Root cellar/sugar shack combo

[billschi]

The last 3 years I have been building a homestead from raw wooded acreage when we left the city. I also started making maple syrup for the first time since living up here in northern Minnesota. The first year I built a small house for the wife and I. Last fall I built a garage. This year we added our second greenhouse which meant we needed a root cellar. I also needed a good place to make maple and birch syrup. Rather than having two separate building sites, I thought, why not just stack the sugar shack on top of the root cellar? I don't know how lay brick so I decided to build this with tamarack. Some of you may know it as larch. I wrapped the root cellar with roofing felt paper and then 6 mil plastic.
For the concrete posts, I put a heavy duty steel fence post in the block openings and filled them with concrete. The root cellar is an 8'x 10' building and the sugar shack is 12'x 20'.
My plan is to filter and gravity drain the sap into barrels in the root cellar. I will then use an RV pump to pump the cold sap up to the sugar shack. The water in my well comes out at 41 F in the summer. This should be beneficial at the end of maple and throughout the birch syrup season.

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[DMF]

Sounds like a great plan to me!

[Johnny Yooper]

That is an awesome project! Seems we have some things in common, leaving the city, returning to the north country, making syrup, building from the land. I think you will really enjoy the fruits of your labor with that building. We have a root cellar out at deer camp, the cellar was initially built around the Depression, and then rebuilt in the '50's when the cabin was built adjacent to it...the exterior door was closed off and a new doorway and underground tunnel was built so you could go directly from the cabin through the breezeway into the woodshed and down into the cellar. The cellar has a poured concrete floor, stone walls about 3 feet high and then angles up to the peak using hemlock supported by railroad rails which serves as forms for the concrete roof and then dirt and grass on top of that. In 1980, I helped my Dad build a root cellar at his home, we cut out part of the concrete floor in the corner of the attached garage, dug down to the basement level, built two block walls, drilled through the common block wall and formed in a door to access the cellar. I'm sure you know to have ventilation inlet and outlet for the root cellar. We've been working on a sugar shack build here the last year plus...concrete foundation and floor, full vertical log construction, cedars and spruce from the U.P., red pine from Wisconsin and aspen door and window posts and headers from our woods behind the house, made syrup in it this spring for the first time, sure beats a cramped woodshed!

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[billschi]

Nice looking sugar shack. How are you letting the steam escape? Is it through the big door? Yes, it's much better evaporating under a roof. I used my garage last year and a shed the year before that. The garage was still under construction as I didn't start building it until last year this time.

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[Johnny Yooper]

For steam escape, I'm going to build a hood and vent through the roof. We elbowed the chimney pipe out the big door this spring just so we could boil but the overall plan is to close the big door if the weather isn't cooperating. That's a nice looking garage you have, what type of wood are those large planks?

[billschi]

Most of the garage is red pine aka Norway Pine. Some of the 1 x 12's are spruce.

[billschi]

I had a bunch of 1x5 and 1x6 rough cut tamarack boards. I cut a straight edge on each one and then cut them so they would be shiplap boards for the floor. It will be raining until next week so I covered the floor in plastic until then.
18907

[billschi]

An update.
After a long winter with about 70 days of sub zero weather, it has finally warmed up to the 30's. I know I won't be able to complete the sugar shack before the sap runs but I hope to have tin on the roof. Roof trusses are hopefully going up Saturday this week.
The root cellar is complete and ready to receive sap.
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[billschi]

Getting the walls put up on the sugar shack potion of the building.
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[billschi]

Walls completed and roof trusses are up. A couple of friends came over to give me a hand today.
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The next picture you can see the entrance to the root cellar under the sugar shack.
The key to keep the sap at 41 degrees even on the warm days.
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[billschi]

Built the cupola on the sugar shack.
I think the sap should start flowing by the weekend.
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[billschi]

I've boiled a couple of times and got some more work done on the sugar shack. I have a 2'x4' and a 2'x6' evaporator on one end of the building. I have just enough tin on it to keep the rain off me. I still have two walls to put siding on.
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[billschi]

I have since stained the whole sugar shack.
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Now it's time to work on the inside.
I have 110 gallons of fresh water tanks in the cellar below for cold sap storage until I boil. I use a RV pump to pump the sap up to the pans. The pump automatically turns on when I open the valve. No more lifting buckets for this guy.
I have two evaporators on the main level. The copula operates off a rope/pulley system.
I can't wait until the next season.
20220

We have been using the sugar shack all summer making other syrups to sell at the markets. We make maple, birch, maple/birch strawberry/rhubarb, caramelized spruce tip, blueberry, blueberry jalapeno, raspberry, raspberry/jalapeno, and different maple infused syrups.