Question about blower control.

[rayjavu]

Where do you locate the control for your blower. I want to use a rheostat and locate it by the somewhere near the doors so it's simple to turn it off when I put wood in the stove. How do I get the wire from under the arch to the front of the stove? I'm open to all suggestions.
Thanks,
Ray :confused:

[RileySugarbush]

I've seen the placed all over. Some right by the door latch, which seems the best choice.

I solved the problem differently. I put the blower in a box, which quiets things down as a bonus. There is only one way for air to get in the box and I put a flapper valve on there that the suction holds closed when I want to open the door for firing. The air starts and stops instantly with a twist of the wrist, rather than waiting for the blower to spot up and down.

[DocsMapleSyrup]

I was planning on using a rheostat on my blower but ended up with an on/off switch near the door on a bracket that holds the switch and my draw off control unit. I've never needed to control the air flow rate for my AUF/AOF arch.

[Russell Lampron]

I use a switch and a rheostat to control my blower. I set my blower speed where I want it and use the switch to turn it off and on. At full speed my stack turns blue and grows about 2". A stack thermometer will help you find the "sweet spot".

[minehart gap]

Russ, how do you determine the sweet spot? Is there a magical range of temperature that works for every evaporator or is it specific to each evaporator? And it is per evaporator, how do you determine what is best, is it all about evaporation rate or fuel consumption or do they go hand in hand?

[Russell Lampron]

Russ, how do you determine the sweet spot? Is there a magical range of temperature that works for every evaporator or is it specific to each evaporator? And it is per evaporator, how do you determine what is best, is it all about evaporation rate or fuel consumption or do they go hand in hand?

You want a stack temperature of 600 to 900 degrees. Lower than that and you're fire isn't hot enough meaning that you need more air. Higher than that and you're sending too much heat up the stack meaning that you are adding too much air.

[Haynes Forest Products]

When I helped a few people put blowers on the first thing we did was fire up the rig and build the biggest hottest fire we could. With aid of the blower getting a good fire started was a snap and then we started playing with the boil. That is how we decided what was the sweet spot. We watched how big the boil was and how even it was in the pan. Steam was a consideration but was harder to read. I think boil rate was more important than fuel consumption. Once we came to what we thought was the best boil we looked at how fast we went thru the wood and firing rate.

If you were put things in order I would think that
1) Boil rate
2) Ability to control the evaperator
3) wood consumption

Once you have the rig running like a top that steam is rolling out the roof and the syrup is coming out the draw off at a regular rate and your able to Replicate the settings every time you cook using stack temperature.

[maple flats]

Initially when I added my AOF/AUF, both on high pressure, I shut the blower off each time to fuel. Then once my grandson forgot to shut it off and I noticed that no smoke nor sparks came out the arch door. Since then I start the blower after about a minute after lighting a new fire and only shut it off as the hot coals are nearly gone at shut down.