I must be nuts or I have the sap fever.

[briduhunt]

I just staerted last year tapping three trees with 6 taps and a turkey fryer to this year tapping 10 trees with 22 taps and using two turkey fryers. And this year I find my self standing out in the pouring rain for hours dumping buckets and boiling. I know I have the sap fever as I am already planning on either buying a used 1/2 pint or building one my self for next year and even working on plans for a small sugar house outback. Am I nuts or just sap sick???? I do enjoy the whole experence and have meet with a few old timeers and have gotten a huge amount of info from them and from this site as well. My question is does this ever end or am I hooked for life???? I started out just doing this for my family and some close freinds now I see my self getting bigger and even possiably selling sometime in the future.

[VT maple maker]

You got the "Maple Bug". I dont think there is a way to get rid of it. Its with you for life now. Mapleman3 has a page that explains this very well.

Kyle

[325abn]

The year before last before I got my arch and pan that I currently use I rigged up three turkey frier burners under one big roasting pan.

Just some pointers on the turkey friers

You said you are using two turkey friers are you using two seperate pots or 2 burners under one pot? Have you modified the burners so they are 1" or so under your pans?

[briduhunt]

I am currently using two different pans and only boiling down to sweet and finishing off inside on an electric hot plate. This has been working good so far. 325abn you state that the flame should be atleast 1" below the pans why is that?

[325abn]

The closer the flame is the more heat will be tranfered to the pan and not the air. When I was using the turkey frier burners, I used some heavy 1/2 wire mesh to support the burners under the pan.

[RileySugarbush]

Another thing you can do on those is to wrap aluminum flashing around the burner frame leaving a half inch gap around the pot sides. It protects the flame from wind, concentrates more heat under the pot and heats up the sides of the pot somewhat.

Should help your evaporation rate.

[Russell Lampron]

briduhunt,

You have been bitten by the maple bug. Once it bites the sickness only increases with time. Most of us started with a small backyard setup of some kind with a small number of taps and have steadily increased the size of our operations and the number of trees taps. It won't be long before you have a sugar house and real evaporator and then some other gadgets like vacuum and reverse osmosis.