Pan size: giant flat or several 6 in wide full width 6 in inset pans?

[zandstrafarms]

to start, my arch is roughly 2 feet by 5 feet. I have a giant sized pan already that fits right inside that. or I can take that pan out, and instead do one syrup pan full width of unit by 12 inches wide by 6 inches deep along with 6 smaller sap pans 6 inches wide and 6 inches deep. which pan setup would be better to use for the highest gallons per hour? Am I correct to think that more pans = more surface area and higher gph?


Photo shows 4 slots, one will be syrup other 3 divided skinnier for total of 7 pans..

12644

[Aaron Roy]

If you separate the pans you will loose some surface area. When I looked at your tree count I see a possible issue that I am running into is that you only have so much sap, like 40ish gallons a week around here. When boiling down you have to very careful not to burn your pan. even if you have 1" of fluid in your pan that's a little over 6 gallons of liquid. What I have done is instead of making one 5' pan I have split mine into a 24"x24" sap pan and a 24"x26" warming pan. So when you get close to the end of your run you only working with 2.5 gallons of liquid in your syrup pan. In the warming plan just put water in there to keep it from burning. That is my plan.

[Helicopter Seeds]

If you separate the pans you will loose some surface area. When I looked at your tree count I see a possible issue that I am running into is that you only have so much sap, like 40ish gallons a week around here. When boiling down you have to very careful not to burn your pan. even if you have 1" of fluid in your pan that's a little over 6 gallons of liquid. What I have done is instead of making one 5' pan I have split mine into a 24"x24" sap pan and a 24"x26" warming pan. So when you get close to the end of your run you only working with 2.5 gallons of liquid in your syrup pan. In the warming plan just put water in there to keep it from burning. That is my plan.
That is actually one of the benefits of using the steam table pans, being able to remove them one at a time, to put the final boil into a single pan. I have heard multiple posters here say that the desire for shorter boils make people want equipment too big for their britches so to speak, and end up burning stuff. That is a risk I am unwilling to do after all the work to get that far.

[zandstrafarms]

Tree count isn't a problem... not sure what you are referring to? I have 800 tappable trees on the property. Looking at doing 100 or 150 this year depending on how things are flowing. I don't want to boil 12 hrs a day every 3 days plus empting buckets and cutting wood.
I'd like at v least 20 gph but 30 would be sweet. However this is not a nice professional system so I know all I can do is so much to get a good burn.

And yes, we did 3 full size steam pans last year, worked nice. I'd drip into each pan again after going through a preheater. When sap runs out you slowly consolidate the pans into 1 and fill empty ones with water.

[Aaron Roy]

Tree count isn't a problem... not sure what you are referring to? I have 800 tappable trees on the property. Looking at doing 100 or 150 this year depending on how things are flowing. I don't want to boil 12 hrs a day every 3 days plus empting buckets and cutting wood.
I'd like at v least 20 gph but 30 would be sweet. However this is not a nice professional system so I know all I can do is so much to get a good burn.

And yes, we did 3 full size steam pans last year, worked nice. I'd drip into each pan again after going through a preheater. When sap runs out you slowly consolidate the pans into 1 and fill empty ones with water.

I was looking at your signature for your tree count from last year

[Big_Eddy]

Square footage is what counts when it comes to evaporation rate. Whether you have one large pan or several small pans will make no difference to evaporation rate. You could argue that there is more square footage due to the vertical sides between the smaller pans, but in reality those are perpendicular to the flame flow so will make very little difference.

That said - there are distinct advantages to a multi-pan system, especially if you don't intend to boil every day. By moving boiled sap forwards from pan to pan and only adding raw sap to the rear pan, you build a gradient and have the option to finish off smaller quantities at a time. This can be BETTER even than a continuous flow setup for a small producer who does not intend to leave the evaporator sweetened between boils. I don't think there is any advantage to further dividing the 4 slots though. I'd stick with 4 @ 12" wide pans.

[TwinBay]

We have two flat pans.
2' by 4' and we run about an inch of sap in each one- about 5 gallons each total.
We struggle to get 18-20 gph when the rig is hot, no wind, and warm air temps
Surface area is the limiting factor to your proposed setup- imho