Disappointed plastic buckets

[TonyL]

We buy used aluminum buckets off ebay. With everyone going to tubing, they've been easy to find, and reasonably priced.

[Cedar Eater]

I'm going to be more cautious and try to use a slightly undersized bit (not sure sitting in front of the computer what the 3/16" tubing OD is) once ive forced the drop tube through the undersized hole I am going to put a old plastic spile on the bottom of the drop tube INSIDE the bucket.

Cedareater my property is not right for tubing because the trees are spread out on a old farm property.There are some on the north side of the house, some on the south, some way behind the barn, some on the road, some on the neighbors properties. No power for vac at some of the neighbors. I could physically do tubing, with vac if I wanted to take it down every year, I cant leave the tubing up. It would also be many different zones with different mainlines because the trees are just to spread out in clumps over a few acres of cleared worked land. I could possibly rig up a few short runs to 55gallon drums on about 10 % of the taps.

The external diameter of 3/16" tubing is 5/16". If you use a 19/64" inch tapping bit for the trees and 19/64" bit for the holes in the buckets, you will get a tighter seal on the 5/16" OD spiles in the trees and you might have a tough time getting 3/16" drop tubes into the buckets.

The fact that you mention mainlines tells me that you're not really thinking about 3/16" tubing runs, because they don't need mainlines and they are easy to route. In one area I have three isolated trees, one of them will have 3 taps, that are close enough together that I can route 3/16" tubing between them and drop the end into a 30 gallon drum that I can strap to a tree or a t-post or whatever. Then I'll drive up, pump the barrel out, and drive away. That's five taps with one stop. In another area, I have 28 taps strung together on one 3/16" line that zigzags all around on level ground for more than 600'. That line runs slowly without vacuum but I plan to put a small 12V diaphragm pump that runs off a deep cycle battery to suck on the end of that line and dump into a barrel. I'm told that I will get two days off that battery before I need to swap in a fresh one and recharge the other. Taking down and restringing 3/16" tubing every year is not all that difficult because the tubing doesn't have to be perfectly straight like a mainline or perfectly sloped like a 5/16" lateral. It can go up and down and around and it can span fairly long distances because it can tolerate sagging. You just have to label it when you take it down each year to know where to put it back up.

I'll be experimenting with even smaller cheaper diaphragm pumps to get the cost of a pumping station down because I plan to move in a couple of years to a place where the maples are all scattered around on level ground. I won't have to take the tubing down every year, but I will want to avoid walking from tree to tree to collect because they are in wet areas. I really resisted tubing at first, but when I learned that I could get more sap from fewer trees because they just kept running through warm nights and didn't shutdown early in the season (I have mostly reds) and that my collection effort would be so much easier, I gave it a try and I was hooked. You might want to try it in those areas where you can support a line with anything every 50' or so and get up to 15 taps per run. I use a lot of non-maples for support trees.

[Marcus]

I just went through and checked my sap bags and bakery buckets. No problem with bags, and only 2 buckets messed up which one was hung on a through away plastic tap and one bucket with tubing run through a hole in the side. I drill tight holes through the lid and run 5/16 tubing. I have some buckets i hang directly on 7/16 taps. My Maple products supplier Josh Williams gave me a great tip to keep the bags on. Take the retainer and slightly expand it to make it a little tighter.
Marcus Yoder

[jake1]

Theres a few pictures of the bags on this website. You can get the idea. Only have had a few bags out of thousands actually rip out and fall off the tree. They are tough, I swap out the ten percent that start leaking during the season. They never get punctured only leak from the corners but ten percent is tolerable.. I use a mainline with 30 gallon barrels every 400 ft or so. Then just pour into barrel and it gravity feeds down to truck. Last year two of us averaged two hours to collect 800 bags in one spot.the other nice thing is i can walk up on the hill at the beginning of the season with 200 bags on my back and start tapping, then go grab 200 more. Took 4 of us 2 or 3 hours to pull 800 bags from my main grove last season. Can't do that with buckets. http://www.wildscoops.com/single-pos...ge-Creek-Birch