Scorched flue pan

[Motoman89]

So I don't have all the details on what happened while I was away for 4 days but I came home and had a bit of story from the Father in-law and my Dad. Checked things out and they scorched my flue pan something awful. It is a CDL hobby unit that is 18"x66", has two chamber drop flue pan with a two section syrup pan. The flues close to where the piping connects the flue pan to the syrup pan are full of big chunks of char (like pinky sized pieces) and at least two of the flues are warped a lot at the firebox end. Can I salvage this thing or is it scrap?
I still have 300+ gals of sap to boil out and more coming. We don't do it commercially or anything it is just for our family and I try to sell enough to friends/neighbors to pay for my bottles. I do try my best to make really good quality syrup and this is pretty disheartning to say the least.

Thanks for any advice.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

That sucks :( You'll have to get the char out before you continue boiling which may require a vinegar or acid cleanse of the flue pan. If it were me, I would pull the flue pan off, fill it with acid or vinegar and let it soak for a day or two. Make yourself a scraper out of copper pipe and get ready for some cleaning. As long as it doesn't leak, you can still use it. Filling it for a cleaning will tell you that. And even if it does leak, it may be able to be welded by someone set up to do stainless. But all of this takes time. Hopefully its cold enough so you can salvage the sap until you can get it cleaned. Oh ya- and make sure the "older adults" help ya out with it!!

[ecolbeck]

Sorry to hear about that. This exact thing happened to me a few years back on my 18x63 rig which is very similar to yours. Burned the heck out of the flue pan and the back of the syrup pan. My best guess was that the float wasn’t keeping up with syrup drawoffs. I currently hold down the float while drawing off to make sure there’s enough replenishment. My rig has the float on the same side as the drawoff so it would more difficult to do that in your situation. Hopefully you are able to clean things up and keep going.

[Motoman89]

I don’t fully understand the copper pipe scrapper? Do you flatten the end and use it to scrap the sides of the flues?

[ecolbeck]

That is correct. Copper is softer than stainless so no damage will occur. Helped out a lot in my situation.

[Motoman89]

Awesome. Thanks!