Steam hood

[gi53]

I am thinking about putting a steam hood on my 30" x 5' flue pan. The main reason is a good flow of water to use in the sugar house. I will have to end the stack in the coupalo, so the stack will only be about 7' to 8' tall. Will this hight work ok, and is a steam hood worth the cost? Any help or suggestion would be great. Thanks

[mapleack]

The stack height would work, but if your goal is hot water you'll need a preheater too I believe. Just a hood won't give you much condensate.

[Sugarmaker]

gi53,
I agree with Andy. You wont get much water off a steam hood by itself. Example: I get maybe 1/2 gallon per hour off my front hood which is 4 long x 2 wide. I did get 7 gallons of condensate off the preheater system in the rear hood, but very little off the inside lip of the rear hood.
If you cant do the preheater then a small water tank in the sugarhouse is a good way to go.
Hope that helps,
Chris

[gi53]

So do you all feel a preheater and steam hood is a good investment? I have never seen or used a preheater, how does one hook up to a flue pan? And does it speed up syrup making? thanks

[whalems]

Check on some of the traders signatures on there photobuckets lots of good pictures of pre-heaters and several threads here on the topic.

[mapleack]

A preheater gets plumbed into your feed line before the float box. Properly set up preheaters in tight fitting hoods should heat the sap to at least 200 deg and improve your boiling rate by approximately 10%. If you go this route you need a damper installed in the steam stack to reach optimum conditions.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

There are some pics of my preheater I built and pics of it in the hood and everything in the photobucket link in my signature. I also have a couple of sets of plans for a preheater if you want them, send me a PM with your email address and I will send them to you in a PDF file.

[Haynes Forest Products]

gi53 My steam stack is only about 5' and ends in the coupla. It works great because I have the stack seperated from the sugar shack by a sheet of plywood. All the steam is up and gone and is seperated from the evap room. Mapleack mentions a damper in the steam stack It will slow draft if you depend on it. My hood is not totaly sealed its open to the finish pans so I rely on draft and a damper will not allow that.

[briansickler]

Leader is claiming an increase of 15-20% in boiling rate with their parallel flow preheaters. A tight fitting hood needed with damper. No additional fuel or other enhancements needed. The preheater and drip pan are supported by crossmembers that are bolted inside the pan. Four threaded rods and several nuts are used to set the height of the drip pan and preheater. The preheater and hood are well worth the investment in my opinion. Leader link below.

http://leaderevaporator.com/p-286-parallel-flow-sap-pre-heater.aspx

Brian

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

gi53 My steam stack is only about 5' and ends in the coupla. It works great because I have the stack seperated from the sugar shack by a sheet of plywood. All the steam is up and gone and is seperated from the evap room. Mapleack mentions a damper in the steam stack It will slow draft if you depend on it. My hood is not totaly sealed its open to the finish pans so I rely on draft and a damper will not allow that.

My hood is one piece and I have the front section that is above the syrup pan going into the same stack as the rear part of hood above the flue pan that is tight to the flue pan but the rear section has a damper and the front section empties steam into the 10" steam stack above the damper, so this is how I work around it. You can see it in the pics in my photobucket link in my signature.

[Haynes Forest Products]

WVM Now that makes sence. This is the first I have seen Dampers discussed in the steam hood.Thanks