linearb
04-05-2023, 07:43 AM
The first thing I should say is NO ONE WAS HURT. Secondly, we should have full insurance coverage for all this, the adjustor has already been through and confirmed this, and further told me I need to get a local supplier to put together a full list of items and prices that would be current equivalents of the gear I had. If the insurance coverage does indeed work out, this is still one hell of a black eye, but it becomes a covered material loss and then it's just the hassle of planning where to move forward from here.
What happened? I don't know, and I'll never know. I had invested substantial time, effort and money in making the sugarhouse we got with the property substantially safer. The original owner had done a wood floor (who does that?) with a pretty sketchy DIY arch; I had put in a real arch, on top of extensive fireproofing and heat reflection across the entire floor under the whole length of the arch, extended well to both sides. (Arch insulation sheets on floor, with thick ceramic fireproofing on top.
I boiled on 4/1, I finished off 21 pints, I stopped feeding the fire at 5. I checked it at 7 and everything was dying down normally. I checked it at 930 and everything appeared dead. This is the same basic process I've followed for the last five seasons; I'm always cognizant that one spark in the wrong place, and, whoosh.
I woke up the next morning to smoking rubble, and while I'll never know what happened, I have to imagine a spark got somewhere, smoldered, caught on something in the middle of the night, and the whole thing probably went up VERY fast.
I was devastated; now that I know I have insurance coverage and have had some time to process, I realize:
* this is a loss of things that can be replaced and all signs point to being replaced with minimal investment from me
* this was a serious fire which could have caused a substantial, crossing-the-street full on forest fire pretty easily, and it didn't
* this was a serious fire in a building I've had my children in recently. None of us were in it at that time.
* this was a serious fire that I slept through. If I had woken and seen the thing burning, I would not have thought to pull out my insurance policy, I might well have charged in with an extinguisher like a dumbass, stepped onto an already compromised floor, gone through it, and just died horribly screaming under a flood of melting metal and burning wood.
Compared to any of the bottom 3 bullet points there, what happened is simply a tramautic loss of a space I had cared a lot about and spent a lot of time in. But, I still have all those memories. I also still have the 17gals of syrup I'd already finished, we use 5 gals a year, so that provides some, uh, runway to rebuild without running out of our own supply.
So, I am taking this in stride as best I can. My wife is in the middle of a job search. She's an architect by trade and I really want her attention and buy in on any rebuild plans, so, I need to slow my roll a little. Once we have a number agreed on with insurance we're not going to be in any particular onus to rebuild fast. I'd like to do it this year, but if it has to wait for family happiness reasons, that's going to be fine, too.
I guess I should include some gore pictures:
https://i.imgur.com/wkUlncV.png
https://i.imgur.com/aC5b3Gi.png
Okay, so, sadness and gore out of the way, here are some thoughts and questions:
* Assuming we rebuild, then we have total control over what we do. I want to make something that's both ergonomically easier for BOTH of us to use, as well as, to the extent possible in an evaporator setup, as fireproof as possible.
This brings me to the thought: Wood is a pain. We do primary home heating with wood, so I already stack and haul (twice) 6-7 cords a year for that. I don't mind it, but with sugaring I have to split the wood a lot smaller, it's just a ton of work, the fire has to be fed constantly, and wood fires simply present risks that LPG, propane, etc do not.
I dislike the smell and hassle of heating oil (we also use this in the house). Propane seems attractive to me. I know it's less cost efficient per BTU than wood, but at our scale I don't care much, spending $700 a year on fuel instead of $350 is fine, especially if it puts 40 hours of dealing with firewood back into my free time.
Insurance will only pay the cost of a wood arch replacement, so to the extent that a gas setup is more, we're on our own. That's fine.
Any input on propane arches is appreciated.
Secondly, I was on track to make like 25-30 gals this year, and I simply don't know if I want to. I got into this because the sugarhouse was here. I put up lines past what we need and then added vacuum (which burned up, but, well. Another $1200 line item on the insurance claim!).
In my head, what I'd really like, is an efficient setup that can poop out ~1-2 gals over the space of a 5-6hr boil, and also I think I want to only do 6-7 boils a year, in a way that is family-friendlier than just spending endless hours down there alone, and then to the extent I am just bleeding sap, I am happy to offer it up to any locals with a truck who find it worthwhile to come drain a ~200gal tank. Pragmatically, I probably only need 50-75 taps for what we want to do, but I already have 130 setup for vacuum and I don't see a reason to take lines down.
Evaporator advice appreciated! I am substantially likely to go with a CDL product of some kind, as I have a good relationship with my local CDL staff, have good feelings about them, and already have approached them about help getting through the insurance labyrinth here and they are super happy to help me get compensatory pricing figured out, so, I suspect if I tell them that my long plan is to actually go propane, they're going to steer me in the right direction.
Considerations: I do want a flued pan again. I don't know if I want another drop flue, or raised, but I do[B] know that I do not want to have to drain the flues between every boil on nights when it's dipping below freezing. I also know there's solutions to this, some people locally tell me they put a small heater in their arch or whatever overnight.[B]But, I am curious what the BEST solutions to that issue are.
