2008 Season

[DougM]

Saturday was a very good day. We finished building our sap sucker & I headed out to collect. Just about every bag was full, so we had to make three trips, a total of 335 gallons.
Late in the day I went back out & got whatever had run in the afternoon since it is supposed to be really cold this week and we didn't want a lot left in the bags.
The sap sucker works really well. It's built from a cut off barrel, a 500 gph bilge pump, a sump pump switch and a toilet float to activate the switch. It doesn't quite run fast enough when you have two people collecting, but keeps up pretty well. We can put over 20 gallons in the basin, so it will hold quite a bit. Some time later if I find another pump on clearance I may upgrade, but it's fine for now. I can't complain too much about a pump that only cost $5.
We ended the day with 5 gallons bottled, another 1-2 waiting to be packaged. It's supposed to be really cold this week, so I don't know if we'll be able to do anything Wednesday or not.

Doug

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Doug,

How is the evaporator working out and are you still using gas to fire it with??

[DougM]

Brandon,
It's good to hear from you.

Yes, we're still using gas and the evaporator is still working great. We worked with a friend of ours this fall to get optimum temperatures out of the burner, and our efficiency seems to be up. My dad said he thought we were running over 80gph toward the end of the day. I didn't time it to get an exact rate, but that's better than last time we ran it in '06. We have been making adustments to the drawoff with an additionl valve before the automatic one that cuts down the flow so it's taking syrup off more often & the temperature stays higher between batches, that seems to be helping.

We haven't really talked about switching back to wood, although the thought has crossed my mind with the cost of gas going up. All we would need to do is get new doors, they were taken off when it was converted to gas. I would be OK with that, but we would just have to make the commitment to get enough wood in during the summer that we don't have to deal with it during the fall or the season unless we underestimated the need.

It looks like you've had a couple of pretty good runs. Hopefully you can stay ahead of the squirrels. :)

Doug

[JohnM]

Looks like the season will really get rolling this weekend.

I think we are going to Rockville on Saturday to tour sugar camps, while the buckets fill. Then.....

Boil Boil Boil!!!

[DougM]

John,
I think you're right. I'm not going to be able to get down there until midday, so I think that's going to work out really well. I'm hoping the sun melts things a little today even though it's still pretty cold.

Monday may be really interesting, too, depending on how much they run over the weekend. If the forecast holds (not counting on that) we may be really busy next week.

Keep us updated,
Doug

[JohnM]

Not the flow I expected yesterday or today.

Drips started again about 4p Sunday.

Dare I say buckets shall run over when the showers come on Monday?

Mom Nature, what a gal!

[DougM]

John, looks like we had the same situation. I'm on here because we didn't get what we expected yesterday...I was expecting to be boiling today. The ground was more frozen in the woods than I expected.

We went out around 3:30 yesterday & got 60 gal from about 110 trees, we didn't do them all. Michael is out collecting now and since I haven't gotten a message from him I assume it's not running like we expected... Monday & Tuesday they may run a ton. Looks like the weather will be really good the next few days. We'll see.

[JohnM]

Gathered and boiled 140 gallons Wednesday. Thats a record for me.

Poured off the pan this evening and have about nine gallons of syrup ready to filter and can. That would make me a gallon or so past 1 quart per tap!

If this is the end, I would call it a good season.

[DougM]

We bottled another 9 gallons on Saturday, for a total of 37 for the year. We have at least another 3 gallons to bottle plus probably another one from what is in the evaporator. I don't know if we'll get any more sap with the weather we're having now or not but either way we're going to call it quits after Wednesday.

We were getting a lot of sugar sand in the last few batches and we're almost out of gas again. With Easter weekend coming up we don't have any time available to boil so we'll use the last of the gas to finish up.

If we end up at around 41 gallons that will be almost 1/3 of a gallon per tap, not too bad. It was an odd season, though. We made 14 gallons between February 2 and March 9, then made 27 last week. If we had more storage we could have done more, but that should be plenty.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Doug,

Great to see you had such a good year. I know the past few haven't been that good!

[JohnM]

I washed my buckets over the weekend and gathered about 25 gallons yesterday.

