Whats new this year for everyone?

[PATheron]

Been busy and havent really kept up with what everyone is doing this year. Just wondered what everyone is doing for the upcoming season. New taps, new ideas, etc. Weve been busy here working on maple. No new taps, most of the woods work has been repairing damage from this years storms. I have been improving my existing lines always trying to get more sap. New for the sugarhouse is another used ro machine that Im adding a vessel to to try to chew through my sap faster and another large tank to hold sap in. Really looking foreward to season to see how everything works. Theron

[lew]

Been running wire for another 700-900 taps. Bouth a new 5000+ gallon stainless sap tank from CDL and am getting ready to pour a concrete pad for it. Also moving electric service. All of this at the same woods.

Taking old tank from above woods, 3,500 gallon stainless milk truck tank, and mounting it on ten wheeler for a new sap hauler when I find truck.

Getting RO room ready for my new CDL 2400 gph machine, upgrade the plumbing, wiring and such.

Sounds like more than enough to me. I better quit typing and get working.

[GramaCindy]

We are in the process of finishing up our new sugar shack.
Electricity comes this weekend.
Need to finish the cupola, siding and doors.
Install stack for arch,
Rebrick arch, may use arch/type board first.
Need more wood!
50 more taps.
More sap storage.
Need transfer pump.
Need blower.
Ordered preheater from Jim Schumacher.
Add counters in shack.
Adding a new section of woods, soooo much work to be done there.
The list is endless, but this AWESOME fall weather has really helped:D

[doocat]

More Taps!!!!! Better get working huh.

[GramaCindy]

More Taps!!!!! Better get working huh.

WHO, I have to ask is NOT planning on more taps for this coming season?;)

[whalems]

Raised my evaporator up on cement piers
prepping the shack for cement floor w/ trench drains
putting 8x12 addition on shack ( to darn crowded in there last year)
adding 200 taps and some sort of vacuum ( I hope):confused:

[PATheron]

I cant imagine a year where everything is all set to go. I seem to always be on the run either improving or expanding. Just the sugarhouse work is always a lot. Name of the game got to keep moving. You know itll seem like nothing and season will be here. Im really putting a big drive on to get the woods the way I want them before cold weather and then work in the shed later this winter. Lew- Are you running a lot more taps now the last couple years. Just wondered with buying the new ro. Theron

[Buffalo Creek Sugar Camp]

Looks like we will only add 500 taps this year. Ran larger wet/dry lines on the 1000 tap woods. Built a new sugar camp and installing new 4X14 Max pans. I sure hope its a good year!!

[lastwoodsman]

Finished (yea right) my sugar shack. I can see where that is going.

Have on order from Jim Schumacher a new set of reservable flow pans for my 2 x 6. Whoa, can't wait for that!!!

Will be selling flat pans and preheater shortly.

Trying to set up 200 taps on vacuum and 100 on gravity with the help of folks on this site. Along with 150 bags.

Have vacuum pump and motor now.

Its been as busy now as in the spring durn near. Have vacuum pump and been ordering tubing and high 12 1/2 ga. tensile wire thorugh work wholesale.

Check Lowes for a high tensile wire crimper--28.88, Heavy duty. Picked that uptonight.

I still have to bite the bullet and buy the releaser. Roths will have them in soon.
Waiting for Tarp money to come.

Woodsman

[Bruce L]

Gutted the old stone arch,carried out loads and loads of rocks,sand,boulders and ash,cemented the sides and base preparing for the new evaporator coming in 4 weeks,presently building a home for the generator behind a stone wall which we built of the boulders carried out to keep everything with the old look even though it will be modernized.Will be posting pictures soon after I finish of before and after.

[Dennis H.]

Theron is alive!

Getting a hood and pre-heater for the evap. I was able to run the thing at 25gals/hr and I am hoping to get about 30gal/hr with the hood and pre-heater.

Might be running some tubing before the start of the season, need more taps!

[GramaCindy]

Gutted the old stone arch,carried out loads and loads of rocks,sand,boulders and ash,cemented the sides and base preparing for the new evaporator coming in 4 weeks,presently building a home for the generator behind a stone wall which we built of the boulders carried out to keep everything with the old look even though it will be modernized.Will be posting pictures soon after I finish of before and after.

I for one am looking forward to these pictures!

