low tech preheater

[tbear]

Hello again,
If I place a 6in. deep ss buffet pan filled with cold sap on the corner of my boiling pan will the steam heat the sap much? I figure if it raises the temp of the sap even 10* it might be worthwhile. I think I'll give it a try and see. If it works at all I can rig some type of trough to keep the condensate from dripping back into my pan. Maybe just lay a length of 1in. angle iron across the corner of the boil pan to elevate the side of the buffet pan that hangs over my boil pan will cause the condensate to run "downhill" and (for the most part) out over the edge of my boil pan. If you can follow all of that. Any thoughts? Ted

[wiam]

Before I had my preheater I used to set a kettle of permeate on the corner of my back pan so I would have warm water to wash press at the end of the night. Not sure how efficient but it will work

[Paperman]

Will it raise the temp, yes, but depending on how many GPH you boil off you wont notice the increase. If you have a 1 gallon container in the corner and boil off 5 GPH you will be refilling it every 12 minutes. That not much time to raise the temp. Wont hurt to try it but as you said be sure to get the condensate out of the pan, no use in boiling the same water again.

[Sweet Shady Lane]

Hi tbear, you might want to try this, I have a 55 gallon barrel set up with a 18"x 24" pan and the back of the pan would always get hotter than the front so I put up a shelf big enough to hold a 5 gallon clear rubber maid tote, in the corner of the tote I drilled a hole for a 1/2" plastic pvc fitting then added a cheap shut off valve to adjust the sap flow and then added a 4 foot piece of copper pipe to the back of the pan, now the back of my pan stays cooler and it doesn't effect my boil rate, all the parts cost me about 10.00 dollars

[taptaptaparoo]

Kjb-any chance you have a picture of this? We have a few weeks to go in my country in northern MN, and that sounds doable...

[BreezyHill]

tbear, how is the land of corn?
We use the steam off of our flue pan to heat our sap. It is a rather low tech system of plywood and some old SS tubing.

I have a DIY hood on the flue pan that catches the steam and sends it to a switch back made of plywood. From there steam goes out thru a 6" duct and outside.

The sap comes from the collection tank into the SS Pipe on its way to the float box. The total length of pipe that will be jacketed in steam is about 110". Since late 1970s the SS Pipe was a double 1.5" copper pipe. The copper was found to have a pin hole so it was scrapped for the SS. SS has a much lower heat transfer rate than copper but I am fairly comfortable that I will still be able to hit 180 or better coming into the float box.
The tee in the pic is where the hood for the front pan enters the steam duct.

I am planning on hooking this up to a Chicago fan to draw a slight vacuum on the flue pan and will use the front hood to regulate the vacuum level with a plywood gate valve.

The old system used a fan pressurizing the sugar house to push out the steam at the expense of our boiling rate.8746

[tbear]

Hi Everyone,
Breezy, all is well here in Iowa, cold and buried in snow but okay, thanks for asking. Here's what I think. I think I need to go somewhere and watch someone boil who knows what they are doing! I can get the job done, but there is no finessing, strictly brute force! LOL Thanks for the ideas. Ted

[BreezyHill]

tbear
LOL, Yesterday, I buried a tractor going to feed cows. Four foot drifts really suck! Brute force was needed to dig it out. Floated on about 3' of packed drifted snow. Glad it was me and not one of the boys.

Boiling is a matter of making it your own. Everybody should share their success and failures. it sucks having a guy laugh and say...yup, did that myself a few years back.

I learned quick as a little boy that you could learn a lot from listening to the old timers. Besides it is funny to see a bunch of silver haired, cane wheedling gents call each other names and tell stories about the old days of boiling.

The best was two brothers talking about gathering sap and one stopped the horses and the other got sloshed. So at the next spot he told the horses to go as the other brother was dumping a bucket and he fell in the open top tank. " You bastard you said the horses took off". They all laughed and having such a great time.

I like to just work smart and not hard; but it does take some hard work to keep the wheels rolling some days.

stay warm sunny but 20 degrees with a 25 mph wind...welcome to hell!

Ben

[Sweet Shady Lane]

well I hope this works ,so here goes, here are some pics on the low tech preheater87988799880088018802

[Sweet Shady Lane]

forgot the black magic marker marks are one gallon marks