Dealing with a deep freeze

[CTsap]

Tough day today. First four hours went fine, but go figure, the second company shows up to watch, i notice my 1'' HDPE gravity line to my preheater is slowing down. As i'm finishing shaking hands w/ everyone, I watch the flow come to a dead stop. I signal my wife to get the "oh sh*t" bucket as I tell my buddy to go grab all the five gallon buckets he can find out back. Long story short, the sap was freezing up on its way from the tote which is about 30' away up on a retaining wall above the sugar house. Closing up like a clogged artery. I event tried pouring water from the hot tub down the line but it didnt help. We made it work by hauling 5 gallon buckets down to the sugar house. Got me thinking about redesigning the gravity flow system with a larger diameter pipe. Thinking about using 2'' PVC. Any thoughts on this ? Crazy cold today ...

[mspina14]

I have a 1 1/2" PVC pipe from my head tank to my evaporator. The head tank is outside my sugar shack, on a platform so it gravity feeds sap to the evaporator.

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The sap in the PVC piping was freezing solid when the temps went below 32 degrees. So I had to wrap some heat tape around the piping to keep it from freezing. Works good.

Someone on MT also suggested I put a shut off valve just below the drain from the tank to keep as much sap out of the lines as possible. I will redo the piping this summer to add the valve.

Mark

[DaveB]

I had the same problem with my feed tank at first because I did not have my heat tape plugged in. Once I got that cleared I literally wrapped an old pair of pants (the only large piece of fabric I had) around the pipe both inside and outside the sugarhouse. That kept the sap flowing all day. Now, I kept having to clear the pipes from the main tank to the feed tank so they wouldn't freeze solid between pumps. Needless to say, I left the heat tapes on tonight so I won't have the problem in the AM so I can finish up.

Outside of that, it was a tough day to be boiling sap and not for the faint hearted. The wind kept the sugarhouse pretty chilly. I need to make that thing a little more air tight but it doesn't help having the roof partially open! It felt more like a winter day than a spring sugaring day.

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[Atgreene]

It was 8° last night at 1 am when we finished. I wondered about using a surflow to recirculate back to the tank. Moving liquid would have a harder time freezing.

[DaveB]

It was 8° last night at 1 am when we finished. I wondered about using a surflow to recirculate back to the tank. Moving liquid would have a harder time freezing.

I've been having problems with my shurflo's in the cold and I'm not sure why. I used them for several years for vacuum and now to move sap around the the sugarhouse. What's interesting is that I've had to keep swapping out the pump that I use to move sap from my main tank to the feed tank. For what ever reason, if I leave the pump out, even after draining it, it doesn't pump but if I bring the pump inside, it works just fine. I'm wondering if the diaphragm is just getting too hard not being wet and so it doesn't move well to create a vacuum. In any event, that's what I've been doing.

That being said, yesterday was a rough day trying to boil between a high temp of 17° and the wind. I'm glad I wasn't boiling outside!

[White Crow]

my tank is on a platform behind the sugar house, I enclosed the sides and drilled holes in the platform and put a kerosene heater in, works great until I ran out of fuel, then the tank valve froze up, my valve froze when I had to shut the supply down for about 10 min. it was 6 below plus wind chill yesterday, if I keep it flowing it has not frozen up yet

[BreezyHill]

My head tank is on the other side of a concrete wall of the sugar house. The sugar house is a basement of our equipment building built on section of ground that had a steep slope near to our brook in an old pasture. Below my parents old house.

We always had issues with the line being frozen in the start of a boil. I will be putting the heat tape suggestion to work for next season. Sure beats using a torch to warm the copper and stainless valve on the bulk tank.

Thanks!
Ben

[CTsap]

I shut the valve at my head tank and gravity feed everything out of the lines. I'm considering putting a port at the top of the line to blow out any residual with a compressor. Never had an issue with the line freezing while sap was moving through it until yesterday. My second year with this set up so still fine tuning everything.

[mellondome]

Got me thinking about redesigning the gravity flow system with a larger diameter pipe. Thinking about using 2'' PVC. Any thoughts on this ? Crazy cold today ...

You may want a smaller line. The larger the line the slower the flow the faster it freezes.

[Burnt sap]

Same old story all over the North East cold sub zero temps and hard cold winds wind chill well below zero. We have been froze up for a week now no end to the cold this week either. We just need to figure out how to do this when it's sunny and 70 degrees:cool:

[Michael Greer]

I'm glad to heat that I wasn't the only one having a nightmare of a day. I didn't have any sap freeze, but I was sending water to the sugarhouse, and ended up freezing the whole supply line and spilling warm water all over the lawn. I did make 6-1/2 gallons of syrup though, so it was worth the extra effort....I guess.

[Sugarmaker]

Its those days when I am glad my head tanks are under cover in the rear loft area. I have learned to get the sap into those tanks as soon as I get it home on very cold days and then begin to boil as soon as I can. Frozen lines are no fun!
I feel for you guys with exposed tanks! Heat tapes might be the answer???
I do like to boil on a day when the weather turns cold. It usually is not much fun out gathering! Just seems nice to be in a warm sugarhouse while the wind is whistling and the temp is dropping and its snowing! Must just be me?:)
Regards,
Chris

[mspina14]

I haven't had any sap to speak of in about a week due to the temperature extremes.

So I thought I'd use the down time to clean my evaporator. I soaked it overnight in white vinegar/clean water. And today, I used a pressure washer to blast off as much of the crud as I could.

But then I couldn't drain the evaporator because both my drain lines (one for flue pan and one for syrup pan) were frozen :(

I have 3/4" plastic tubing connected to my drain valves. They drain to the ground outside the sugar shack. Took me 30 minutes to defrost each line with a propane torch. I also managed to burn the plastic in spots :(

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Anybody come up with a way to keep these drain lines from freezing (besides heat tape)?

thanks

Mark