Sap preheater

[Brien]

I've decided to try something different for my sap pre heater this year. Last year I had a SS pot over my pan dripping sap into it. But it never really heated the sap up. So I did a few mods to my setup and now have the pot sitting on a chimney pipe tee. I did a test run, the flames don't really hit the bottom of the pot because there's so much draft, but it does heat it up much better than just on top of the pan. The real test will come in a couple weeks.

I was going to add a few pics to this thread, so people could see what I did but I can figure it out. Said file failed to upload...

[Waynesgarden]

How's your preheater experimenting going? I will be working on something for next year and looking for ideas for use with a barrel stove evaporator.

[Brien]

It's going good actually. It will actually get the sap pretty warm before going into the evaporator. Its not boiling, but it's way better than last year where it was dripping in cold. If you PM your email address I could send you some pics.

[wobbletop]

Just use imgur.com or imgbb.com for posting pictures.

[MajorWoodchuck]

I will relate what worked well for me last year and will do again this year for a preheater...but it goes against every post about not doing it this way I have read on MT. I have a 3/8" copper line running up inside my stack and back down - total about 15 feet long. I have a small homemade RO that uses a aquatech pump that I pump the sap through the lines in the chimney and discharges into the pans. Being a weekend warrior, I usually collect sap on Friday evening and RO it overnight to pull a little more than half the water out. In the morning I start up the evaporator and start fill the pans. As the fire gets going I can turn the RO valve down or up as needed to match my boiling rate. It might not be running the RO at the most efficient setting as the permeate rate is quite a bit less than the consentrate rate, but that also keeps the filters from clogging. Once going I don't have to do much adjusting and get the output flow to be about 160-190 degrees that keeps my pans boiling. I get the benefit of pulling another 3-5 gallons of water out of the sap from the RO as I boil. When I run out of sap (pump makes a different sound) I stick the suction tube in the bucket or barrel of water I collected and start feeding that through. I then start to collect the discharge in pans that I can test pretty fast to see when the consentrate is changed over to water. Then I route the discharge back to the same bucket or barrel that the pump is sucking from and turn the valve wide open. That gives me a nice supply of warm water to clean up with.
My first year I tried doing this with a gravity feed system with a bucket up on the joists, but it was a pain constantly feeding the bucket up high and when it ran out the sap in the lines would instantly boil and would spit and hiss and be hard to start with only a few feet of head. I was also using a aluminium coil that ended up melting up after it ran out of sap with a very hot chimney (burning OSB).

[Brien]

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Here's the pictures of the preheater I made last year. Pictures are sideways for some reason, but you get the picture.

[Pdiamond]

Brien, I must say that is a very unique preheater you came up with. I like it.

[Brien]

Thanks, at first it was just the pot sitting on top of the black pipe T. But it was very tippy and wanted to slide off. So I fabricated that contraption on top..