[PATheron]

Dennis- Im alive, Ive just been bustin but in the woods so I can have an easier winter and season hopefully. Man, your going to have a lot of evaperator for your taps now. Your going to have to go back to your idea of hanging buckets everywhere between your house and work. Jeremy- your cranking on taps bigtime. What are your two ro machines? Are they both newer ones? Theron

[PATheron]

Jerramy- Are you clost to Henry Brennemans place? Id kind of like to come see his setup but hes kind of hard to get ahold of. Theron

[Haynes Forest Products]

Its a big year for the sap shack. Installing 200 amp service with its own meter. Put in 54 yards of roadbase for the tank farm for the CDL 600 RO to keep the oil truck from tearing up my road. Putting together a few vacuum pumps to replace the gas beast with some Gast pumps.

[ennismaple]

We replaced the last of the old black mainline recently. Still a few connections to make to it and a few mainlines to be tightened where the drive hooks pulled out of a stump.

The last of the 5/16" taps will be replaced with stubbies this winter - all CV's for us in 2012 except 900 Lapierre tomahawks in the one bush. They performed so well last year we need to give em one more chance!

The new sap house is essentially complete - and its nowhere near winter! Just a little plumbing and electrical to do and we're good to go for next season.

The new open top tank and releaser to replace our last spot with a Zero tank came in last week. We still have to tear the end wall out of that building, pull the Zero tank out, put in the new tank, replace the wall and hook up the releaser.

The new evaporator feed tank also arrived last week. It'll replace the 305 gallon poly tank. I didn't like how grime grew in that tank, that it didn't completely drain and how it held the heat. The new tank will be much easier to clean - which is key because I'm not the right size to fit into tanks anymore!

We also need to re-plumb the RO sap and permeate lines and lots of other odds and ends. Theron is right - there's never enough time!

[PATheron]

Marty- You sound just about exactly like what Im doing. Seems like a lot of people are doing new equipment this year. Thats cool that your getting an ro Haynes. Youll love that. My shed got a pretty big revamp too becouse of the third ro. I had to move my releaser that was in the shed outside to make room and space out the existing ones. Now my dad is building a small addition to cover the releaser and vac pump. Ive got the pump mounted over a large coolant tank just outside the door this year where its handy. I also ran a half inch line that siphons continuously from a pond above my house in and out of the tank. That setup and the releaser setup will be in the little addition. I still have to plumb up the new to me ro and wire it. Need another 100 amp breaker box for that. Were actually getting in a pretty good spot becouse ive been just relentless in the woods. Ive got the lines pretty well all done as of now not much left at all. I still have to install a 1500 gallon tank at one spot where it was always filling multiple tanks and set up the releaser. Im also running two runs of inch and quarter to upgrade the vac feed line to another spot and setup the releaser and tank there. Everything is all kind of just improvements to make my system better and my life easier. This weekend is the start of early muzzleloader deer season and Im looking foreward to taking the kids hunting for that and Ill be able to feel good about where Im at with the lines. Then after that week Im going to come home everynight and take an hour and go squirrell hunting with the boys then probly work on maple in the dark. Have to do something maple everyday or I wont be ready. Theron

[lew]

Theron, I upgraded my Ro mostly because of time constraints, but also to make room for more taps. It's a huge RO for 3500 taps, but I plan on being at 5,000 by next year. My job can consume 14 hours a day. That leaves 10 hours to sleep, fix problems, boil, and maybe see the family when they bring supper down to the sugarhouse. I am hoping to make 12% with the new RO in a single pass at a rate of 4 gallons per minute. That would keep up perfectly with the evaporator. Not a lot of boiling time..

I, for the first time in 25 years, am running new wire and lines in the fall. It's great not killing yourself on snowshoes trying to hang new lines, but it does have its drawbacks. It takes forever to lay out where the new lines are going. I can't see my marking ribbons near as well. I'm used to being able to see them 200 yards away through the woods. They stand out like a sore thumb against the snow, and blend in so well with the colored leaves. Also I can't tell where I walked the previous lateral mainline because I din't leave tracks in the snow. Before I could pretty much set up where the first mainline was going then just walk parallel to that line by lining yourself up with the tracks you left behind on the previous line. Just spot check for distance and away you go. anyway, I am passed the lay out stage and am actually hanging wire so things art flying now. Should be adding 6-800 new this year.

