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This is a community for those who come up with creative ways to make maple syrup. You don't have to be designing and building homemade vacuum or RO systems to participate. Have you done something cool with your buckets and spiles? Tell us! Are you proud of your tubes and buckets? Show us! Have you built your own homemade gravity of pumped vacuum system? Show it off! Do you design, build, or install giant, gleaming, stainless steel maple syrup production systems? Tell us all about it! If you don't make maple syrup but love it on your pancakes of johnnycake and want to ask question, ask away. The people posting here love to talk about making and eating maple syrup.
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I built this releaser from PVC pipe that I bought at Lowe's in Ogdensburg, NY, check valves and solenoids that I bought on Ebay, and fence T-bars that I bought at TSC. The controller was an Arduino Nano in the grey box on the side of the releaser. This one was vertical and sat on top of the IBC draining into the port on the top. It worked quite well and didn't cost a lot to build. I can't remember how much it released per dump but it was under 4 L.
Can you give a quick explanation what this does? I can see it's part of a system for collecting maple syrup but I'm lost after that.
Sure! This is the business end of a vacuum sap collection system. In the past maple syrup producers drilled a 7/16" hole through the bark of the maple tree and into the sap wood then pounded in a spile which is basically a hollow tube with a hook on which they could hang a bucket to collect the sap. Modern vacuum systems use a 5/16" hole and a tube tap which is a hollow tube that you pound into the hole and attach a 5/16" drop line to. Up to 20 of these drop lines can connect to a 5/16" lateral line which runs back to the larger main line. I use a 3/4" wire supported main line. The vacuum system pulls the sap through the tap lines, through the lateral lines, and into the mainline then up to the sugar shack. The sap collects in the sap or vacuum releaser. The problem with having a liquid in a tank under vacuum is that if you open a valve air is sucked in but the liquid doesn't come out. What the vacuum releaser does (the white, vertical tube on top of the tote) is it acts as an airlock. It has a check valve between itself and the collection lines and between itself and the tote. When the releaser is full a solenoid (electrically activated) valve between the vacuum releaser and the vacuum pump closes and another between the vacuum releaser and the outside air opens breaking the vacuum. This pulls the check valve between the vacuum releaser and the collection lines to pull closed and the weight of the sap in the releaser pushes the check valve between the releaser and the tote open and the sap pours out into the tote. When the releaser is completely empty the solenoid valves change back, the vacuum pump draws a vacuum in the vacuum releaser pulling the bottom check valve closed and the top check valve open and the process repeats.
That's a long winded explanation. I hope it helps. I have a video somewhere that I intend to post where I show the new releaser in operation and point to each component as I explain what's happening.
I appreciate all the detail you provided - I wasn't expecting that. What do you call the group(?) of trees you collect from? A farm is the only term that comes to mind but doesn't sound right. I've seen this setup while skidooing in northern NB but just assumed gravity did most of the work.
How many lateral lines can you have on a main line? I'm guessing you only need one of these releasers per main line?
We call the trees, "the trees". I guess would could call them the stand or a maple wood or forest. We're a homestead of 16.5 acres so they're just the trees on our property. We don't really call them anything.
There are some rules of thumb. You should only have a maximum of 20 taps per lateral line and 250 taps per 3/4" main line. Those numbers are based on sugar maples which give the most sap. I've got just over 300 taps on my 3/4" mainline in sugars, silvers, and Manitobas and it doesn't feel like it's maxed out. I'm actually planning to put in another 200 taps on another branch of 3/4" mainline and may switch out the near section of the mainline (where the second line will branch off) to 1" mainline. That's a run of 500'.