Half pint pre heater

[acrete]

I'm trying to get the most out of my half pint so I had this idea. Let me know what you guys think. I would take the preheater pan off of the regular pan and put it on a propane burner next to evaporator. Run copper tubing to pan to have it drip in. This way the incoming sap should be much hotter and also lets more steam evaporate off of larger pan without dripping back in

[sapbrush]

i have a half pint also have boiled on it for years, i just put a cover over the prehwater pan, and have no problems getting that to boil also, i know some have dropped the preheater down to the back and sitting on the smoke pipe, but if you keep that unit hot enough you will get it all to boil, love my half pint

[acrete]

I haven't been able to get the preheater even close to boiling. How deep do you keep it?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

[wnybassman]

I haven't been able to get the preheater even close to boiling. How deep do you keep it?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk


Yeah, no doubt. I don't have a half pint but my preheater is the same principle. I can get it warm enough for ice to (slowly) melt but that's about it. lol

[steve J]

If I can get preheater to barely warm I am lucky but I may try and cover it to see if it works I have mine over the elbow vs the pan as the condensation dripping in the pan kills your boil rate.

[bowhunter]

I have a half pint, but I'm feeding directly off my ro. I took the preheater pan off. I made a coil out of 3/8 inch copper and feed it directly into the pan. I have 7 turns wrapped around my 6 inch pipe out the back of the evaporator. I have the coil pulled tight against the stove pipe using some thin wire. I run the feed at about 6-7 gallons per hour and the temperature from the preheater varies between 125 and 170 degrees depending on how hard I'm firing. I just flush the preheater coil with the permeate water at the end of the run and let the coil run dry. I you had a small pump or a way to use a gravity feed tank I think you could do the same thing. I was surprised at how well it works.