Hot Water

[ennismaple]

How do the rest of you get hot water for your sugar camp?

Our camp has electricty and running water but no hot water heater because the boss is concerned about the lines freezing during a cold snap. To make hot water for washing we have a couple of aluminum sap cans that we fill with water and place on top of the flues. It takes a bit to heat up and you don't get much at a time.

I was thinking about installing some 2" copper tubing on the inside of the hood above the flue pan. I've calc'd that I'd have 1 gallon of hot water per 12 feet of copper. Anyone else have a better way or comments?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

You should be able to get many gallons of hot water from the condensation come from the preheater and hood. :)

[Fred Henderson]

Before I had running water and a gas hot water heater, I took a 55gal plastic barrel and put it in a wooden box. I piped the bung outside to box added a vent and filled the box with zonolite insulation, put a cover on it and hauled water from my home to the SH. You can do the same by just having an insulated container to store the water in. You just cannot beat have hot water at the SH.

[mcmp]

Wood Burning Evaps have a flat space between the flue pan and the smoke stack. I have seen this flat area as much as 8 inches wide by the width of the evap. Further on wood burners the underside of this flat area is not usually insulated. It gets bloody hot !. Find or fabricate a container the size of that area, both in length and width. You can make it as high as you choose. Depending on dimensions, you can easily get 5 gallons or more of water inside. Have a draw off valve on one side. The heat from the flue pan & the flat area (under side exposed to high temp) & smoke stack will give you all the HOT water you want. You can even have this container in direct contact with the smoke stack for more heat transfer into the water. Further, you can also run the condensate line from your hood/pre heater into this container so the hot condensate does not cool down, as it will just sitting in a pail. My grandfather ran this set up for as long as I can remember and had all the free hot water he wanted.

Paul

[FLB maple syrup]

Hot water in sugar house.

We used an old 5 gal. coffee pot that the was discarded.
Now with a perheater we have plenty of hot water.
Don't forget to unplug and empty the pot when done for the night.

[maple flats]

With a primitive preheater design with rather poor % condensate collection on my old 2x3 flue pan I was able to collect about 1/2-1 gal/hr last season. design a preheater to go in a hood and catch the condensate, you will have plenty. Look at pictures of the 3x5 preheater for sale and you will get some good design ideas. Good luck.
Dave

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I get between 5 and 10 gph off of my 2x8 in free hot water from the hood and preheater. :)

[brookledge]

Ennismaple
I'm assuming that you have a steam hood (From your post) but don't have a preheater inside. If thats the case then any method you use to warm up sap inside your hood is losing efficiency. When the steam rises up to the buckets of cold water you put in the steam will condense back into water and drop back into the pan. Even if you put 2" copper around the inside without creating a way of collecting the condensate you are just lossing efficiency.
My recomendation is to add a preheater with a condensate pan underneath it and plumb the drain out to the side of the hood and you will have a non stop supply of hot water.
Otherwise like whats already been said try to set up a pan of some sorts near your base stack
Keith

[Sugarmaker]

Cold snap freezing no heat in the sugarhouse, need for hot water. Sounds like a lot of sugarhouses. I ran the first year with no hot water just used the hot water off the pre heater. Year two I called the local electric company and they came out and put in a small hot water tank for free. They also maintain the tank for free. I set up the entire water system to drain when its freezing. I wouldn't be with out the hot water. we have much cleaner equipment and are probably making better grade syrup.
Tell the boss its worth it. From cold start (filling the tank and kicking on the circuit breaker we have warm/ hot water in less than 20 min tops.

Sugarmaker

[jason loper]

What we did last year was put a 100 gallon storage tank on the same raised platform our sap feed tank was on. Then we used gravity to run it through a 3/4" copper pipe that ran ontop of the fire brick in and out of our 2x6 evap. Also right before the evap I put a tee in line and ran it to a mixing valve for the cold then the other line from the evap for the hot side. This was mounted over a ss sink and drained out the back wall. Then I put a stock tank heater in the tank so when it got to cold it would not freeze. this worked great for us.