2" lines to a 3" pvc manifold my brother-in law made for me. He tapped the 1/2" ports directly into the bottom and then tapped a 1" port for my main leaving the ladder. He then epoxied and screwed plexiglass on the ends so I could see in and make sure things were working right. I didn't install a bleeder valve in my bottom main but both situations at the end of my mains I have a vac guage and a ball valve. All I did was just barely cracked that ball valve so I could barely hear any air. It literally didn't effect my vac at all.

So I think my results have been pretty good. No I don't really have a ton of volume of sap to probably make it work the way its suppose to but I never have pooling, and I have good vac at the end of my line. So when I first turn my vac on there is usually sap pooled at my tees. Once I turn it on it takes a couple seconds for some air to get that first plug of sap pushed up through the ladder. After that pooling is cleared (literally not more then 10sec.) it seems like a sort of violent bounce of sap and air going up and down my ladder. I think this is b/c of the lack of volume of sap being able to constantly fill the ladder. But this allows me to only use the one 1/2" line and therefore it never being full full I always have good consistent vac on my bottom main. I've tried opening the ball valve and using the 2nd 1/2" line and it seems all the air goes up the first tee while the futher down slope tee just sits stagnant and pools up till the sap hits the upper tee and acts the sameway as I explained before. So I've kept that valve closed off and have been using just the one 1/2" line. Like I said before I usually have 23.5-25" before the ladder and at the end of the main after the ladder I consistently have 22-23".

After getting use to the set-up and not worrying about it all the time I just walk right by these ladders and aren't constantly checking or babying them. The one thing I would suggest is the upper manifold pipe make sure you use a good thick pvc pipe. My brother-in law used a thinner wall pipe and the 1/2" pipes coming up in I have them screwed 1/2" up in so they're fine. The 1" drain line I wanted that almost flush with the inside of the pipe to drain all the sap. Well with thinner wall pipe that doesn't leave a lot of the fitting screwed into the pipe. I had to put a lot of pipe tape on the fitting and I still had to silicone the outside so they didn't leak. But no leaks now and seems to be working good

[MT Pockets Producer]

We are using the attached set up with 3 risers on 30 or so taps and are having issues with sap stalling in the lines. Mains are 3/4 inch with between 50 and 60 taps total on a Gast 1550. Laterals before ladder moving fine and after ladder sometimes going backwards with no movement up ladder. The vac at the releaser is 27" and at the end of the lower main after the ladder is 25". We are thinking it is a pooling issue and are considering adding another riser. Had considered the 1/2 inch riser idea but were concerned about small amount of taps/ volume to work properly as mentioned above. Tried cracking valves to introduce air with same results. Should that air be introduced between the valve in the pic and the ladder or somewhere on the opposite side of the ladder? Not opposed to converting to manifold style ladder if thoughts are that it would work better. Thanks.

[PCFarms]

We trialed our sap ladder this year - 600 taps with a rise of 40'. I posted earlier with our exact configuration - we broke it up into 4x10' ladders, each with 4x1/2" risers.
The results were quite good, the ladder never stalled and we had good vacuum most the season. We ran about 22 inches in the bush and were getting 17 at the end of the lines. I thing we can do better by tightening our mainlines as there are some pretty flat sections. We had a very busy season and no time whatsoever to take and look at how to improve.

In any case it worked quite well, I might consider adding a 5th riser to the system as I think it struggled. We have two 3/4" lines and one 1" line coming into the base of the ladder.