[Rhino]

Getting new r.o in January, so that means r.o room needs to be built. More taps added (of course), and make some improvements to our gravity line networks and change the location of some of our storage tanks for the r.o to be plumbed in. I better get going.

[Thad Blaisdell]

Theron, m hoping to make 12% with the new RO in a single pass at a rate of 4 gallons per minute.

With that sized RO you should think about going more toward 16-18% in one pass. That will cut your boil time down that much more. 12% will be nothing for that size RO. With an oil fired RO 5x14 (no steam away?) I would not be afraid to go 20%. I have a 6x14 with steamaway and I will start out this year with 16 and move up as high as it will let me. I may nozzle down the oil gph a little to RO heavier.

[jasonl6]

I am no where near adding R.O. ect but i have done allot.

I installed two 5'x18' squash pipes to i don't have to bucket water from part of my woods like i did last year.

I installed a 120v 6gal water heater and double bowl util-a-tub so i can clean my stuff in the sugar house instead of toting it to the house.

I purchased a 2gallon SS water jacked Coffee urn and put a propane feed burner under it so i can bottle better this year.

I'm working on a new finishing pan setup so i can hot pack at least 15 gallon kegs this year.

I have purchased 3 15.5 gallon kegs and 1 7 gallon keg for more storage.

I have purchased a shallow well pump and am working on hooking up a meter and 20" filter so i can filter and get accurate amount of sap collected.

I am running electric to my one bush so i can run electric pump and extractor rather than gas/mechanical milk releaser.

I have added 50 more taps to my creek bottom bush and hope to add a couple more hundred on the hill.

Still trying to get a hood and preheater but it may not happen this year.

Jason

[lew]

Thad, thanks for the input. I Was thinking that this machine would do more than what i wanted, but I didn't want to push too hard with the pressures. This new machine is replacing a 20 year old Coster machine with 2 membranes (8inch). Could put about 850 gph through it. 2 to 8% at about 3.5 gpm but at350 psi at best. usually 400 to 450+ psi. I hope to be able to obtain the numbers you are talking about. do you have any preidictions of the pressures I will be running if I attempt theses numbers?

[Thad Blaisdell]

I can make no predictions, but think of it this way. I had my 1200 go to 8% 2 years ago so easy. Last year I made it do twice as much sap and made it take it to 12 % one pass. That was with 2 towers. You have 4 towers. I am adding a third tower now and plan on taking it straight to 16%. With 4 towers you will have it made in the shade. You are going to find that you are way overpowered in the RO field.

[Buckshot]

Attempting to put 200 taps on tubing (have only used buckets in the past).
Decided to invest in the Rapi-tube / Rapi-fix system as we only needed 325 ft of mainline to put up. Really happy with it :) Couldn't imagine going through the hassle of putting up wire and regular mainline after trying this stuff.

Have about 3/4 of the lateral lines up so far. One more weekend should finish the project - but moose hunting weekends are hubby's first priority right now.

So thank-you to everyone who has put up a posting in the tubing section over the last few years as I believe I have read them all at this point! There is a lot of great info that I got from this site that you just won't find in the North American Maple Syrup Manual or the Installation of Maple tubing manual. Thanks again.

[PATheron]

Lew- Im doing the same thing with my ro's for the same reason as you. Id like to have enough ro to single pass to 15% at six gallons per minute to match where Im running my evaperator. Pretty tall order though to do that. What Im going to do is run the 900 gph and the 1200 gph machines kind of open flow into a tank at say six percent and then Im going to fire up my cdl 900 and see how many gph of 15% I can make per minute that way. Im not sure what Im going to get. I also might churn out a couple thousand gallons per hour of water first off and then try my two step trick. Have to just experiment. I think I have a good fix on the high pressure pumps becouse Ill be running 17.5 hp of high pressure pumps for six posts and cdl says a 7.5 per three posts so I think itll work good. Whats the high pressure pump(s) on yours? Theron

[adk1]

everything. New evap, new sugarhouse, new tubing, new fittings etc etc etc

[PATheron]

adk- What do you have for an evaperator? I used to have a homeade one and would run around 120 taps and Id never hardly shut the evap down. Just keep adding sap for days and then pick the pan off and it was the best tasting syrup I ever made. Theron

[adk1]

I bought an mid 90's Leader 2x6 off my BIL.

