forced air

[nhdog]

i'm already thinking for next year and want to add air to my evaporator but have no 110 power at the sugar house. every thing is run on 12 volts. has any one tried to use a 12 v fan, say something like a bilge exhaust fan or something similar?

[Gord]

Go to this site. Most DC blowers are so inexpensive, it's worth the experiment; most under $10. If you don't find anything on that page, search a little throughout the site. They have a lot of neat stuff.

https://www.surpluscenter.com/shop.axd/Search?keywords=dc+blower

I have power to my little shack. One of my best improvements was adding a blower to my evaporator. Made a huge difference in making more heat and hotter fire. Burns a little more wood, but evaporates sap faster,

[M&M Maple Grove]

Hey nhdog, what size system are you currently running? What are you currently powering with the system? Is this for AUF, AOF or both?

I run everything on 12 V as well…. Or, at least I strive to but I’m currently only running 2 - 100 W solar panels with 2 deep cycle batteries at this time. I have 2 more 100 W solar panels and 2 more deep cycle batteries to install and plan on running a 24 V system with a step down for 12 V as well but I haven’t got to it yet.

Aside from lighting, I am running a shurflo 4048 as my vacuum system pulling up to 10 Amps, 24/7. A shurflo 4008(7 amps) is used to run a hand sink as well as a transfer pump for sap/permeate in the sugar house. And that’s about all it can handle. Throw in a few cloudy days and/or some cold temps, and the batteries need recharging. In addition to the above, I can run a small RO on a 12 V/1500 W inverter but at that point, the system is really struggling.

I would assume you would be pulling somewhere around 10 to 15 A using a 300 to 500 CFM marine fan. If that isn’t feasible, maybe an inverter generator is the answer. I picked up one a few years back and it’s been the backbone of my operation. I have a small five amp battery charger wired in to charge the batteries when the generator is running. Very quiet and dependable and with an inverter, you can switch back-and-forth depending on your current battery life.

[nhdog]

i have a small lapierre vision, with 3 channel syrup pan and float box, and a 2 channel sap pan with float box. i'm currently getting 16-17 gph but can only get my stack temp up to 600 degrees and getting some color out of the stack. i use only well seasoned hard wood split small. i've got a 11' stack and will be adding another 3' this summer. i'm thinking a 300 or 350 cfm or so with a rheostat would work with this small evap and i would only want auf as it would not require any extra modification. the only thing being powered with the 12 v system now are the lights and pump to fill my head tank.

[berkshires]

I just installed a small squirrel-cage blower (https://www.surpluscenter.com/Electrical/Blowers-Fans/AC-Centrifugal-Blowers/160-CFM-120-Volt-AC-Fasco-70639814-Blower-16-1548.axd) . It's AC, but I just plug it into a cheap 350 Watt inverter attached to my deep cycle battery. It only uses 115 Watts, so I could run it all day.

I am running a Mason 2x3, and adding the blower made a huge difference. I actually have it stopped down to about 2/3 maximum flow, and my Gallons Per Hour rate went up 30%! It was a bit scary how fast things were going my first time running it. I wasn't used to the sap being guzzled so fast! So glad I did this!

Sounds like your evaporator is a bit bigger than mine, so you would probably need a bigger blower, but I just wanted to point out that adding a small inverter inline should be no problem, since these blowers don't use much current. At least mine doesn't, and you would only need one maybe 50% bigger than the one I got at most. Then you are not confined to only what is available in DC. Seems like there are a lot more AC blowers available.

GO

[M&M Maple Grove]

i have a small lapierre vision, with 3 channel syrup pan and float box, and a 2 channel sap pan with float box. i'm currently getting 16-17 gph but can only get my stack temp up to 600 degrees and getting some color out of the stack. i use only well seasoned hard wood split small. i've got a 11' stack and will be adding another 3' this summer.

My apologies for the confusion. Simply put, how are you charging your battery? More than one?

