How much filter Aid

[blissville maples]

Curious how much filter Aid other go thru, or how far does a bag of filter Aid take you...I'm thinking we've used 2 1/2 bags for 900 gallons of syrup, kind of seems like alot to me. I think the oberdorfer pump has some wear to it reducing the Pressure which it runs resulting in premature slow flow.

[JoeJ]

I have made 998 gallons and used 2 1/4 bags of DE.

Joe

[maple flats]

That is a tough question to answer, there is far too much variation in sugarsand. It is however quite possible pump wear is causing you to use more. Just think of it like this, you may have used $100 or so worth of DE to make 900 gal of syrup. At retail that is about 2 gal worth of syrup, at wholesale bulk it is maybe 5 gal worth, still a bargain.
In the off season look into trying an pneumatic powered diaphragm pump, you will really like how they work.

[blissville maples]

I have made 998 gallons and used 2 1/4 bags of DE.

Joe

That's pretty close to the same amount......

Pneumatic power would be an interesting swap, I know the pneumatic barrel pumps work very good.

[Russell Lampron]

I don't keep track of how many bags of filter aid I use to how many gallons of syrup I filter. I figure the more the merrier to keep the pressure down in my press. My press had a hand pump on it and it wasn't designed to handle the pressure of the air powered diaphragm pump that I use on it now. It doesn't take much pressure to have syrup squirting out between the plates.

I second the air powered diaphragm pump. I took the hand pump off of my filter press and added the diaphragm pump without even looking at the gear pump. It's a move that I never regretted making.

[lew]

We've made 1200 gallons so far this year and used 1 bag of filter aid. This year we've had a hard time filtering and have used more than normal. We have a 10 inch press. We add 6 to 7 cups of filter aid to the initial batch then add about 2 cups every second or third batch through. Those are 5 plus gallon batches. That's this year's protocol. Normally we charge the plates with the 6 to 7 cups and run until the plates are plugged which was usually 2 to 3 barrels.