Wood consumptoin

[Lukie]

Made 32 gallons on a flat pan 2X3 batch boiling and went through 4 cord of pine and a little hard wood mixed in . Does that sound right would like to upgrade to a 2X4 some day with raised flues would that cut down on the wood consumption?

[Ghs57]

I read somewhere to figure 1 cord per 25 gals, but don’t recall what they were burning on what the wood was. I was burning trashy wood this year and went through 1 1/2 for about 35 gals.

[motowbrowne]

I have heard 10 gallons per cord as a ballpark figure for flat pan setups and 25 gallons for rigs with flue pans. That's pretty much been what I've experienced personally as well. I know we used to burn a buttload of slabwood with our flat pan rig. When the local mill stopped selling it I decided it was time to upgrade to something with flues.

There are, of course, variables. A 2x4 with flues and a 2x10 without flues will not get the same fuel economy. I think the longer your rig is, the more heat you can extract from a given amount of fuel. Also, things like taller flues, more flues in the same width pan, a preheater, forced air, etc will make a big difference. And of course, how dry your wood is, how many hours you run at a time (it's more efficient to run it for 12 hours once than for 3 hours four times), wood species, and probably other factors as well.

This year we've mostly been running for just 4 hours or so at a time. Generally fire up around 2 and stop adding wood by 6. In that time we've been burning about 75% of a cord of wood. The wood is a mix of 50% nice dry ash, butternut, popple and a few other things and 50% box elder that was piled in log length for a year and has only been split for about two months. The better wood is noticably better burning. In that time we've been making about 20 gallons of syrup, so we're pretty close to that 25 gallons per cord figure.

[mol1jb]

What those guys said. A lot will depend on arch efficiency for sure. Arch length is a factor as is what air booster system you have. This year was my first year running a rig with AUF + AOF. Years previous it as just natural draft. I took quite a bit of planning and work to build the arch with AOF but after producing 34 gallons on less than a cord it was time well spent.

[Sunnyacres]

We have a 2x5 flat pan with a blower and use a little over 4 cord to make 50 gallons. Mixture of mostly pine slab wood and a little hardwood split this summer.

[RileySugarbush]

So far this year we have used up about 3/4 cord of oak/maple to sweeten the pan and draw off 23 gallons

[motowbrowne]

Oh, I forgot to mention sugar content. That'd potentially make a huge difference in wood consumption.

[ennismaple]

Oh, I forgot to mention sugar content. That'd potentially make a huge difference in wood consumption.Absolutely. We've had seasons with poor sugar where we averaged 100 gallons per chord and we've been as high as 150 gallons per chord in 2017. We're sitting at about 125 gallons per chord this year.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

[Radnagel]

Also how your wood is split will make a huge difference in most rigs. We can keep the rig up to high temp and making syrup with small splits. Start throwing large splits in there and draws become farther and farther apart and also you notice the steam isn't as thick.

[maple flats]

The old rule of thumb was 1 full cord for 25 gal of syrup. That was for 2% sap and an evaporator of medium or larger size with conventional flues and using wrist side, well seasoned hardwood. It was also before R.O.s and pre-heaters, steam aways, hoods, and all of the other improvements to boiling that have come along.
There are whole bunch of factors that will affect your wood use. And a smaller evaporator will be hard pressed to use anywhere near what a bigger one uses to make a gallon of syrup.

[ennismaple]

Depends on your rig. With conventional draft or a smaller rig you may want it split small. Our Force 5 wants wood as big as we can feed it! The larger the log the slower it burns and the more we can control the temperature by varying the primary and secondary air. Every evaporator has a different sweet spot that you need to figure out.

[Sugarmaker]

Face cord or full 4 x 4 x 8 cord? Dry wood?
Regards,
Chris

[Lukie]

sounds like I may need to split my wood smaller to get more of a roaring boil I did notice when I put in the smaller pine it would really boil . And my sugar was 2.5 % the pine was nice and dry cut split and under cover for a year. One problem may be that I tried batch boiling 200 gallons in each batch so I was heating the syrup over and over I probable should batch boil 150 gallons at a time or a little less. And again the flues would help a lot18440

[Sinzibuckwud]

1 full cord of mixed hardwood split to 1\2 wrist size, and anything I couldn't hand split (crotches, big knots ext)got thrown in... nothing survived not a stick left, got 11 1\2 gallons of syrup finished using a 2x2.5 flat pan with preheater. 10 hours was my shortest boil.
I started with 30"-32" wood and ran out grabbed another half cord of 18"-20" the longer wood definitely put out more btus very noticeable once I switched.