[nhdog]

mm
i have 2 large marine batteries if one runs down i just swap them out and recharge if necessary. lights are not needed often and i'm using a shurflo 2088 pump and it only draws 7 amps so power wise i'm pretty good for now.

berkshires
the inverter is one way to go and i'll take a look at that.
your blower is only 160 cfm and you have to cut it back so maybe i might not need as big a blower as i thought, but with a rheostat i'l be able to control the flow.

[M&M Maple Grove]

Hey nhdog, The beauty of this site is most of these questions have been answered in there easily attainable through a search. I prefer to use a Google search followed by “maple trader“. Here’s what I found when entering “Air under fire fan size maple trader”:

3.14 x radius x radius. This will give you the area of your stack then use 5cfm per square inch. This will give you approximate minimum blower size to go with. If you go bigger it's easier to restrict air flow then it is to make more air flow .Jan 16, 2017
http://mapletrader.com › showthread
Thread: AUF Blower Size - Maple Trader

I prefer this search method because most of the time, the answer you’re looking for will pop up at the top and then lead into the thread. From that point, if you’re looking to attain more information, you can dive into the thread.

So you would have to run the previous formula to calculate the size of fan needed. Assuming you have a 10 inch stack to keep it simple and make an educated guess, you would come in just under 400 CFM based on the above. Leaving some room to dial it in, I would assume you would need a 500 CFM fan give or take. Again, quick Google search and you’re really looking at 24 V fans. So a 12 V fan that will pull 350+ CFM is going to run around 7 A I’m guessing.

So now you’re looking at 14 A on the lower end. Batteries are measured an amp hours. If the batteries are new, you’re probably at about 100 amp hours storage for a battery. As they get older, that drops. With all that being said, assuming your batteries have about 80 amp hour storage, you would be able to run both of your items simultaneously for six hours on one battery. Again, your fan is probably undersized at this point. This is where temperature really comes into play. The further from 70°F, the less performance you will get from a battery.

I would also recommend adding one of these to the mix. This is similar to the one I use but they have smaller ones you can find as well. This way, you can monitor the voltage coming off the battery. You may be running lower voltage than you think without it:

https://www.amazon.com/Kohree-Waterproof-Vehicles-Digital-Voltmeter/dp/B07X41BRZ8/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?crid=1SXLT7JHSY0JU&keywords=marine+switch+board+12v&qid=1648562468&sprefix=marine+switchboard+12+v%2Caps%2C221&sr=8-6

For all of those I haven’t bored off already, I’d like to geek out for a moment. Amps are everything. I’m such a dork I get chills watching the following scene from Apollo 13. One of the quotes, “you can’t even run a vacuum cleaner on 12 volts”. Two takeaways from that:

1) you realize how screwed these guys were with only 960 amp hours left. You could run a vacuum cleaner… For a very short time.

2) A vacuum cleaner is essentially a blower which refers me back to my first point.

https://youtu.be/Tid44iy6Rjs

Good luck with your project nhdog, you’ll figure it out. Failure is not an option!

[anchorhd]

Cage heater blower from an old truck.

[NhShaun]

Great info M&M Maple Grove. I do the same thing with the search, i find google narrows things down a little more than the site search.

I used a 12v blower from a double layered greenhouse. I found it to greatly improve the boil on my 2x6 flat pans even though it was only 300cfm. Any increase in boil is a good thing so if your battery bank and budget can only handle a lower cfm blower for now it will still help. I even used my Dewalt 60v blower when i was trying to speed things up for a few hours, and that worked too. Off grid sugaring sure is a difficult, i even set up a blower connected to a pully on a bicycle wheel my second season and that was not worth the effort but a fun experiment.

[M&M Maple Grove]

Off grid sugaring sure is a difficult, i even set up a blower connected to a pully on a bicycle wheel my second season and that was not worth the effort but a fun experiment.

Now that’s funny, thanks for the giggle.