raised or drop flues?

[boondocker]

is there an advantage to having drop flues v.s. raised. just wondering, im in the process of looking for a new 2x8 or 3x8, and was wondering if one worked better than the other. it seems that i find more drop than raised, and the evaporater that i have takin a liken to is raised. so any input would be great. thanks.............josh

[3rdgen.maple]

It just a preference thing in my opinion. I bet if you take the same rig from the same manufacture and put a raised next to a drop you would get the same results. In the old days the drops didnt have drains so that was a downfall. Now days they have the drains in them. The only disadvantage of the drop is the potential to hit the flues with wood when loading but I have yet to have a problem loading wood on my drop. There are a couple more advantages of a drop over a raised like, your head room for the tank feeding the evaporator does not need to be as high so if you are limited on ceiling height it is something to consider and there is only one float box to deal with which maintains the level of sap in both pans. Some guys like to run there pans at different depths so the 2 floats are a plus for those that do. Either way you cant go wrong putting a flue pan in the operation.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I have never boiled on a raised flue but if I were to buy a new evaporator, it would be a raised flue due to being able to run the sap in the flue pan at a much lower level than the syrup pan.

[Russell Lampron]

I like my raised flue evaporator. I don't have to worry about sap from the front pan mixing with the sap in the flue pan. I know that is an easy fix but one less thing to think about when I shut down. I also like that I can run my flue pan just over the flues and still run 1.25 inches in my front pan.

[boondocker]

thanks for the input guys. another question i have is ............ does anybody know if lapierre offer a 3x8 or just a 2x8. i was all set to pull the trigger on a CDL 2.5x8, but it seems that not to many people have a lot of good things to say about them. it looks like a nice rig in the CDL catalog. but the more i look at the lapierre, that looks like a nice rig too. i guess im stuck. looking for some thoughts or differnt modles to look at.

[Brent]

I ran a raised flue for two years and this year got a drop flue. This year I was really really annoyed that there was no valve between the pans so I could shut off the supply from the flue pan to allow taking the syrup pan off for cleaning. Mind you this rig was big enough that reversing was effective and I learned how to clean on the evaporator. Heat and acid is all it takes.

The other issue against the raised flue is that the flues are harder to get at if you want to brush the soot between boils. I never did it this year because my brush was wrong and I could't do it the two previous season because of the raised flue.

Raised flue rigs have two regulator boxes so you can adjust levels independantly in the flue and syrup pans. I missed that this year. Maybe not a big deal, but I like to be able to fiddle with levels.

In the end its a Ford vs Chevy type arguement. If one was a hands down winner, no-one would by the other, and they're both selling well these days.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Building the arch is alot easier with a raised flue. Smaller and more compact.

[thenewguy]

seems like the canadian way is raised flue pan and cross flow syrup pans, the american way seems like drop flues reverse flow syrup...anyone else ever notice this??? I have raised flues and cross flow pans, love it. only down fall seems to take forever to get the front syrup channel to boil hard and steady