Do you know if there will be any discussion about results comparing 3/16 on a combination of natural + mechanical vacuum vs 3/16 on gravity alone there?Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins
I did 3/16 onto a mainline under 27.5" of vacuum this year and had what I consider to be very good results for this weather - 23 gallons of sap per tap on 107 taps - but I didn't do it in a scientific way (I didn't do any 3/16 only lines). Last year I got close to that in gallons of sap per tap using just 3/16 on gravity - but the season was much different last year.
I was achieving at least 27" on all the taps I measured throughout the season, and had vacuum readings at the top of my lines that were higher than 28" or 29" - the Leader catalog has a little chart that makes it sound like >27" should yield around 30 gallons of sap per tap - but I suspect that this year that would not be the case.
Since I trade/sell the sap, the gallons of syrup per tap is really just the upper limit assuming there was no processing waste - in that I hit 0.62 gallons per tap (calculating the syrup value using the "new jones rule of 88.2" in http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/jones.pdf ).
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