Boil rate

[Bfouts]

What are some of your boiling rates with a drum evaporator? I'm hoping to get 10 gallons per hour.


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[TerryEspo]

What size pan are you using on your arch ?

Wood size, type and dryness, firing times, blower or not, stainless or mild steel pan, amount of sap in your pan, preheater. Those are some factors that will effect your boil rate.

Whatever rate you get, have fun with it.

Good luck.

Terry

[Helicopter Seeds]

Someone on a different thread posted that you can plan 2.5 gph per square foot of evaporator. Other factors would be burn BTUs of course, but also how much is wasted everywhere, up chimney and through sides. But the more important thing for the weekend boiler I think, is that you need to add the startup time. Plus, if you don't pre-heat in some way, then at least one spot will not be boiling, so the rate is going to be less there. My 5 pan setup took an hour just to start up boiling, another 20 minutes to have all pans hot. with good stoking once going, I think I pushed 15 GPH, based on re-filling 5 gallon pail every 20 minutes. But since I shut down at night, re-started, it took total 13 hours from lightup first day, lightup next day, and pans off. Yes, that makes just over 5 gph total.

If I start earlier, and run a longer day, keep splitting wood, etc. I could do better, yes. Or, if your arch is well insulated, you may startup quicker the second day then I did.

[Big_Eddy]

What are some of your boiling rates with a drum evaporator? I'm hoping to get 10 gallons per hour.


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Some general guidelines

Flat pan, natural draft - 1 GPH / sq ft.
Flat pan, forced air - 1.5 GPH / sq ft
Flue pan / hybrid pan, natural draft - 2 GPH / sq ft
Flue pan, forced air -3GPH / sq ft

From there you can add pre-heaters, steam-aways, max-flues, AOF etc. to increase the evaporation rate per sq ft.

For any given setup, all of the following will affect the actual evaporation rates, so actual rates could be <50% - >200% of above.

depth of sap
size of wood
dryness of wood
firing rate