Sugar House how big

[firetech]

After my first year of sugar'n and the fun we had doing it. I want to put up a building to house an evaporator and the supplies,wood and equipment that is involved. I can forsee a unit 2x6 to 3x10 atmost. How large should the building be? Looks like I will have company alot also. Any ideas on building styles and construction types. I believe I have a good soure of rough cut lumber. Just have to cut down the logs or I was looking at slip form concrete/stone for the walls. How about some ideas? Justin Turrco's is kick butt,I don't have the skills for timber frame work. A pole barn is to blah for somthing as cool a sugar'n.

[Fred Henderson]

Look at my avatar.Its about 32' long and 16', it could be 4' wider. A 20'x30' with a wood storage off the side would be a good start. That will leave room for canning.

[tapper]

Build the biggest that you can afford and then some. I build and work on garages and shops for other people and never had anyone say ohhh darn I made it too big. I am currently building a shop/sugarhouse for myself. I am putting up way more building than I can afford its not done yet and is already way too small.

[Fred Henderson]

Got to agree with Tapper, they are never too big.I build my retire home 12 years ago(retired now) and a dettached garage & work shop. Then I had to have a small building to put the wild animal food into. Then I needed a building for my tractor. I now have 5 out buildings plus our house.

[Sugarmaker]

Firetech,
Check out our web site.
Our sugarhouse size is:
Evaporator room 24 x 16 (3 x 10 rig off set for more room on the visiting and public side)
10 x 24 wood shed,
and 12 + x 26 kitchen clean up and sap storage area above. I think this is big enough for a 4 x 12 rig and or a R.O. in the back room.
All rough cut over treated posts. 10 foot ceiling in the evaporator room and 8 foot ceiling in other areas.
Works for us. Hope this helps, took about three months to get 60% up with the roof on. And a year to finish the rest. (part time and evenings)
Thought it was going to be too big but would like to add on just like everyone else or build another building for other toys too.
Go look at several sugarhouses and glean the ideas you like. I agree Justin's is awesome!!! Love the benches!

Regards,
Chris

[Father & Son]

Figure out what size will house what you want and some room for growth, and add a little bit, THEN DOUBLE IT!

Jim

[cncaboose]

I built a 20x20 with cupola plus 8x16 woodshed last fall for my setup with 3x8 evaporator. It's big enough to put the 29 hp tractor in during the offseason and has lots of room to work during sugaring. Get the pamphlet on Sugarhouse Construction and Design from VT cooperative extension. It was a lot of help for mine. Also try to get into as many sugarhouses as possible in the next few months. Every one you go into will give you at least one good idea or save you at least one problem. I've got lots of photos of our construction if you want to see them via email.

[Sugarmaker]

Humm, Maybe Father and son is about right!

[Father & Son]

I wish I would have thought that way when I was building mine. I'm way too small way too soon!

Jim

[maple flats]

Father and Son are the closest to being right. The formula for all non residential buildings is figure how much space you think you need and double it, then you will have half as much as you really need!!!!!!

[brookledge]

Mine is 20X32 Plus a small section for my head tank. I have a 3X12 evaporator. I have a wall parallel to my evaporator that gives me a room for a picnic table and to do all my canning and filtering. I like having a separate room for filtering and bottling that way dust and steam doesn't get all over everything. The floor is concrete everywhere except for the wood storage.I can put in 16 full cords inside.
I agree with others that the best thing to do is visit other sugarhouses even if it is off season you will pick up alot of ideas from others.
And that will help you identify your needs. Plan on building for future expansion also. There is a big difference between a 2X6 and a 3X10
Keith

[Breezy Lane Sugarworks]

I agree with cncaboose. Go out and look at plenty of them. not only for size, but for layout as well. Sometimes things can be more efficient if they are smaller and designed right. And sometimes things need to be bigger too. But if you're going to have any amount of people, plan like you're going to put a 6x16 in there! speaking from experience.

[Parker]

My sugar house is 20'X70' ,,I have a 5X16 evaporator,the section with the evaporator is 30' long,and has benches on each side of the house,,IT IS WAY TO NARROW,,,feel like your in a submarine,,,it is hard to have visitors cause it is so cramped inside,,when the rig is boiling I am worried about having kids inside cause the evap. gets so hot I am worried about them getting burned,I do have enough room for wood storage,,,,,I would build the next one much wider,,enough room for visitors (potential customers) to mill around,,,to my mind a concrete floor is a must.........my 2cents

[802maple]

Like Ryan said the first thing you need to do is check out other sugar houses, and the second thing is sit down and create a flow chart.

