Fuel Cost per Litre of Syrup challenge

[4Walls]

The one thing I love about MT is all the amazing ideas that people share. I especially love the home built section. So I propose a challenge to help spur on some creative ideas.

The Challenge: Cheapest fuel cost per unit of syrup. Be it USD per Gallon or CAD per Litre its all the same. The goal of everyone is to make it better, quicker, easier and cheaper.

So, for a couple of assumptions. Lets say a face cord of wood is 100$ CAD. That is about the going rate here to have it delivered cut and split. Maybe a bit higher. We will use that as a base line even if you cut wood off your own property because there is work and effort to cut your own wood and opportunity cost if you burn it and don't sell it.

I know a couple of big producers (10,000+ taps) here in the area that have their fuel cost down to roughly .50c/L. They have big RO systems and use fuel oil and super heated steam with the most advanced commercial evaporators available.

So the challenge is can we as back yarders get our costs down close to the big commercial syrup producers.

I'LL start.
This has been my quest since I started 20 years ago with 10 taps and a propane turkey boiler. It was costing me about 9$ per litre in just fuel alone. 12 years in and I made a big upgrade to a 2x8 D&G flat bottomed sectioned rig. It brought my cost down to about 4$ per litre burning cordwood. I would burn a cord a day and make about 25L/day.

I played around and made a system to burn used veggie oil under pressure in the arch. Still burn a bit of wood in the morning to get it lit and hot before the oil is introduced. It brought my cost down to about 1$/L. Last year I was low on both wood and oil so I made a RO system with a filter and 3x100GPD pods. I normally bring my sap up from about 2% to 6% which is good enough for me. Just the RO has saved me 2/3 of my total fuel. I should have done it years ago.

So by my latest calculations, my total cost per Litre of syrup is now down to .38c CAD. Which with current currency exchange is $1.14 USD per us gallon.

Would love any other crazy ideas to make it better.

Justin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxyp0GEzEcs

[TooManyIrons...]

Why would I use any baseline cost for firewood that I cut, cure and split myself when I do not have that cost?

I would use some kind of an amortized cost for the chainsaw. Then their is the cost of the oil/gas mix, one gallon will cut enough firewood for one season. Then the bar oil, two or three pints would do it. I sharpen my blades myself. I would have to amortize the cost of the splitting maul, wedge, and axe for splitting. I would have to amortize all my equipment investments as well as repair and maintenance costs associated with the hobby, which I could do with some effort. Then there is the cost of electricity for the well and water heater for keeping things sanitary. Cost of electricity for stove for final finishing and bottling. Then costs for containers/bottles, which is minimal for me because I turn most of my syrup into granulated sugar and vacuum seal in bags but there is then the amortized cost of the vacuum sealer and the bagging material. A person can see how complicated this can get.

I also consider all my labor and effort to be 100 percent free, but I assume many people would not or could not do the same.

My point is not to be critical of your idea but to simply show how tricky it can get and end up being mostly apples-to-oranges comparisons based on differing interpretations. If I were to estimate just this season's out of pocket expenses then I am at around $.50 USD per gallon cash out plus any overage on my average electricity bill for this month, but this is simply not an accurate accounting of the overall investments plus maintenance, repair, and improvements that occur randomly over the years. Two years ago due to repairs and purchase of some new equipment my cash outlay for that season made my costs approximately $30 USD per gallon of syrup.

[Big_Eddy]

I can boil ~200 gallons of sap with a face cord of (free to me) wood. It takes me ~20 minutes to collect and cut that face cord of wood. We burn 1-2" diameter hardwood saplings which are dead standing by the thousands in my woods. No splitting involved. I can cut enough for an entire season on a single tank in the chainsaw - cost <$0.50 including chain oil. I heat the house with wood which I cut with the same chainsaw I bought 30 years ago. Amortization costs are zilch.
If I pay myself minimum wage. that would be 20l syrup for $5 or $0.25 a liter. But I don't pay myself anything.

My biggest fuel cost is one propane refill a season, for my finisher. Used to be $12 a fill. Was closer to $20 last time I filled the barbecue tank.

What I would be much more interested in seeing results for would be actual wood consumption per 100 gallons boiled. Does a 2x6 use more or less wood per 100 gallons than a 3x8? Adding a blower increases evaporation rate - does it increase efficiency too?
I did a test last year (or the year before or the year before that) where I started with a known amount of wood, and recorded how much wood I used every hour and how much sap I evaporated every hour over an entire day. Unfortunately, the hourly results were captured on the white board in the sugar shack - and were inadvertently erased the next day.

[Brian]

I have a 4x12 that burns about 15 gallons of oil per hour, that said it takes me an hour to sweeten the pans at the beginning of the year. It then makes a 40 gallon drum on the first hour on start up and then will do about 60 gph. Along boil day is 3 hours. The sap is at 20% from the Ro. so in 2 hrs I can make 100 gallons, in 3 hrs I can make 160 gallons.

[4Walls]

Wow! Brian you must have a huge RO system. My little cheaply built one has 3 x 100 GPD pods and I run it overnight when I sleep. I can only get my sap to 8%.
As for fuel costs, I think my buddy has me beat. He lives 3 doors down from a cedar saw mill and get the slab wood. it burns hot and fast and smells great mixed with the maple steam.

[Michael Greer]

It's a good place to start a discussion, and indeed we are comparing apples to oranges, and probably to coconuts as well. I keep pretty careful track of everything...gallons of sap, % of sugar content, yield in syrup, and how much wood we burn through in a season, and yet it would be difficult to compare my fuel usage to anyone else's. The biggest factor in any year has been that special weather pattern that allows me to throw out the ice...often doubling the sugar content before even building a fire. What IS important in this discussion, is that every one of us needs to look at fuel usage and search for efficiency. Our "Carbon Footprint" is real and substantial. My sugarhouse burns twice as much wood as my home, and we have done all sorts of things to this house to make it more efficient...so why not the sugarhouse too?

[Brian]

Thats why they make ro's and steam-aways and pre heaters. Sugar content,boiling rates, ro's are all the same factors, it is how you use them. As far as being more efficient my stack temp is about 600 deg f and roing to 20%. I run about 4500 taps all by myself and my wife helps me boil. All the sap has to be trucked in from 3 locations. I now have a big truck to haul with instead of 2 f250's. I have 2 guys that are brothers that help me tap and wash pipeline. Back when syrup was 3.00 a pound we did verry well, we thought when we got every thing paid off we would be in great shape. Now that every thing is paid off it is time to start replacing every thing, but this is my drug of choice. When I get to the point of not being able to do all this I well cut back to the 500-600 of my own.

[Brien]

I will say the cost of my fuel is practically free. Other than the cost of oil and gas for my chainsaw which is very little. I would never consider it lost wages since I could sell the firewood. I don't consider this work. This is just living. Its kind of like saying gardening doesn't save you money because the hours you work in the garden you could be doing other jobs getting paid and just buying the veggies. Working in the garden is just living, not work. I also plan on giving a lot of my syrup to family and friends, So I guess that makes my syrup very expensive... too me. lol.