Mounting a Steam-Away

[nymapleguy607]

This past year I picked up a new Steam-away for my evaporator. I didn't buy the lift kit that Leader sells for them, seemed like alot of money for the parts that came with it... I wanted to see what others have done to mount there units, my thought is to have the support cables hooked to a trolley that rides on a barn door track so I could lift the steamaway and move it to the side if I wanted to clean the flue pan. Anyone else have a similar system? Thanks

[DrTimPerkins]

Anyone else have a similar system? Thanks

We have two steel I-beams (black in the attached photo) running across our sugarhouse above the evaporator (steam-away and backpan section). Trolley's (orange in the photo) are mounted on that with a crank lift system. We can connect to any part of the evaporator system, crank it up, move it off to the side (or above a truck backed into the sugarhouse) and then let it down again. Saves our backs quite a bit.

Would have been really nice back when we had our 5' x 14' soldered (HEAVY) evaporator. Moving that thing was a real chore, and we couldn't get a truck into the building at the time either, so we had to lift it off the arch and carry it the whole length of the sugarhouse, across a ditch, and then lift it up onto the truck. What a PITA (and back).

Attached photo taken by Dr. Gary Graham, Ohio State University Extension.

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[lew]

Although I don't have a steam away (yet), a trolley system is the way to go. I have one for taking off my steam hood and 5x10 Max Flue pan. When the pan needs to come off I can take it off by myself in about ten minutes. Mind you Leader says that pan weighs close to 1000 pounds. I elected to use small chain binders to do my lifting. They give a vertical lift of about 1.5 inches. Just enough to get it off the arch. I used trolleys from Harbor Freight and for track I repurposed some old track out of a barn. Essentially it is two pieces of 1X1x3/16 angle iron welded together with a spacer in between to give you the width you need for your trolleys. My system runs perpendicular to my trusses, unlike Dr. Perkins. So the rails are suspended from the trusses at or very near webbing junctions.

[Sugarmaker]

I think your on the right track. (pun intended) We used (2) 2 x 10's across the sugarhouse, then added barn door track to each one and custom built a trolly from 2" x 4" steel thin wall box tubing. Attached a HF winch and two cables through pulleys to lift the steam away.Then it can be rolled off the arch for cleaning the rear pan. May be pictures on here some where?
Regards,
Chris