Mason 2x4 xl

[highlandcattle]

Here's The pipe when Ron turns the blower on! 13995

[red dorakeen]

Wow, that's cranking.

I would put some metal or a pile of concrete blocks between that and the wood wall.

[Jolly Acres Farm]

I put a restrictor plate on my blower. I run it at about 40%, any more then that I could melt my stack down.

[Urban Sugarmaker]

I use a Harbor Freight router speed control and it works great. Inexpensive and easy to hook up. Just plug your blower into the speed controller and plug the controller into any outlet. My pipe would glow like that too if I didn't slow down the blower. You must get some pretty impressive steam when you're running hot like that.

[1220']

What do you think the mason 2x4 XL is getting for a evaporation rate?

[Urban Sugarmaker]

12-13 GPH for me in full production mode. Not working too hard it definitely never averages less than 10gph.

[1220']

wow, thats lower than what I would've expected.

[Urban Sugarmaker]

The pan is rated for 9-12gph per Bill Mason, who built it. I think you have to define what you are looking for when you want to know what GPH an evaporator can do. When making a claim, does it include warm up and shut down, or just steady state after a warm up? Are you including the syrup being drawn off too? It will also depend on firewood species and dryness, as well as the user, and the sap depth in the pan. I have no doubt that steady firing with dry wood cut to "wrist" size, and a blower, you could exceed 13 gph because I have done it, but not by much. A pre-heater would help some too for sure. If somebody claims to be getting 18 or 20 gph on this thing I'd question their measurement technique. Even at 15 gph I might want to see a verified and accurate flowmeter going to a float box, and a measuring stick to verify the level in the pan is consistent. Then you could really collect some accurate data. If the level in the pan is rising slowly, whatever rate you calculate will be falsely high.

I know my 2x4 does better than 10gph when warmed up, but on average from warmup to cool down, it's about 10 gph. If I have 25 gallons of concentrate to boil, I plan on a minimum of 2.5 hours of active time. With a larger amount to boil that number would improve somewhat because there would be more time for the evaporator to make steam at its best rate. If I were planning to buy this rig, I would base my tap count on an average of 10 gph and how much time I had to boil. If you have tons of time, base it on 12 gph.

When I have measured the rate, I took 5 gallons of sap and added it to the "preheater" pan (which really does nothing to preheat). I time how it takes for half the sap to drain into the pan (2.5 gal) with the ball valve set to a point that is keeping the pan level constant. The best I saw was 13.6 gph. Not bad for a non-preheated boil rate running at 1" deep. Even with a pretty large margin for error, 13 gph is reasonable. During this measurement I fired the evaporator every 4 minutes as described above. This measurement was also taken using my AOF manifold which did indeed improve the boil. You could get the same result with blower on full blast but the stack will glow. Unfortunately, short arches can't use a lot of the energy before it goes up the stack.

This arch performs as advertised and sometimes better.

[steve J]

I have had times were I have gotten 15 gallons per hour but its not the norm which is 12 to 13 and like said above that is not counting warm up.

[Rock Bottom Maple]

Getting 12+ like others. Running 3/4-1 inch in the pan. You get more below that. But it is scary running that low. Agree got to improve the preheater.