19x48 lapierre mini pro

[Walbur1588]

I am currently using a half pint pan on some sort of homemade barrel arch with 45 taps achieving approximately 5 gph. Although close to the season I am looking to upgrade my rig to something with a higher gph and larger tap capability. the lapierre mini pro is a prime suspect for my upgrade. I am interested to know if anyone has any direct experience with this setup and any insight you could give me on this particular rig. thanks in advance.

[Clinkis]

I have a Lapierre 16x48 propane evaporator. It has the same float boxes and pans except slightly narrower. It works excellent and I can get close to 10 gph. I would suspect you would get 2-3 gph more being slightly wider and on wood.

[Rich]

Walbur1588, I have a 19x48 Lapierre Mini Pro. Just to let you know it is a great rig if set up right. Right out of the box I made some good decisions. First changes I made was to ignore the directions to use half bricks to line the arch. I put 1" ceramic blanket in with full bricks threw out the arch. the only 1/2 brick is in the ash box. It does fit with some work to the top edge of the bricks near the pans. I ended up beveling the bricks to a 60 degree edge at the top to make sure the pans get all the fire. Under the raised flue pan I bricked level with the ramp bar that comes with the arch. I put in vermiculite under the flue pan before bricking to build it up. The ramp comes with in 1" of the flue pan and has a 11" flat before dropping back down to the stack area. I did put some sand in that area to help squeeze the flames and heat threw the flues better (ended up with 3/4" of space between flue and sand.) The other modification made was to get a stainless steel plate for the front door. The door is thin and I was afraid of warping it so I drilled 4 holes in door with a drill press and sandwiched a piece of 1" ceramic blanket between the inside of door and stainless plate with some stainless carriage bolts, nuts, and washers. I did get my rig with a small blower. As it sits like this I got approx. 13-14 gph out of it. The next year I put a hood on it and now getting 17-18 gph. Now that being said I made 52 gallons of syrup on it the first year. second year made 56 gallons. Third year added a RO to the mix and made 122 gallons. 4th year made 126 gallons. Chris from The Maple Guys that help design this rig came to our sap house to see in run in person and I think even he was impressed. Wish I had taken pictures when I bricked it. I am currently running over 860 taps on it. I use just under 3 cords of wood with the RO. Plan to use 2- 2.5 cords of wood to make 50 gallons (if your nuts like us). We started seeing other sugar houses stop by to look at what we had done. Most of them are running 3x12's with no RO and we are almost putting out the same amount of syrup. Hope this helps. Had to add to this....we had another sugar maker make a great suggestion before we started bricking. We ended up putting a cinder block with a 1.5" paver under each leg of the arch to raise it up. This saved our back when firing the arch. Also better height when standing and cleaning.

[Walbur1588]

Thanks for the insight. Rich I sent you a PM.