Freeze Issues

[Dundee Ridge]

This question my cover a lot of the forums, but I'll toss it here.

Have some great temps from today until Wednesday in my area, but the forecast goes real cold from then through the next weekend. I'm hoping the warm stretch gives us enough to fire up the evaporator, and if it does I'd like to boil nover the weekend, but I'll need to deal with some real cold temps (lows of 0, highs around 20). How do you all deal with freeze issues in the sugarhouse, from pump systems, to head tanks, to float boxes, and in the pans. Any big things to be careful of? Can you thaw froze pans just by firing things up without buying them? Would love some tips.

[sugarman3]

drain everything into food grade barrels is what I do plus make sure everything else is drained.You can also start a small fire in evaporator to warm up it

[wnybassman]

All my tanks and pumps are emptied at the end of every boil. Cold float box is drained. Everything else is fine, my raised flue is high enough in sugar it does not freeze "solid", just a hard slush. I have also put a heat lamp in the firebox under extreme conditions, but have to be careful it might keep it a bit too warm and sugar will spoil

[Russell Lampron]

I have a heat tape wrapped around the valve and outlet pipe on my bulk storage tank to keep it thawed. I sweeten my sap up with an RO so freezing once it gets concentrated isn't as much of an issue. In the evaporator it gets sweetened even more so the ice that forms in there isn't as dense as just water. I light the evaporator like I normally would and it thaws fast enough to not be an issue. As far as pumps and hoses go, make sure everything is drained after use so that they don't freeze up on you. A heat tape around the valve and pipe to the evaporator on your head tank will keep the sap flowing to the evaporator.

[Mark Wengert]

We use heat tap on inlet pipe from bulktank. Drain preheater, feed float box, and sight glass of raised flue pan. Everything else is concentrated enough to only be a firm slush. On a long dry spell, may ligt a small fire in firebox to soften things up but dont always worry about it.

[SeanD]

The raw sap side is the challenge for me. A couple of years ago, I saved my sap for a weekend morning when a hard freeze was on the way. Shortly after starting up the RO, the temp plummeted to the low 20's. I was stunned how quickly a 1" line with sap moving at 125 gph froze solid. I tried to thaw it with heat tape after the fact, but there was nothing doing. The temp continued to drop and I was stuck with frozen lines and giant blocks of sap.

Now, my approach is to get it all collected and boiled before the hard freeze. It's challenging because you have to gather late enough to get as much of the sap coming in, but starting late means ending really late. Sometimes, like last week the run is big and I've got a ton of sap to get through at the last minute. It makes for some long nights, but the trade off is some off-days ahead. Based on the forecast ahead, I expect the same thing this week.