[PATheron]

That should work good. Youll still probly be pretty busy when you get real good runs? Theron

[adk1]

no idea. they ran it with 350 taps of much larger trees than I have. They would have some long boils but that is to be expected I guess. Time will tell!

[lew]

theron, she'll have 2 - 7.5 hp high pressure pumps. I was thinking of going the route you are with multiple machines. But like you have eluded to, you may end up running for awhile before you fire up the evaporator. I want to fire up the RO and evaporator at almost the same time. I just don't have time to wait. the last couple of years of very low sugar content (last year I was ecstatic when our highest load came in at 1.6) have really driven this home for me. I also have my reservations about multiple machines. Yes, if one machine breaks down you can still keep going, but you have many more moving parts to break down, more machines to clean and maintain, more (bigger) RO room, etc. I feel (obviously) you can argue it either way. I went the one machine route due to the fact I had a 20 year old machine that had served me well, but it was 20 years old. It was time to update. I think your machines sound like they are a little newer than my old one. It will be interesting to see what each of us can do. keep in touch during the season.

[PATheron]

Lew- I think you went the right route for what your trying to do for sure. Youll love it. Itll perform like crazy with two 7.5s. The only reason Im doing things like I am is becouse Im willing to look around and take the time to try to find deals and such. More bullcrap involved but I havent really spent a lot of money on any of it. I just stick new membranes in the machines and add a post and away we go. Whatever they do they do. Anything to get rid of water. I might keep right on buying them. I want to do just like you said and just turn on everything at once and have my 15% and go to bed early.

[Daren]

I'm kind of late to get things rolling but this year it's a new sugarhouse and an old RO. Picked up the RO after the season last year and forced my hand at the new shack build. 15 x 25 sugarhouse with an attached 6x12 RO room and 5x20 wood room. Have tin and coupola built and working on the board siding. Gotta get this done before the nightly freezes! As everyone says...never enough time!

[Buffalo Creek Sugar Camp]

Theron

My RO machines are going on 3 and 4 years old. The big machine I bought used and the 1000 I bought new. The big one is overkill, but works excellent and was priced right. It was used 2 seasons before I bought it. I am real close to Brennemans. If you are ever down this way, look me up and stop in.

[sapman]

Finally getting around to writing something here. Making the switch to electric in the bush for next season. Glad to have the 820 ft. of 200 amp wire buried and connected at both ends. Dug and backfilled in only 5 hours by a buddy I work with using our mini excavator! Now to get the new Busch pump and accessories into the pumphouse and working, and eliminate all the sap ladders.

[sugarman3]

all new to me, 1100 taps ,new set up on vacumn getting greyer already and its not completly done ,don't know what to expect other than i have put all my trust in brad from leader

[Sugarmaster]

Good Morning To All...Just an update for the sugar makers and the calls we have been getting here at the sugar house. Thanks for the interest. Our guys have been working in the woods repairing and "adding" for 2 weeks now. Everything is ready to go. 2 more pump houses are being made then all of our pumps will be inclosed. We will start tapping on Monday and it will take about 2 weeks to finish. Will post a count and the day we finish tapping. May Mother Nature be with You!!
Richard

[waysidemaple]

Good to hear from you Sugarmaster! New for this year for me is quite a bit. Going from 230 taps to 1200+ (lost count at this point). New 3 by 10 intens-o-fire and a vacuum tbuing system. New 7" full bank filterpress by WesFab and a viariety of stainless steel tanks. I think Im going to tap in on the 11th. Goal for this year is 400 gallons of syrup. Still need to set one tank and releaser but other than that I think I'll be ready.

Scott

[Sugarmaster]

Scot, I know you are so excited about the new equipment and how you can't wait to use it. Dont forget to let us know how the boiling is going and how the rig works. Yeh Yeh yeh about the "add ons" Not so many but Linda keeps threating to quit if we add any more on. Messes her paper work up. Just give her another cup of coffee and she keeps going.

[ELM_DALE_MAPLE]

Almost everything is new to us this year. Got a new to us 2x6 evaporator and a new Lapierre Sirofilter. Hopefully its a good season!

[Dave Y]

New sap hauler a few new pumps and about a 1000 more buckets

[tuckermtn]

new hood with preheater for flue pan, new high efficency arch in the works, probably 125 more taps on vacuum and 50 or so more buckets...

[shane hickey]

Natural gas line that was ran 1300in
feet and 10 psi. Also 8 burners