Finally -- if we rebuild, it's going to make my wife a lot happier (and me) if we end up with something that's also usable as a detached office. In fact, I had a detached office setup in the old shack (there's another $1000 in electronics claims!) but it was pretty uncomfortable to use.
My idea is, if we rebuild a 16x12 shack, designate a 10x12 area (plus a little) as "evaporator, small RO unit, working surface for filtering and bottling, small sink". No significant insulation in this part of building.
The remaining 6x12 space would be split, such that an interior wall boxes off a 6x8 area behind a door. There would be a large glass/plexiglass observation window, between the "office" area and the evaporator, and I'd have a couple cameras to make it super easy to keep an eye on stuff from in there. This area would be fully insulated (so 6x8 prolly turns into more like 5x7 internal), set up with the same sort of monitor + internet setup I had in the old shack. During boils, this would be the "command center" where I can keep an eye on everything easily. During the rest of the year -- it's just a 5x7 weatherproof space with some kind of small electric heater in it, which can be used as a detached office by my wife or I.
So, those are my ideas and thinking now, and I am looking for any feedback before I start approaching builders.
CDL also told me they could set me up with builders who do this work, so, of course I intend to make those calls and double check whatever the insurance offer is for the structure, against actual quotes. The adjustor implied that whatever number CDL came up with for a complete rebuild of my evaporator setup and all other sugaring stuff would likely just be accepted, but, I won't know anything until I see insurance numbers.
It's likely that if we rebuild, we're going to exceed the insurance budget in any case by virtue of wanting to do the interior work I mentioned, and also have the building properly hardwired electrically to the house (small job inside the house, bigger job to bury 100' of 14g wire that needs to go down a steep hill). As much as I'd like to line all this up this summer, that may be unrealistic (and insurance doesn't care; they cut us a partial check and if we don't rebuild instantly the rest goes into escrow for long enough to deal with this next year). I know prices move fast, so waiting isn't the best plan, but I have to be real sensitive to my family needs right now because my spouse has strong opinions on this stuff but also doesn't have the mental capacity right now. So, I am doing sketches and I will be talking to builders etc, so that when she is able to think about this, I have some coherant ideas on paper.
Condolences are, of course welcome, but I think Sunday was my day of grief, Monday was the day of finding out what the general insurance trajectory looked like, and yesterday was my day of thinking through nightmare scenarios about how much worse this could have been.
Both the insurance adjustor and the guys at CDL told me not to beat myself up and that they have seen this happen a fair amount even among experienced people, but, of course it's a super feel bad to know that I was sitting in there boiling at 5, I shut it all down at 9:30, and then it turned into a pile of rubble.
What happened? I don't know, and I'll never know. I had invested substantial time, effort and money in making the sugarhouse we got with the property substantially safer. The original owner had done a wood floor (who does that?) with a pretty sketchy DIY arch; I had put in a real arch, on top of extensive fireproofing and heat reflection across the entire floor under the whole length of the arch, extended well to both sides. (Arch insulation sheets on floor, with thick ceramic fireproofing on top.
I boiled on 4/1, I finished off 21 pints, I stopped feeding the fire at 5. I checked it at 7 and everything was dying down normally. I checked it at 930 and everything appeared dead. This is the same basic process I've followed for the last five seasons; I'm always cognizant that one spark in the wrong place, and, whoosh.
I woke up the next morning to smoking rubble, and while I'll never know what happened, I have to imagine a spark got somewhere, smoldered, caught on something in the middle of the night, and the whole thing probably went up VERY fast.
I was devastated; now that I know I have insurance coverage and have had some time to process, I realize:
* this is a loss of things that can be replaced and all signs point to being replaced with minimal investment from me
* this was a serious fire which could have caused a substantial, crossing-the-street full on forest fire pretty easily, and it didn't
* this was a serious fire in a building I've had my children in recently. None of us were in it at that time.
* this was a serious fire that I slept through. If I had woken and seen the thing burning, I would not have thought to pull out my insurance policy, I might well have charged in with an extinguisher like a dumbass, stepped onto an already compromised floor, gone through it, and just died horribly screaming under a flood of melting metal and burning wood.
Compared to any of the bottom 3 bullet points there, what happened is simply a tramautic loss of a space I had cared a lot about and spent a lot of time in. But, I still have all those memories. I also still have the 17gals of syrup I'd already finished, we use 5 gals a year, so that provides some, uh, runway to rebuild without running out of our own supply.
So, I am taking this in stride as best I can. My wife is in the middle of a job search. She's an architect by trade and I really want her attention and buy in on any rebuild plans, so, I need to slow my roll a little. Once we have a number agreed on with insurance we're not going to be in any particular onus to rebuild fast. I'd like to do it this year, but if it has to wait for family happiness reasons, that's going to be fine, too.
