Evaporator Steam Hood

[Brad W Wi]

Starting to get my ideas straight for a sugar shack I'll be building next June. One idea I've got is , since I wont have running water I was wondering about having a lip or channel running along the bottom inside of the hood. It would have to be an inch wide with a nipple and piping or tubing running to a barrel for collection.has anyone tried this or is it even feesible? Right now I'm looking at a 2x6 evaporator. How much steam do you think would condense and collect doing this? I've only used a flat pan and that has always been outside. Time to up grade and see how the rest of you do it. I've never seen an evaporator working. I'm just trying to get my ducks in a row. I've questioned you on the size of the shack now I need to check out other things

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Brad,

Might want to check out the pics of my hood on my website. You have the right idea. You want about a 1" channel running all around the bottom of the inside of the hood and you can probably expect somewhere between 5 to 8 gallons of hot water per hour. Hood is really nice and you can add a preheater for less than $ 100 and probably pick up 3 to 5 gallons per hour! :D

[syrupmaker]

Brandon hit the nail hard. Even if you get half the water you want,you will notice a heck of a difference in the amount of sap you can process. Night and day. Wish we would have added the preheater before this last season,(Veary impressed with it) Can't wait to see what the new rig(to us)will do.

Rick :wink:

[Parker]

I had a local fab shop build an aluminum hood for my syrup pan,,has the 1 " channal around the inside eadge with the nipples,,also has a lip on the top which the stack sits on,,all the water that condenses going up the stack runs into this lip and off of the hood via a nipple-hose setup,,instead of back into the pan,,,alot of water runs off this top lip

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Parker,

Definitely good insight there also. My drip pan for my preheater is 2" wider than the stack and directly underneath, so it catches my stack condensation. :D

[brookledge]

As everybody said its good to collect condensate because it's clean and warm. I have a 3X12 with a pre-heater and I get about 35 gal. of water per hour. If you only have a hood you will not collect as much condensate as if you have a pre-heater in the hood. With out a pre-heater, once the hood warms up to the temp of the steam you will not get much dripping back down. But if the steam hits cold sap in a copper pipe you will get lots of condensate.
Keith

[longlivenintendo]

I had a local fab shop build an aluminum hood for my syrup pan,,has the 1 " channal around the inside eadge with the nipples,,also has a lip on the top which the stack sits on,,all the water that condenses going up the stack runs into this lip and off of the hood via a nipple-hose setup,,instead of back into the pan,,,alot of water runs off this top lip

Do you guys have pictures of these? I'm looking to get a hood for my evaporator as well.

Thank you!

[lpakiz]

I would also say that you won't get too much water off of just a hood, without a preheater. It depends to some extent on how warm the building is. Mine building warms up pretty nice, and on my 2X10, at approximately 100 gallons of sap per hour, I get about a gallon of condensate per hour. If your building is cold, you will get more.