Recovering steam / water

[Brad W Wi]

I have a free standing hood over my 2x8 evaporator and a 16" stack going out the roof. It sticks up above the roof line approx. 2-3 feet.I would like to recover more water for cleaning as well as improve the draw. I am wondering if I added 3' of stack would this help much? Also the hood stack is 4 feet from the chimney (10"dia.) of the evaporator and is directly west of the chimney. We have a westerly prevailing wind and the 3' extension would bring it up to the same elevation as the chimney. "IF" I add the 3' would or could this effect the draw of the chimney. I'll thank you for your help right way.

[ziggy]

If you want to improve your draw bring your hood down tight to your flue pan, the hotter you keep the steam and the less outside air the better the draw. If you want to recover the steam as water add a pre-heater, it improves your boiling and the condensate that drips off makes great water for cleaning.

[RileySugarbush]

If you lower your hood and add a preheater as suggested ( and seconded here) you will get lot's and lot's of hot water. And your 16" stack will probably be too big and you will need to add a damper to keep your incoming sap above 200F.

If you do add steam stack height it would not affect the smoke stack draw.

[Brad W Wi]

I keep the hood approx. 13"+- above the pans. I'm a visual type person and I like to keep an eye on the boiling at all times. I'm sure I'd get more water with a closed system but this is what I have chosen and am just trying to improve it for me if I can.

[802maple]

The only way you are going to get more water is add the preheater or run cold water which you don't have over the outside of your hood as the cold versus the hot creates the condensation that creates water.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

You will create more water by adding more stack because the air is cooler than the stack and the more cool air that hits the stack, the more condensation you will get. How much more, maybe not much, but you would need to make sure you have a catch pan underneath the stack. You could add a preheater to the setup you have and gain some more condensation also. It won't preheat the sap a ton, but it might get it to 100 degrees or even more the bigger you made it and every little bit counts.

[brookledge]

Is the hood one piece or two? If you were able to put it just on the flue pan with a preheater you would be all set. But as others have said you need something very cold to cause the steam to condense back to water. Just the stack alone will not give you enough temperature difference to condense much water. I have seen many setups with one hood right on the flue pan and then have the hood up about 1' over the syrup pan so you can keep your eye on it.
Keith

[Brad W Wi]

My hood is one piece. Inside is a collector plate about 10 inches under the stack with a trough to a collector lip around the whole unit. Right now when it is boiling there is a steady stream of about 1/8" in dia. going into my pail. I don't have a well at the sugarbush so I would like to collect as much water as possible. At this time a preheater is out, but I do have a 3' stack that I can add on. So I guess I'll add it on and see if it helps much.

[802maple]

1 loop of 1 inch copper pipe or about ten feet for a preheater with some kind of small drip tray will result in ten times the water that you are going to get from adding on a section of pipe. I am not trying to be a smart a** about this but in forty years of sugaring I have tried about everything and one of the things I have tried is what you are going to do and it won't be that noticable. A longer preheater would be better but the first ten feet is where most of the water condensate comes from as it is to warm beyond that point to condensate very much. Just trying to help.

[Brad W Wi]

802maple, Thanks alot and I don't think your being a smart a**. I put the question out because I value the answers I get. I hope to get some sort of preheater in before next year just because of the answers I get off of here. This sight has taught me so much about sugaring, without it I doubt I would be doing it today, as I had never see it done before I did it. If I go to deeply into a question it's just the way I am. So thank you and everyone else for all the answers to all my questions.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I agree with Jerry as I stated earlier a preheater would definitely see some increase. I doubt the stack would help much, but it would help a little and the extra 3' section is better than nothing.

You can make up a preheater and add a drip pan under it and it will take care of stack condensation as well as preheater or if you have a channel all around the outside of the hood, you could run a section of copper all around the inside of the hood wall above the channel and it would help some.

[Parker]

When my evaporator is going the preheater fills a 5 gallons syrup jug with water in about 5 minutes,,,all it would take to make a basic preheater is some copper pipe and a littel time..

[Sugarmaker]

Brad,
I boiled for many years with out hoods and liked to see what was going on. Probably with that much exposure to boiling, and knowing what was going on I was OK when I went to hoods which were totally different. I now like them very much and the sugar house is not full of steam. Basically you just need another way to make sure that there is sap in the pan under the hood, Via sap in float box, or outside connector boxes. But if you really want the hot water I would agree with all the others, have a semi tight hood and a preheater.
Could you add material for the inside of the hood down to the front and back of the rear pan? And maybe then add a full hinged door/ side on each side of the hood ( at the flue pan) so you could open if you wanted?
Not sure how your 16 inch stack is situated on the hood. But you would need to be able to have a damper in that to control the steam going out. I stole shamelessly from Leader when I designed the hoods and the preheater, and on a 3 x 5 flue pan I can get 6-7 gallons of hot water per hour.
Probably this all sounds like a lot of work? My hot water currently goes down the drain, since we have a hot water heater in the sugarhouse we use that for all the clean up work.

Send/ post some pictures if you can.

Regards,
Chris

[Parker]

I forgot to mention in my post,,I have a sight tube on each side of the flue pan so I can see how much sap is in my flue pan,,,,the ammount does change depending on how fast the rig is going,,how much sap is in my head tank,,and on rare ocassion,,if there is a vaporlock in my preheater,,,keeping an eye on your flue pan is critical in my opinion

[maple flats]

I haven't gotten to build a preheater yet for my current rig but my old 2x6 had one and if designed right I don't think you can get a vapor loc. Design it so there is a constant rise from inlet to the end and have the outlet to the preheater directly above the float box valve with a straight drop on the pipe there. My last preheater (and the next) was all copper made with an inlet at thew low end and then it teed off into several parellel passes to a main cross piece at the high end and dumped straight to the in valve. The whole thing was tilted up and slanted to one side. The sap rose in each pass evenly as I could tell by the condensation on each. My last was also built as a double decker because I didn't have much room in a 2x3' hood but my 3x6 flue pan will give me enough room to make it a single level with several parallel passes to heat the sap and then dump straight to the float box valve. I made a manifold for the inlet and outlet lines and just soldered it all together flat, then i mounted it tilted up and tilted to the side. The inlet and outlets were at opposite corners.