I guess I should include some gore pictures:
https://i.imgur.com/wkUlncV.png
https://i.imgur.com/aC5b3Gi.png
Okay, so, sadness and gore out of the way, here are some thoughts and questions:
* Assuming we rebuild, then we have total control over what we do. I want to make something that's both ergonomically easier for BOTH of us to use, as well as, to the extent possible in an evaporator setup, as fireproof as possible.
This brings me to the thought: Wood is a pain. We do primary home heating with wood, so I already stack and haul (twice) 6-7 cords a year for that. I don't mind it, but with sugaring I have to split the wood a lot smaller, it's just a ton of work, the fire has to be fed constantly, and wood fires simply present risks that LPG, propane, etc do not.
I dislike the smell and hassle of heating oil (we also use this in the house). Propane seems attractive to me. I know it's less cost efficient per BTU than wood, but at our scale I don't care much, spending $700 a year on fuel instead of $350 is fine, especially if it puts 40 hours of dealing with firewood back into my free time.
Insurance will only pay the cost of a wood arch replacement, so to the extent that a gas setup is more, we're on our own. That's fine.
Any input on propane arches is appreciated.
Secondly, I was on track to make like 25-30 gals this year, and I simply don't know if I want to. I got into this because the sugarhouse was here. I put up lines past what we need and then added vacuum (which burned up, but, well. Another $1200 line item on the insurance claim!).
In my head, what I'd really like, is an efficient setup that can poop out ~1-2 gals over the space of a 5-6hr boil, and also I think I want to only do 6-7 boils a year, in a way that is family-friendlier than just spending endless hours down there alone, and then to the extent I am just bleeding sap, I am happy to offer it up to any locals with a truck who find it worthwhile to come drain a ~200gal tank. Pragmatically, I probably only need 50-75 taps for what we want to do, but I already have 130 setup for vacuum and I don't see a reason to take lines down.
Evaporator advice appreciated! I am substantially likely to go with a CDL product of some kind, as I have a good relationship with my local CDL staff, have good feelings about them, and already have approached them about help getting through the insurance labyrinth here and they are super happy to help me get compensatory pricing figured out, so, I suspect if I tell them that my long plan is to actually go propane, they're going to steer me in the right direction.
Considerations: I do want a flued pan again. I don't know if I want another drop flue, or raised, but I do[B] know that I do not want to have to drain the flues between every boil on nights when it's dipping below freezing. I also know there's solutions to this, some people locally tell me they put a small heater in their arch or whatever overnight.[B]But, I am curious what the BEST solutions to that issue are.
Finally -- if we rebuild, it's going to make my wife a lot happier (and me) if we end up with something that's also usable as a detached office. In fact, I had a detached office setup in the old shack (there's another $1000 in electronics claims!) but it was pretty uncomfortable to use.
My idea is, if we rebuild a 16x12 shack, designate a 10x12 area (plus a little) as "evaporator, small RO unit, working surface for filtering and bottling, small sink". No significant insulation in this part of building.
The remaining 6x12 space would be split, such that an interior wall boxes off a 6x8 area behind a door. There would be a large glass/plexiglass observation window, between the "office" area and the evaporator, and I'd have a couple cameras to make it super easy to keep an eye on stuff from in there. This area would be fully insulated (so 6x8 prolly turns into more like 5x7 internal), set up with the same sort of monitor + internet setup I had in the old shack. During boils, this would be the "command center" where I can keep an eye on everything easily. During the rest of the year -- it's just a 5x7 weatherproof space with some kind of small electric heater in it, which can be used as a detached office by my wife or I.
So, those are my ideas and thinking now, and I am looking for any feedback before I start approaching builders.
CDL also told me they could set me up with builders who do this work, so, of course I intend to make those calls and double check whatever the insurance offer is for the structure, against actual quotes. The adjustor implied that whatever number CDL came up with for a complete rebuild of my evaporator setup and all other sugaring stuff would likely just be accepted, but, I won't know anything until I see insurance numbers.
It's likely that if we rebuild, we're going to exceed the insurance budget in any case by virtue of wanting to do the interior work I mentioned, and also have the building properly hardwired electrically to the house (small job inside the house, bigger job to bury 100' of 14g wire that needs to go down a steep hill). As much as I'd like to line all this up this summer, that may be unrealistic (and insurance doesn't care; they cut us a partial check and if we don't rebuild instantly the rest goes into escrow for long enough to deal with this next year). I know prices move fast, so waiting isn't the best plan, but I have to be real sensitive to my family needs right now because my spouse has strong opinions on this stuff but also doesn't have the mental capacity right now. So, I am doing sketches and I will be talking to builders etc, so that when she is able to think about this, I have some coherant ideas on paper.
Condolences are, of course welcome, but I think Sunday was my day of grief, Monday was the day of finding out what the general insurance trajectory looked like, and yesterday was my day of thinking through nightmare scenarios about how much worse this could have been.
Both the insurance adjustor and the guys at CDL told me not to beat myself up and that they have seen this happen a fair amount even among experienced people, but, of course it's a super feel bad to know that I was sitting in there boiling at 5, I shut it all down at 9:30, and then it turned into a pile of rubble.