R.O.'s

[Brad W Wi]

I'm sure this has been talked about before but here goes. I'm thinking of getting a RO for my 400 pails. I'm getting tired of doing all the boiling and would like to get out in the woods more. My wife and I do most of the work and ,Bless Her Soul ,she ain't getting any younger. She's afraid to run the evaporator much and does most of the collecting. What could I expect to get my sap to in sugar content and mainly how much time could I save by using one? I would not add any more pails but would like to cut back a boiling time.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Brad,

I run a 2x8 with 1,000 taps and sap hits steamaway most days at 10 to 12 percent and out of that into the evaporator probably 16 to 18 percent. I try to have at least 50 gallons of concentrate to fire up the evaporator with and that works good if I have a low flow day.

[Diesel Pro]

Someone could go deeper into the math, but taking 2% sap to 4% takes out cuts boiling time in half. Taking it to 8% takes cuts 75%. I run my sap to 12-14% which is about the point of diminishing return with my home built RO. For every 200-240 gallons sap I boil 30-40 gallons or so of concentrate. To do this takes a couple gallons of gasoline for my Honda EU2000 generator.

[jmayerl]

Get a deer run hobby ro . For $2500 you can process 125 gallons per hour and 2 step the sap to 8% very easily.

[maple flats]

Yesterday I turned 1500 gal of sap into 300 gal of concentrate, 1 pass from raw then about 3 hrs of recirculate time. The sap was real cold because the tanks both had ice in them. The rest was just water called permeate. That was 1200 gal I didn't need to boil. My RO is a Ray Gingerich RO, most of the big name company's RO's do even better, but cost far more.

[MISugarDaddy]

We presently have 400 taps like you, the only difference is that we have them on tubing dumping into 30 barrels around the woodlot that we pump out each evening. As the others have said, running 400 gallons of 2% sap through an RO that concentrates it to 8% will reduce the amount of sap you have to boil to 100 gallons. We have a Deer Run Maple RO and really appreciate how much time and firewood it saves us.
Gary

[red maples]

I have an H20 300 concentrator and I can take 500 gallons of sap and squeeze the water and turn it into 50-60 gallons of concentrate. going from 2% to 14 % in about 2.5 hrs and then boil for 1.5 hrs and make 10-12 gallons of syrup. After that you do need to run the pure water back though the machine so you can clean out the sugar which can be alot when you going that sweet but it will usually only take about 10 to 15 gallons to get the sugar out. The amount of electricity you use run the machine is really WAY less than the gas it took to cut the wood and run the splitter. Basically you will go from 20 full cords or what ever you would use of wood and I can make 100 gallons of syrup about 2 cords of bone dry pine.

Sweetening your pans in the beginning of the season in an hour and start drawing off syrup. no sleeping next to the evap waiting for your pans to sweeten.

And while the machine is running you can be in the house eating dinner or eating breakfast enjoying your coffee or even collecting your buckets which I did the this morning.

So not only do you save time boiling, you don't have to cut even close to the amount of wood you used in the past, which saves your back, gas for the chainsaw, log splitter, and the emissions given off by your Evap is cut down down to a fraction of what it was.

lots of saving all across the board. You can also look into the USDA/NRCS and try to get a grant they usual take about a year to get but if get between a 200-300 GPH RO they will pay about 80% of it. you still need the tanks and plumbing and a heated place to keep it. but its well worth the red tape to get the grant!!!