Burnt to a crisp!!!

[jblaker]

Burnt to a crisp! When we get done boiling for the night, we leave about 40 gal of sap in our feed tank, stoke the fire box, close the flue and walk away. Well when I returned to the sugar shack, to my horror, I found the front pan full of "BURNT BLACK" syurp or non syurp. Now have a small leak in the pan to repair. The man that taught me sugering, has always ended the boil this way. Still can't figure out what happened. How do you all end the boil, when you are done for the night? Sap still running need to get up and running again. This is my first running the operation. Chalk it up to experience? Looking forward to your feedback.

[MapleMoonChaos]

i just have a big flat pan that i started using this year. previous years i'd just remove my small pans for the evening. this is what i've been doing this year and so far i've been lucky. i stop feeding wood an hour to an hour and a half before calling it quits and then right before bed i add COLD sap to the pan, it will simmer all night and in the morning when i re-light the fire there is still about an inch or so of sap in the pan and that is with overnight lows in the 20's ( i boil outside ). i thought it best to err on the side of caution and found that my actions were just barely enough to keep the same thing from happening to me.

[adk1]

wow, well, I would think that there are many reasons for it. The firebrick will retain alot of heat, as will the pans..You will get alot of slow evaporation for hours after you leave.I would never leave a fire going in the evap when I closed up for the night, no way. I shut down by making sure I ahve enough sap in the tank to keep feeling it..I will wait till the wood is burned down to small coals and then open up both doors to speed up the cooling. I will also push my float down and hold for a minute or so filling up the pans another 1/4 inch or so..

[katmike]

I do the same thing before I go to bed. I try to always err on the side of caution as well but I will probably get "burnt" sooner or later myself. Once my son got home late and added wood to the box but didn't add sap.....boy that was a close one. Less than 1/2 in the pan the next morning.

[Dave Puhl]

I would never ever leave my evaporator with a fire in it.... there is just too much that can go wrong..as said there is so much heat left over after the shut down to evap alot more than we think over night...

[danno]

The question is - did running the pans dry put a hole in the pan or did you have a hole that opened up once the pans began to cool. I've had that happen to me - leak opened up as the pans began to cool, sap ran into the firebox leaving no sap in the syrup pan causing a burnt pan.

I don't leave the sap in the head tank. When I've got about 20 gallons left in the head tank, I stop loading wood, pull the floats and run all the sap into the pans. I leave about 2.5" in the syrup pan and about that much over the flues. It takes me about an hour to clean up everything, by this time, the fire is no longer roaring but it's plenty hot. I don't lkie leaving it, but it's usually between 1-3 in the am. and I'm getting up at 6:30 for work. Next morning I've usually evaporated another 1-1.5 ".

[twofer]

After the last loading we run the blower for an hour with the door shut and then we shut the blower down and open up the door for half an hour. Only after all of that do we shut the door, check the pan levels, and head up to the house.

[davidpetersonmn]

I made my arch with perpendicular rails so at the end of the night I can pull the entire pan(2x4) off the arch by myself. I then cover the arch with a sheet of metal. This works really well for me.

[mike z]

If you went from soft wood to hard. Hardwood would leave more coals that would keep the temp high much longer then the soft a person was used to. Can the pan be salvaged, or will you be getting a new one?

[adk1]

I just cleaned my syrup pan tonight. I had a small area of burnt syrup that I had to clean. I used the barkeepers friend stuff, came off pretty easliy. I only have several small spots in there. Was gonna fill pans with vinegar and water solution and leave it but I didnt. partly becuase one of my stoppers leaks and I didnt have anything else to use to keep the sap from entering the syrup pan from the flue pan or from having the water/vinegar solution enter the flue pan. Also, I know when I get home from work tomorrow I will have to boil so we will see what happends. Should be ok, I am sure that there are plenty of pans out there with spots of burnt syrup running. there are several dozen bout the size of pencil leads.

[peckfarm]

Shutting the doors with coals on them and walking away is also what causes grates to sag. The guy that used to be in my current sugar house said when he was sugaring and had to milk the cows he would fill the fire box as full as possible, fill the pans 1 inch from the top and go to milk the cows. Then he would come back and get back to sugaring. I can barely leave for a minute to "use the great outdoors" much less hours at a time...seriously the thought of adult diapers has crossed my mind more than once.

[jblaker]

Got an update for you. Pan is not ruined. Thank God! What happened is a seam came apart, as the sap started leaking out it turned to syurp and burnt to a crisp. Have a friend from church, who is retired from a welding shop, he has the pan says it will be an easy fix. In the mean time temps in se Mi are riseing and I have 350 gal of sap that needs to be boiled. Looks like a long night tonight. In the future I will error on the side of caution. Thanks for the feedback. More later.

[Cake O' Maple]

Shutting the doors with coals on them and walking away is also what causes grates to sag. The guy that used to be in my current sugar house said when he was sugaring and had to milk the cows he would fill the fire box as full as possible, fill the pans 1 inch from the top and go to milk the cows. Then he would come back and get back to sugaring. I can barely leave for a minute to "use the great outdoors" much less hours at a time...seriously the thought of adult diapers has crossed my mind more than once.