I have my crop at a little under a quart per tap but as usual looking for that last gallon of dark for my own use.

We had a little freeze last night. Taps are dripping in the sun.

Planted peas before the flooding rain. Spring Fever on the way!

[DougM]

We collected 120 gallons Tuesday night, boiled it off yesterday and emptied the evaporator. The taps will probably run more today but we're close enough to being out of gas that we didn't want to have more delivered.

We also ran out of containers with 40 gallons bottled and around another 4 to go, I think. If we end up with 44 we would be just over 1/3 of a gallon per tap.

The last few days the syrup coming off the rig had a lot of sugar sand but the color was still a nice medium and tasted good.

Now I'll just sit back and read posts from everyone north of us while thinking about converting to wood for next year.

[Dave Y]

DougM,
Looks like you had a nice season. 44gal is a decent crop on 130 taps! the first season i ran your old rig I made 38 gal on 130taps. If you go to wood next year get an air tight front for your rig. you will not regret it. You will just have to put together a wood cutting crew!

[DougM]

Dave,

Unfortunately I don't think we'll have the cash for the airtight front. We are trying to add more storage and a dedicated evaporator room so we can use the space we're in now for finishing.

The good news is my boys are now old enough to help with the wood so labor for that is less of an issue than when you came out a few years ago.

Maybe we can keep adding a little at a time & save up for the airtight. :)

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Doug,

What kind of rate are you getting with propane?? With good dry wood, you should be able to get around 50 gph out of it stock and maybe better.

[DougM]

Interesting you should ask, I've been doing some figuing on that today. It seems like it has varied a lot this year. We haven't tracked it as well this year as usual, but I think we've been around 30-40 most of the time.

We spent $667 on gas to make about 43 gallons of syrup, or $15.50 per gallon. Even if we spent half that on gas, oil, saws, etc., to cut wood we'd be ahead. Not considering the time, of course, but I think we could get enough cut and split in a few days of work.

I was delivering syrup in the office today and found an illustration one of our HVAC engineers has on his wall. It shows a cord of "mixed wood" =
122 gallons of fuel oil,
16,585 cu. ft. of gas,
or 4,980 KwH of electricity.

I had him send me info on the BTU's available from gas so I could compare and there are about 1500 BTUH/Cu. Ft.

So, multiplying that out for the 300 gallons of LP we used that's 91,600 cu. ft. x 300 = 27,480,000 BTU

1 cord = 16,585 cu. ft. of gas = 1,500 BTU x 16,585 = 24,877,500 BTU

27,480,000/24,877,500 = 1.1 cords That’s not all that much wood. If we could add a preheater that would go down.

Now the question is...is anyone else getting results on a well-insulated 2x8 raised-flue rig with a hood that would back that up? :)

Even if we used two cords we haven't spent near as much out of pocket.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Doug,

You would use more than 1.1 cords of wood for sure. I probably used around 5 to 5.5 this year making 97.5 gallon of syrup. Maybe a waste a little, but that is a better wood ratio than I have ever gotten and I can run around 60 gph to 65 gph on a good day which includes startup and shutdown. I have a 2x8 with an inferno type arch and a preheater. I would think you should be able to do somewhere around 50 gph with a preheater stock or maybe better and a lot more with an airtight arch. Ryan(Breezy Lane) gets 100+ gph out of his Dallaire 2.5 x8 raised flue, but he does have a high efficiency flue pan with a couple of extra flues. Jon(Tapper) gets 80 gph out of his 2.5 x 8 Leader drop flue and maple maniac gets close to 100 gph out of his 2.5 x 8 Leader drop flue. All of these are airtight inferno or intens-o-fire type arches.

[tuckermtn]

we have a 2.5 X 8 grimm raised flu- 2.5 x 5.5 raised flu pan...no hood or preheater- (see photos)

stock arch front (read: lots of air leakage), but an archboard and insulated arch- no blower.

we average 50-55 gph. and like Brandon we go though 4-5 cord of wood per season to make around 100 gallons of syrup

sap runs 2.0 to 2.5 at best...