The Poorer Man's Diaphragm Pump Vacuum System

[Cedar Eater]

I used a cheap solenoid valve to replace the motorized ball valve that I usually use.

I haven't had any luck with using cheap solenoid valves on the vacuum side of the pump. They seem to need a minimum amount of pressure to open, which does no good when you are trying to dump the sap directly to the tank.

It's definitely louder and vibrates more, which makes me think it will be short lived, but at the price you can get them for from eBay, you can buy 4-7 of them for the price of one ShurFlo 4008. This makes me more likely to use them for the small clusters of trees that are separated by great distances from larger clusters.

[wmick]

I haven't been on here for a bit... Got busy, in the bush, boiling etc... and now catch up with real life..
I will prepare a full report when I get a chance...
Lots of questions from my 1st cont. flow experience.

But I do need to say, that I was very impressed with the amazon vacuum pump and temp controller set up...
1. Allowed bypass from the taps right through the pump when it shut down or sap came before startup.
2. It generated over 25" when wet and would cycle up and down when air bubbles came. (but it seemed to use a lot less power while that was happening)... Self primed when the trees pushed a little sap to it.. or the tiny bypass worked as well.
3. When the trees were sucking back at night, it drew air in through the outlet, rather than drawing sap up the bypass.
4. Very easy on batteries... When I got busy boiling, the weather turned warm and sap wasn't running much, so I didn't bother to change batteries...(figuring my run was over)--- Fresh battery on Thursday night and it was still pumping on Sunday afternoon when we went to empty the tote.
5. The 50 taps I had on the vac, FAR out-produced my bucket spiles.
6. Pump worked great to pull some chlorine solution through the lines when tearing down... Pinched off 3 of 4 incoming lines and started at the last tap, sucking from a pail... and worked my way back to pump.. (and repeat)

Thanks for the idea.

Gonna see if I can find another small road-side bush and add another system next season.

[Biz]

Glad to know there is hope for the smaall pump. I tested my Favson pump for the first time on a real sap line over the weekend.... not successfully. Have a line already out there connected to a Shurflo 4008 which was pumping a steady trickle. I bypassed it and connected up to the Favson pump. It developed 10" of vacuum with no flow, but after 30 minutes it never generated enough vacuum to get a steady flow going. Occasionally it would see a surge of sap, pump it, increase vacuum to 15" for a bit then back to 10" and no flow. Reconnected the Shurflo and immediately I got steady sap flow and 22" of vacuum. I have not given up, I need to mess with recirculation lines, looks like it really needs one to work with low flow where the larger 4008 pump will work fine without it (although it will probably help).

Dave

[wmick]

Hey Biz - I suspect from what you are saying about "steady flow" your Shurflo will outperform my setup... I certainly did not have "steady flow". It would pulse up and down quite often.. If you get yours working at all, it will be really interesting to see your comparative observations of volume per hour, etc...
I'm pretty green and have no other experience to compare it to at this point... I kind of figured, the trees will just do their thing, and the vac will help get it through the lines and out of the way for more... so the pulsations between flow and no-flow didn't bother me much... I only had 50 taps on it, so I wouldn't have expected it to "flow" steady all day long?

[Biz]

I think any more testing is going to be next year, the season is coming to a close. Flow needs to be steady for best vacuum, pulsing isn't good. I had 40 taps on the test line.

[wmick]

I think any more testing is going to be next year, the season is coming to a close. Flow needs to be steady for best vacuum, pulsing isn't good. I had 40 taps on the test line.

I'm curious - With your shurflo, approximately how many gallons per tap might you get on a decent day?

[Biz]

I'm curious - With your shurflo, approximately how many gallons per tap might you get on a decent day?

Can't really put a number on it since every day is different, but it will outrun the gravity 3/16 that is located right beside it by 50-100%.

[Cedar Eater]

I thought that I would dredge up this zombie thread to report last year's results and this year's plans. Last year's results were fantastic. That is to say that they weren't as good as I could have achieved with a Shurflo, but they were almost as good and much cheaper. But things have changed for me and I will not be able to continue gathering sap at my secondary sugarbush this year because I will be too busy building a house there as soon as the weather permits, which looks like it will be in about two weeks. So I am moving the pump here to my home that I am trying to sell and setting up a tubing run on the trees around my house. This means that I will be able to get AC power out to the collection point and that's a plus because the batteries that I used last year were undersized and I had to swap them too often. If my house and sugarbush sell this year, I will need this experience because the land that I am moving to has fewer maple trees and is quite flat. Many of the trees are clustered in small groves, so I will need to set up about 5 of these PMS units to get my sap yields back up to last year's total for both sites.

[sugarsand]

It was mentioned that regular cleaning of the strainers wouldnt be needed. You will be surprised at how little it takes to clog the screens, especially later in the season when you start getting flaky, gooey slime crap. This year we switched to air pumps because I got tired of chasing batteries, I've had to clean the screens for the second time and its only the second week of running. With the air pumps we dont run a bypass, when it builds up a vacuum around 25 in it will stop until it drops due to sap coming in then will cycle again to maintain, the more sap the more it will cycle.

[Cedar Eater]

I can't even imagine how I would get air to run pumps at the place I will be moving to. It's more than 80 acres of almost flat ground and I would be running hundreds of feet of airline just to pick up 5 trees here, 10 there, etc. I'll be moving batteries in an E-Z Go and having to maintain trails for that.