Syrup Pan front or back of evaporator ??

[Maplesapper]

I hear the back half of the arch is hotter than the front section where you load the wood.
If I want to add a 20" wide pot to preheat sap before I pour it into the 2x4 pan.....
Does it go front part of arch or back half close to the stove pipe?
Thanks-

[PerryW]

Generally, the syrup pan is in the front (over the firebox).

[michiganphil]

The hottest part of the arch will be over the firebox. Smoke and flue gases will only cool as they escape through the chimney(unless the flue gases ignite a chimney fire).
One way that the back would be hotter, is if you have a relatively short arch and there is so much draft through the front, that it pulls the flames toward the back and away from your front pan.

From the sound of your question, though, your asking where to preheat sap. If it's a batch pan, it doesn't matter where you preheat or add sap, just pick the hottest spot. If it's a divided pan, you will make syrup over the hottest spot, and you DO NOT want to add sap there. It will make it much harder to keep a gradient flowing through the pan.

[Maplesapper]

Hi Phil-
I'm somewhere between batch and continuous......boil over a cement arch.
I have two baffles in a 2x4 pan, and draw off occassionally to finish syrup over a propane burner.
We boil 200 gallons at a time, and a batch run would throw dark syrup since its over the fire so long.

We have too much sap since we put out 150 buckets.
We only are up weekends, so I thought more buckets would capture even small sap flows, and we could get enough sap to boil on marginal weekends.
This extra pot holds about 10 gallons, and Im just trying to figure out how to best get through as much sap in the least time with RO, or buying a full on evaporator.

[michiganphil]

From some of the other threads on here, a small homemade RO could be quite cost effective.

The only way to significantly increase evaporation is to get bigger pans, or add an RO.