sugarhouse design/ best interior steam vent

[English River Maple]

What is the best way to vent interior sugarhouse steam to the coupola without affecting the evaporator boil? Sugarhouse is 16x28, 9' walls, 6/12 pitch on roof, soffit boxed in with 1x8 pine boards, siding is 1x board and baton. Coupla is approx 2'w x 6'l, new 30"x8' evaporator w/ 30"x5' sap pan with hood and stack. Has anyone been down this road of R&D? If so, what works best with respect to maximum boiling rate. Thank you in advance for any input.

[Sugarmaker]

Sounds like you will get 80% out of the sugar house with the rear hood. I added a front hood right on top of the front pan with room on the sides and front. then a stack on that hood too.
I rarely fog my glasses and there is only about 2% of the steam in the room. Some pictures on our web site.
Regards,
Chris

[English River Maple]

Thanks for your feedback. Our worry is that the sugarhouse was build fairly tight with board and baton siding. The eves are boxed in with 1 x 8 pine boards. Totally closed in. One would think there would be alot of breathing spaces between the boards, but based on what we saw last year, the best draft was achieved by opening the side windows a little to help the draft go up toward the coupola. If we didn't, the steam would go up and mushroom around and back down when bouncing off the ceiling above, filling the sugarhouse with steam. We were thinking that a machine 3-4 times the size is going to create the same problem, but on a larger scale. There were some thoughts from my brother of cutting closeable louver type vents in the sidewalls, in line with the coupola to help the draft go up to the coupola in parallel with the trusses. Looks like we may have 2 issues. Enough incoming combustion air for the evaporator and enough outside air coming to draft steam up to the coupola without killing the boil. I think our plan is to try it as-is and have a backup plan in place to fix the problem when boiling. We shall see.