School Sugar House Project Update

[JimW]

As I mentioned a few weeks ago we are building a small sugar house at the high school I teach at. We've taken some of the suggestions from here, thank you very much. I just thought I would give a little update. We are finishing the plans and if all goes as planned . . .

Our sugar house will be 8 feet by 14 feet and sit on a 8.5' by 16' float over trailer, so we can take it to various events. The exterior will be 1" by 10" pine board and batten, with a metal roof, and copula for ventilation.

The floor will be sealed plywood, with the hopes of installing tile in the future. For the interior we are not sure yet, but were thinking just using 1/4" plywood and sealing it with non-toxic paint/varathane to produce a flat easy to clean surface.

We will install 4 CF lights and a small solar panel as a demonstration of alternative energy, as well as wire it to contact into the school power.

For maple syrup production we will have two 45 gallon drums outside, sap will be poured from our 5 gal collection pails through a screen filter into the first drum. A bilge pump with pump the sap through a UV sterilizer and to the second drum.

A second pump will the pump the sap into the sugar house through a 5 micron cartridge water filter into a smaller tank in the rafters of the house.

Gravity will then transport the sap down through a homemade copper pipe pre-heater and into the small pre-heater pan on top of our 2' by 3' evaporator.

We will draw off the sryrup from the evaporator a couple Brix below "finished" syrup and filter it through a couple pre-filters and Orlon cone. We will finish the syrup on our propane turkey cooker "finisher" (unless we can find a biodiesel burner to use) and then filter the finished syrup again.

We will bottle the syrup inside keeping it warm on the stove or we may try to rig up some type of "coffee maker" bottling unit to keep the syrup hot as we bottle.

If we can't process all the sap we collect that day, (I live 1 hour drive from school, so I don't want to be there until the sun comes up), we will try and keep it cold in the outside 45 gallon drum by adding blocks of frozen sap, and then running the sap through the UV sterilizer again the next day.

We are planning on 50 taps this year (25 buckets, 25 tubes).

That is our plan, we'll have to see how things "pan" out over the next couple months, hopefully we will have it fully operational this year.

Jim

[Fred Henderson]

I think you would be better served to made your syrup just a little heavy in the evaporator and then dilutle it in the finishing pan. The rest of your plan sounds good. Just make sure that the feed pipe from those outside tank doesn't freeze.

[Parker]

You might think about finding an open top tank to use to hold sap in especillay after you have filterd it,,drums are almost impossibel to clean properly and after a few runs they will be filled with sap mung,,I learned the hard way(dark syrup) to wash all my holding tanks every time the are emptied,,that bacteria grows fast when there is any sugar availabel,,and dont forget some kind of fireboard under the evaporator,,they can get hot underneath,,would not want you to burn the sugarhouse down,,,,GOOD LUCK and keep us posted

[mountainvan]

Sounds great Jim, You may want to pass the sap through the 5 micron filter before the uv light so the light passes through the sap not bounces off of stuff in the sap. I filter in the woods, in the tank before the uv light, and the ro has a filter. uved sap can be held for a day or two without grade loss, as long as it's not 60 and the tank it goes into is clean. Good luck, and sounds like you're starting a new generation in sugaring.

[brookledge]

You definately want to filter the sap before sending it through the UV and I argree with the others that your sap storagre tanks shouldn't be drums because you will never clean them as easy as open top container. You can even get plastic barrells that are food grade very economical. You might find out that useing the turkey frier to get the last couple of degrees might take alot of time you might want to draw off closer to finish temp.
Good luck and it sounds like a great project for the students.
Keith

[HanginAround]

Sounds like a super-fun project! I'm sure you and the students will have a blast with it. Keep us posted!

[davey]

I am a 7th Grade Social Studies teacher in Williamson NY near Rochester and I run a Maple Sugaring club for my students as well. We call it the "S.A.P.S." Club (Students Attempting to Produce Syrup) It is really quite a bit of fun. We run about 50 buckets and the kids work in pairs after school to gather the sap from their bucket, with two per pail one of them is always available after school. Its really fun to hear all the noise in the woods on a day with a good run as they find how full the pails are and check to see who has the most. We have a culminating day where I have written a Maple lesson for all of the other classes as well. In math they figure sap percentages to gallons produced etc..., in science its dendrology, English is Maple poetry, Art does Maple prints and in my class I take the classes out to the woods where they tour the sugarbush and then visit with a friend of mine from the Genesee Country Village and Museum who is dressed in 1850s clothing and is boiling sap into syrup in big iron kettles like they used to do it then. At the end of the day I feed the S.A.P.S. who had been gathering the sap pancakes and bacon. The next day I get the kids to write a review of the day and its a pretty positive response across the board. I get the local town paper to show up and the people in the community seem to enjoy it as well. Williamson is in the heart of Apple country so Agri-Ed goes over very well. Last year I needed to take my truck out to the woods when the newslady arrived so I offered her a ride out (its about a 1/4 mile across the fields) and proceded to bury my truck with her along for the ride. Luckily she left that out of the report. Our groundscrew's children are in my class and they said there was no way I would be allowed to fix my ruts after the day their kids had had in school. Made my whole day.