Teeing into 3/16 Tubing

[maple flats]

Just start at the highest, farthest away tree and weave back and forth to tap all the trees, then head down hill. On a flat at the top, it does not matter that you have some ups and downs, you just want as much down as possible in the home stretch.
Most of my 3/16 starts a few hundred feet across a rather flat plane, but then I have 30-50' of drop towards the bottom. This works perfectly with 3/16 but would not with 5/16. Do not go to 5/16 anywhere along the route (except 5/16 drops work well). As soon as you tie to 5/16 you lose all the benefits you gained with 3/16 before that point.

[sbedilion]

will do. i'm just a newbie at tubing. thanks!

[buckeye gold]

Don’t tee two lateral lines together. Results are generally never as good as one line going to each tree or running two separate lines.

Hmmm, although I been sugaring for about 10 years this is my first experience with tubing. Your reply has me thinking, Dr. Tim. I have 5 runs of all 3/16th and 4 of them are continuous line from tree to tree with 14-25 taps per line and at least 25' fall on all 5. However, on one run i had 5 taps off to the side across my main woods rd and I did not want to cross it. They were high enough and adjacent to another run that I ran a line from those five taps and teed into the other run. There are 8 taps above this tee, but all 13 of these taps are pretty much within 5-6 feet of each other in elevation. I have ~300 feet of run with another 8 taps below these and 30+ feet of drop to the collection point. Did I make a mistake? I could run the line for those 5 down to an end tree on another run and simply make it an extension of that line, I'd just have to cross my road and put removable couple there. Should i redo this or just let the 5 extra taps go. They are historically strong producers and I hate to miss them.

[DrTimPerkins]

Why can't you weave the 3/16 through the 20 trees and then head down the hill?

This would be the most favorable approach.

[buckeye gold]

I guess I left out that the five trees are below the others by 5-6 feet in elevation and probably 40 feet in length....I'm not going to be able to pull sap back up hill that far am I? Assuming I won't I don't see it being feasible to weave them into the run. I have kept everything on slope so far, and figured a tee was less of a block than an up hill climb.

[cjf12]

This is all a little new to me. Didn't realize teeing in was a problem. When I tapped last year I tried to put 25 to 30 taps on a run to fill the line quicker to get vacuum. I teed like crazy. 5 trees here 10 there. What is the minimum amount you would want on a run. I have some redo work to get on it seems. 0 degrees or not Saturday, I guess I know where I will be.

[Snowmad]

Since Dr. Tim is following this, I have a question that relates to this subject for him. I understand that you can't "T" in different lines and you explained that very well. I'm sure we've all got this ONE outlier tree that isn't near the line for whatever reason. My question is, how long, realistically, can you have a "drop" when using all 3/16"? If one tree is say 10' from your line and is up the hill from it, can you run 10' of line to the tree for one tap and treat it as a "drop"? Or is 3' or 40" the maximum for a drop? If 10' would work, would 20'? Just wondering as I had this with one tree last year and didn't know if I could run an extra long drop to it or not. Thank you in advance. I hope I was clear enough in my question you can answer.

[maple flats]

I guess I left out that the five trees are below the others by 5-6 feet in elevation and probably 40 feet in length....I'm not going to be able to pull sap back up hill that far am I? Assuming I won't I don't see it being feasible to weave them into the run. I have kept everything on slope so far, and figured a tee was less of a block than an up hill climb.

As long as you have good fall after the taps on the lower section and enough taps to generate good vacuum, yes, you can pull sap up 5-6' from a lower section. Think of it as a sap ladder, but on 3/16 you need no infused air to help it up.
That being said, the taps in that lower area will get a reduced vacuum, if the air (gas) bubbles take up 50% of the tubing you will lose roughly 3 or 4", if it fills less than 50% of the tubing, you will lose even more, but you will still get vacuum in that portion. In season, watch all taps for leaks but pay even more attention to those taps in the lower area. When the lines freeze those will be slightly more apt to have ice push those taps out a little. If the leak, gently reseat.

[DrTimPerkins]

Since Dr. Tim is following this, I have a question that relates to this subject for him. I understand that you can't "T" in different lines and you explained that very well. I'm sure we've all got this ONE outlier tree that isn't near the line for whatever reason. My question is, how long, realistically, can you have a "drop" when using all 3/16"? If one tree is say 10' from your line and is up the hill from it, can you run 10' of line to the tree for one tap and treat it as a "drop"? Or is 3' or 40" the maximum for a drop? If 10' would work, would 20'? Just wondering as I had this with one tree last year and didn't know if I could run an extra long drop to it or not. Thank you in advance. I hope I was clear enough in my question you can answer.

There is no clear-cut answer for this. In this case, if the alternative was running another line and spending a good amount of $ to do that, I'd probably go with one "long" drop, but with the realization that this is not "best practice" and you will likely get some reduction in yield because of it. In general though, this practice should be avoided, and you definitely don't want to put tees or wyes into the system all over the place and expect them to produce well. Again, going back to the road analogy, we've all seen those intersections on a busy road where another road comes in, and traffic backs up on the side road due to the difficulty (resistance) in merging. In terms of tubing, except for drops, all merging (tees or wyes) should be done in a mainline OR the road (tubing) should lead directly to the destination (a tank).

[buckeye gold]

I been following and participating in this thread and it is one of the things that make this forum "Wonderful". It would take most of us years of compromised production to figure many of these mistakes out, being able to glean so much great information is like being able to transport to our future for those learning new skills.

With that said I think one perspective that we all may want to consider in these tubing scenarios is the operational level of the producer and whether the operation really requires peak performance. I know for myself, and I suspect several others asking questions in this thread, I don't need absolute optimum production, I just want less labor intensive good production. I have worked buckets and bags for 10 years and I imagine even my less than perfect 3/16th tubing set up will far out produce what I used to get on buckets and bags. I respect that the best practices should always be the goal, but if you are a hobbyist and peak production is not going to matter a lot why not just do what is simpler.