If you're a guy, keep a can or bottle in the sugar shack and some hand cleansing gel if you don't have soap/water.

[Jeff E]

I'll add my 2 cents.
If your boiling outside, you need to empty your pan or keep it warm, so it doesnt freeze. When I did this, if I was going boil the next next morning, I would flood the pans, and put some wood in and shut the draft down.
I always intended to have plenty of sap in overnight. If I thought it might freeze regardless, I had to drain it. That was a pain, but necessary.
Best bet, drain each night. Clean up the pans, filter the sap so you have a clean start with your 'sweetened' sap the next day.

If your boiling indoors, and freezing is not a problem, and you have a partitioned pan set so you draw off syrup throughout the day, you simply need to make sure you have enough sap in the pan so you dont wreck your pans.
By trial (and perhaps error) you should be able to figure out how much sap evaporates when you stop feeding the fire. On my pans, thats about 2". So when I stop feeding the fire, I need to flood my pans to 4-5" so I am sure to have 2" remaining after everything cools down. I actually have a mark on my depth gauge on my feed tank. When I get to that mark, I stop adding wood. That keeps it simple for those late nights when I am not thinking to straight.

[RileySugarbush]

The shutdown problem is much easier to handle if you minimize the use of firebrick to areas that only need protection from the wood during loading. Most of my arch is only insulated with ceramic blanket. When I stop loading wood the boil stops in about 15 to 20 minutes, plenty of time to clean up around the sugar house. Without a lot of hot brick, the whole arch cools down very fast. It helps to have a blower to burn up the last coals quickly.

[Mike in NY]

when we shut down for the night we just push all the coals back under the flue pan and open the stack damper wide open. Leave the front doors open and bottom draft shut. the intention is always to go down in an hr to check on things. about 1/2 the time we actually do go back down

[Chainsaw Baby]

I feel your pain! I also burnt a finishing pan, although no leaks. Same same: stoked the firebox, shut down the air intake and walked away, just as I had done many many times before. Next morning: Charcoal. I figure there are 2 ways to burn a batch: 1. Not enough sap. This should not happen, as long as you are attentive to the resevoir level. 2. Foaming. I think this is what happened to me. I figure with 1 stoking, my 2 X 6 drop flue evaporator could not possibly evaporate 40 gallons of sap, so it must have foamed over the side continuously, until the resevoir drained and the pan burned...

Note: Scraping the carbon off the pans can be done easily with a credit card. No, don't buy a new pan, scrape it with the credit card! On second thought, "USING" the credit card might be easier!

[PerryW]

After I load the firebox for the last time, I have a list of things I take care of before I leave the sugarhouse. I empty out the hydrometer cup and rinse out any use prefilters & filters, close up the woodshed, remove the sap filter, etc. By the time I've finished all these chores, the fire is down to coals. These chores need to be done anyway and I can keep an eye on the evaporator while she cools down.

[Mike in NY]

Perry, this yr I made both start up and shut down lists of things that need to be done and in what order. Mainly to help the 2 kids who do more every yr. But also to help myself after boiling for 20+ hrs or longer. unfortunately we did not have any long nights down there this year
:(

[lastwoodsman]

On my 2 x 6 When I have 25 gallons left in the head tank I quit firing and let the fire burn down. Then when all coals, I open the door to speed cooling and stay until all coals are out.
Pretty much the same as ADK1.
Woodsman

[michiganfarmer2]

I do just the opposite from the OP. I wait untill the fire has died down, then I flood the pans. Ive burned syrup too many times years ago trying to keep the pan boiling after I went to bed. Never again.

[sjdoyon]

We have a sight level for our concentration tank, when it's down to two inches, we stop feeding the evaporator with wood. We then send some permeated water into the concentrate tank (just in case). Start cleaning up equipment (wash down evaporator, clean filter press, install new filters, clean some barrels, set up wood for next day). Leave when the fire is completely dead.

[jblaker]

Thanks for all the feed back. Lots of ideas for next year. Just one added piece of information, I live 15 mi. from the sugar shack, so comming back in an hour is not so easy. Plus the price of gas has me making only the trips I really need to make.

[gmcooper]

Simple solution is stop firing before you run out of sap and don't leave till fire is out.

[maple flats]

I've not yet had a problem. I just quit firing when I have 18 gal left in my head tank. Then I clean up while it burns down most of the way, I leave the AOF blower on. Then in about 30 minutes the firebox is mostly out, I open the rear float and finish emptying the head tank. I then raise the syrup pan 1" above normal, shut off the blower, cover the pan and leave. My boil rate is about 60 gph, and without fueling things slow down enough for this to have worked for about the last 6 seasons. Before that I raised both pans about 2.5-3" but then I had too much in to start the next boil. My numbers will likely change with the new pans I ordered because I expect to get about 70-75 gph now. I may stop at 25 or 30 now. On my head tank I put a sight tube with gal marked at 8-10-12-18 which were measured by adding those amounts and drawing a line for the level and above that I have reference markings from reading the numbers on the sap transport tank as it was pumped into the head tank before I had an RO.
When I leave for the night I have little left in the firebox and that I spread out to keep from having a hot spot.