cold draw of compartment

[Brent]

Yesterday I finally lit the fire in the new evaporator. Generally it all went well.
Started at 5:00 and put the last logs on near midnight. About 10:30 something strange happened. The draw off alarm stopped going off every 15 minutes or so. When I noticed it I looked in the syrup pan and saw something strange. The pan has 4 compartments and all evening the boil and foaming was nicely progressive from the first compartment with a good boil and a bit of frothing, the last and draw off compartment had 2-3 inches of boiling and frothing near syrup. But at 10:30 or so the last compartment lost most of the frothing and the second from last had higher frothing.

Anyone seen this ??

My best guess is that because I have a pair of double doors about 4 feet from the firebox and take of compartment, that this was getting effected by the big drop in temperatures. If that was what was really the cause, I'm wondering if I should put some protection on it ... maybe just a draft shield on 2" standoffs. The heat rising from the cast iron doors would stay behind
the shield and keep it going.

??????

[Fred Henderson]

Sounds to me like you already got the answers.

[Valley View Sugarhouse]

I have alot of drafts in my sugarhouse, and if I am not carefull I have the same problem, I need to have a hotter fire on the draw side so whet I do is fire on one side oppisate the draw side, I never open the door on the draw side i just push the wood that is burning good over under that side and add new on the oppisate, after you get in the habit it makes for quick firing, and you can add wood while drawing..

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

I Have To Be Careful Or I Make Syrup In The Center Partion, I Have To Keep The Hotest Fire On The Draw Off Side

Rich

[Brent]

fired it up again today and boiled off about 120 gallons. Going from a Half Pint flat pan this machine has been, and likely will be, quite the learning curve.

With the doors closed today I had the same problem again. Then I discovered two things:
1) being chicken I was running the syrup pan pretty deep. When the outside tank went dry last night and 35 gallons overhead, I got even more conservative and in creased the depth to nearly 1 1/2". Not good as I found out.

2) I have sand in the last compartment so thick is was coming off like scale in an old kettle.

Corrected both and things got back to normal.

Now got about 7 gallons of the scale light, golden yellow.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

If the sand is heavy, try reversing the flow about every 3 hours. Another thing I have found is that if you are making syrup in any compartment other than the drawoff compartment, your evaporator may be a little off level from side to side not letting the syrup flow side to side perfectly.