The orignal sugarhouse that we had was 30 x 80 and we added this room and that room as we went along for tanks, R.O. and Vacuum and it didn't work and we were crowded. We were going to build a new one until we got thinking about the flow of the building and we found that we had alot of wasted space and a lot of back tracking. So we gutted the building and took all of the tanks' evaporator etc. out and started over. Now the sap comes thru the back of the building to the tanks and the syrup goes out the front. With out building a new building we aren't crowded anymore and have gained a kitchen area that was needed. We also had crossflow pans that allowed us to shove the evaporator right up to the wall so that you don't have to have all that space around the evaporator

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I built a 24x48 sugarhouse a couple of years ago with a 8' x 24' extension for wood storage. It is a little big for a 2x8 evaporator but one end is tractor storage and the other end will eventually be a bedroom and a kitchen. This is a good size for me and it would handle a much larger evaporator if I ever upgraded which is not too likely.

[Mark-NH]

It was mentioned in passing on a couple replies but in my opinion, it bears repeating. If you offset the evaporator you will gain much more room without increasing size of the sugarhouse. On the skinny side keep the evaporator 18" +/- off the wall. This will give you a nice open space on the other side for visitors, canning, rocking chairs etc.

It also allows you to run your feed pipe along the short wall, out of the way and provides for storage on the wall for things you don't want people coming in contact with like axes and drills.

Figure on your wood supply being accessed from in front of the arch. You can locate a small wood bin here. Say enough to boil for a couple hours, and just replenish from the main source, probably outside, when needed.

Keep in mind that you do not want traffic coming across the front of the arch where it is hot and where a majority of the work is taking place. Have the main door come into that open space, especially if you plan on having a lot of company.

These are just a couple points that you may not have considered and that I feel are important.

Good luck and have fun.

[maple flats]

All good ideas. With my wood this year I kept about a 1/3 cord inside for backup and brought most of it to a set of double doors at the front of the evap and dumped a load right there for immediate use, when more was needed I got another load, OK but I have now come up with what I think may be my best way to handle the wood yet. I have a set of forks for the front loader on my tractor so I drew up pland to make specialized pallets, with steel roofing to hold my wood from splitter til ready to use. I will set each on cement blocks so they do not freeze to the ground. I have a 5'8" wide double door on the end of my sugarhouse and the tractor has a 5' bucket. I am building pallets 5' wide with skelletin sides and back, 6' 6" high in fron and 6' in back, with steel roofing. I cut my wood 20" and that is what I will design this for. I plan to pick the loaded pallet from the back, carry it into the sugarhouse and work it til empty from there, then remove that and get another. I will still keep a little in reserve in the sugarhouse but not much, just if when i need another is not a good time to go get it. I have my own sawmill and can make everything except the steel roofing which will hang over 6-8" front and back but wrap the sides so it is not too wide to fit in the door. I have it figured i need 1 for every 8 gal of syrup to be made and I hope to get enough ahead for a banner production year. If I only get a few made I will need to refill them each time the weather gives me a break in production. I have always had enough wood ahead but had to handle it too much, this should help that respect. I would make them 40" deep but my tractor will not easily handle that much weight in snow etc and besides that would crowd my evap a little. Does anyone use anything like this or something even better? (At this time I do want to stay with wood)

[royalmaple]

Dave-

I made some racks like what you mention but I didn't make a roof on them. Just put some NH siding over the top(blue tarp) had to put a dig into the NH guys.

Then I can go over with my forks and pick one up and set in the sugar house. This year I didn't have my forks on my tractor and also the pallets were frozen to the ground so I just used them preseason to stack wood in and move behind the sugar house. Ideally I would have done like you mentioned and blocked them up and I could have grabbed them. I was going to use an old pallet jack that I have and leave that in the sugar house. THen once I got the wood set inside on the slab, I could go over with the pallet jack and wheel it right in front of the evap.

Portable mini wood sheds, good idea. I have seen people use old apple crates to stack wood in, and if you keep the wood down from the top you can also stack them ontop of each other.

[New Hope Mapleman]

I built the sugarhouse I am now using at the end of my first season. It is 16x30 with an 18x30 area that was pre-existing. When I got my 30x8 it was just the perfect size. Toaday betweeen the RO, 4x14, finishing units, barrells of syrup (not that I'm complaining about having them), filter press, packing table, sink, and all the holding tanks it's just too small. I'll have to rebuild sometime.

What I did was to use graff paper and cut out small scraps the size of everything that is in the sugarhouse, even the space for people. It gave me the ability to get the flow right before without having to change it. Now it works great, but it is tight. I use this idea with residential clients before they go to the architect.

We even started putting our wood outside on pallet racks and cover them with shrink wrap to save on space & taxes on another building.

[Russell Lampron]

Matt I have seen a lot of that same type of siding used as roofing in Maine. Ok I've seen it used for roofing in NH too.

Russ