Fin tube in sap preheaters

[Machinist67]

Has anyone used or tried using fin tube in your steam hoods?

[PerryFamily]

By fin tube do you mean the innards of baseboard , aluminum finned copper?
If so , I never thought of it but why wouldn't it work. Lots of surface area for sure. Just need to make sure the drip trays are adequate to catch the condensate. Good idea hopefully others chime in.

[OldManMaple]

Not worth using as the aluminum fin expands and looses contact withe the copper. As it would in a solar collector.
Works great the other way, heat to copper, copper expands transferring heat to fins

[cncaboose]

I use baseboard fintube for my preheater. 4 parallel tubes 4 feet long over my back pan. Works for me.

[BreezyHill]

We used straight copper pipe. The thicker of M and L class it worked for about 15 years in the preheater. Then it strung a leak. Switched to stainless this season and it worked much better and is a lot easier to clean.

Copper fin tube should work fine as I have used it before. It will need to be flushed so no sap sits in the tube and corrodes it. Regular copper tubing without fins will work well also.

Ben

[DoubleBrookMaple]

Not worth using as the aluminum fin expands and looses contact withe the copper. As it would in a solar collector.
Works great the other way, heat to copper, copper expands transferring heat to fins

Good point, and I agree wholeheartedly. Having said that, I did use it for my preheater, after testing copper only that failed, raising just a very little. I built one with baseboard heater pipe and added a shroud. My stack preheater raised temp from 40 to 90-120 degrees. It does work better than pipe only.

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