Homemade drop flue

[Gratefulmaple]

Long time Lerker. I'm in the process of planning a 2x8 arch build. I think I have most of that figured out. I'm now trying to figure out the pan. I'm thinking of doing a drop flue with tubes that run through the pan and act as the flues. Now I'm trying to figure out what my dimensions should be. Now should the flue pan be 2x5 and the syrup pan be 2x3. Are weld in sanitary fittings readily avaibale? Think that's all I have for now. Thanks in advance.
Jordan.

[motowbrowne]

Either a 2x5, 2x5.5, or 2x6 will work fine for a flue pan. My 2x10 had an 8' flue pan.

Since you're on the east coast, have you heard or A&A metal shop? Those guys make darned good pans (lead free soldered instead of welded) for cheap. Like really cheap. Worth looking into. Probably get a whole set of pans for $2k or less.

[maple flats]

I have a 3x8 that was originally 6' flue pan. After I started using an RO that ratio was not so good. I then got a new set of pans and this time I went to 5' flue pan and 3' syrup.
If you NEVER plan to move up to an RO, you can go with the longer flue pan ratio. However beware, this is addictive, very few remain small. The maple bug takes over and you "need" to add more and more taps. Then at some point you decide you need a faster way to process the sap into syrup. An investment dollar in an RO achieves far more than an investment in a larger evaporator. Even a rather small off brand RO can realistically give you 4-5X the capacity, while it would take a huge evaporator to do that. With an RO I don't think you would be happy with an extra long flue pan. Try to keep the flue pan at no more than 2/3 the total length of the total, and many even end up wanting both pans equal length. That seems to give you more control in the syrup pan.
Mine is 60% flue pan and 40% syrup, which seems to work good using anywhere from 8% to 14% concentrate from the RO (My RO gives 8% in one pass but I usually recirculate to end up with 12-14% concentrate (the concentrate figures refer to the % of sugar in the concentrate). To then calculate how fast you will make syrup by using the rule of 86 (now more accurately the rule of 87, in this you divide 86 (or 87) by the sugar% in the concentrate to tell you how many gal of concentrate or sap it will take to make 1 gal of syrup. For example 2% sap takes 43 or 43.5 gal to result in 1 gal of syrup, but 10% concentrate only takes 8.7 gal of concentrate to get 1 gal of syrup.
Good luck on your decisions and welcome to the Maple Trader.

[whity]

We have a 5' tube flue pan and 3 18" syrup pans for our 2x8 arch we just got this summer from Bill Mason. They are all hooked together with dairy fittings and shut offs. Looking forward to using them. From what he told us they boil like nothing you have ever seen. We had 3 syrop pans made so we can change the front pan before every boil.

[Gratefulmaple]

Oh I am addicted to this already. First year I had 35 taps that I boiled on a cinderblock arch last year I had 135 taps on buckets and worked a deal with my friend to boil on his arch. This year I'm hoping to add another 70 on buckets and posibly trying roughly 60 on 3/16. My cousin can get my the stainless fairly cheap through his work and I worked in a sheet metal shop for a little while so I think I can get the pans made and have a friend weld them for me.
My buddy has a Mason and I kinda got He idea for the pans from his. I found a couple places that have weld in fittings but trying to figure out the standard size is on pans.
If I expand next year I'll prob look into an ro. I have a few small sugarbushes I'd like to put on vacuum. One I haven't tapped yet and have to do a test tapping this year as they are in a swampy area and not really sure if they will produce well or not. I'm guessing there prob 100 trees there with a good possibility of 2-3 taps each. Thanks again for all the help.
Jordan

[maple flats]

If they're in a swampy area, are they Silver Maples? Often swamp maples are silvers. If yes, they tend to run lower sugar % sap, however some good ones can run quite high in sugar. The main thing however is that an RO becomes more necessary in a silver bush. They might only run .9 or maybe 1% sugar. If 1% you will need 86-87 gal of sap to produce 1 gal of syrup. Some silvers in good sunny areas can however get to rival most sugar maples.

[wiam]

We have a 5' tube flue pan and 3 18" syrup pans for our 2x8 arch we just got this summer from Bill Mason. They are all hooked together with dairy fittings and shut offs. Looking forward to using them. From what he told us they boil like nothing you have ever seen. We had 3 syrop pans made so we can change the front pan before every boil.

I had a 2x6 like that. I have not seen anything boil like it.

[Gratefulmaple]

If they're in a swampy area, are they Silver Maples? Often swamp maples are silvers. If yes, they tend to run lower sugar % sap, however some good ones can run quite high in sugar. The main thing however is that an RO becomes more necessary in a silver bush. They might only run .9 or maybe 1% sugar. If 1% you will need 86-87 gal of sap to produce 1 gal of syrup. Some silvers in good sunny areas can however get to rival most sugar maples.

To be honest I'm not sure what kind of maple they are. I'm still not great st telling the difference in maples. I'm going to tap a few this winter and do some samples.