GPH difference between 2x3 and 2x4 flat pan

[Loun]

I have heard 5gph for the 2x3 what kind of gph would I be looking at with a 2x4?

I did a search for 2x4 gph and I dont know if the terms were too short but nothing came up. Thank you!

Im trying to see if with 50 taps it makes sense to go with a 2x4 instead of a 2x3 or if the difference would be minimal

-Lou

[Bucket Head]

There are two things in maple that you can't go wrong with. Always go with the slightly bigger pan if you can and always go with the larger of the two sugarhouse plans if you can.

Murphy's Law is you'll wish you went with the bigger of the two shortly after purchasing the smaller one.

This type of business-like thinking is learned from the school of hard knocks. I think the name of the first class was "Bad Decision Making 101". I got an "A" in that one.

Steve

[Loun]

im looking at overall total investment. I have an order in for a 2x3 pan and can upgrade to a 2x4 for $75 but at the same time this is my first year, if there isnt enough of a gph difference with the larger pan then I would stay with the 2x3 for now and then possibly add another pan on next year and have 2 pans. Im looking to produce for a hobby not to sell. I will have $900 invested in the past 2 weeks at this point so im trying to spend wisely at this point to get through the season and reassess for next year.

Whats the potential GPH difference. Anyone?

[3rdgen.maple]

Not alot with a flat pan Loun maybe 2. But 2 could be the difference between staying up for 10 hours to boil 50 gallons or boiling for a little over 7 hours for the same amount. You can always sell the pan and upgrade next year as well and not lose alot of money on a almost new pan. Or you could stay with the 2x3 and like you said add another 2x3 next year and get up to 10 plus gph. Or better yet A flue pan and then it will open up a potential for alot more taps. Decisions decisions. Keep in mind Bucket Head is right on though you can never get something to big in this madness.

[RileySugarbush]

The difference is roughly proportional to the the surface area exposed to the flame, so a 2x4 would boil about 33% more than a 2x3. That would be nice for 50 taps.

But if you really think you might get bigger, than your first thought of adding a 2nd pan makes a lot of sense, particularly if you add a flue pan for your second pan.


Then you would have a legit 2x6 with 3' in each pan which is about what we use for 115 taps, or even a 2x8 if you get a 5' flue pan. Either would really be a good set up!

[Loun]

Im not arguing his theory :) im debating this with my wallet. Since I have more stuff I need to pick up too. by the end of the week it will be 1k+ invested in something I havent tried yet :) thats all.

The GPH is what I needed to know for that very reason. Right now im looking at 5gphso like you said with 50gal im burning for 10 hours. If I can get that down to 7 then it is worth it to me. Thats why im asking for numbers from someone that might know :)

And yes likely next year everything I have now as a starter kit will end up with someone else and I will have something bigger.

-Lou

[3rdgen.maple]

Another guy who just got the maple disease. Already talking about selling and upgrading before this season starts. Loun you fit in very well here. Welcome aboard.;)

[Loun]

you have no idea... i placed an order for a 2x3 pan last week which hasnt been made yet so technically im upgrading before I have even gotten the 2x3 :)

I just need to learn how to do more of this stuff on my own, welding wise etc.

[Toblerone]

I think about 1.5gal/hr/sqft is about the best you could hope for with a flat pan. You could add forced draft and possibly make it up to 2 gal/hr/sqft. 50 taps will yield quite a bit of sap... 500 gallons or so for the season.

[3rdgen.maple]

With an arch probably right, but I think the plan is for blocks this year to get himself up and running.

[KenWP]

I have heard 5gph for the 2x3 what kind of gph would I be looking at with a 2x4?

I did a search for 2x4 gph and I dont know if the terms were too short but nothing came up. Thank you!

Im trying to see if with 50 taps it makes sense to go with a 2x4 instead of a 2x3 or if the difference would be minimal

-Lou
I would say that 5pgh for a 2x3 is somebody trying to discourage you. You should with ease get 1.8 gallons of evaporation rate per square foot of pan. I used a 2 foot square pan and boiled and checked the rate several times a day and it was always 1.5 gallons British per square ft. Thats 1.8 US gallons.
Therefore a 2x3 pan should boil between 10 and 11 US gallons a hour and a 2x4 pan should beat 14 gallons a hour US.
The better you can get the heat on the pan and keep up a good boil the better your going to do. If you can ever get flue pans you can expect better then that for the same size pan.

[3rdgen.maple]

All I can say is I boiled on a 2x6 flat pan setup for many years and on the best days If I hit 15 I was superman. But have learned alot since then so the numbers I was saying were estimated on figures from my past. I still think you should expect the worst and say 5gph and if you get more than that you got yourself a bonus. If you are on an efficient arch I would add to the gph. Either way the bigger pan is gonna save you time until you tap more trees cause you know you are gonna. ANd by no means would I try to discourage a man on a maple mission.

[Loun]

I will be using a cinder block arch for now so I dont expect a huge efficiency. If I can get 8-9 gph I will be more than happy out of the 2x4 pan at this point. That brings my expected boiling time down to like 6 hours a day which I think is a TON more doable for me than the 10 hours I was looking at :)

Thank you guys for the help.

-Lou

[Brent]

The difference in hours won't seem much the first few days of the season. In fact you likely love it. But as the weeks go on the long hours start to wear you down. Add in hours for cleaning the pan before you can light the fire. I'd be trying hard to find the money for the biggest pans you can get.

[RileySugarbush]

8 plus on a 2x4 flat is reasonable. Use a grate and a little blower under it and it's almost certainly going to be better than that. Because a block arch has relatively poor draft, after a while you will end up a pile of coals on the grate and your rate will drop a lot. The blower will prevent those coals from building up by providing lots of oxygen at the bottom of the fire.

Also, in your block arch, force the fire up towards the pan about 20 inches back with a stack of firebricks. That makes a huge improvement. To keep your concrete blocks lasting a little longer, get some of those L shaped pieces that form rectangular heating ducts and hang them down on the inside walls of the arch. Set your pan on the top short leg to hold them in place. It keeps a remarkable amount of heat off the blocks and they only cost a couple of dollars each.

[Loun]

"get some of those L shaped pieces that form rectangular heating ducts and hang them down on the inside walls of the arch. Set your pan on the top short leg to hold them in place."

Im lost in regards to this part. I guess I just cant picture it. Also how does one hold the firebricks in place? If I wanted to line the fire box with them, how would I do that? chicken wire or something to hold them together or? I imagine just dry stacking them would cause them to fall over?

Thank you a TON this is helping a lot.

-Lou

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I would say that 5pgh for a 2x3 is somebody trying to discourage you. You should with ease get 1.8 gallons of evaporation rate per square foot of pan. I used a 2 foot square pan and boiled and checked the rate several times a day and it was always 1.5 gallons British per square ft. Thats 1.8 US gallons.
Therefore a 2x3 pan should boil between 10 and 11 US gallons a hour and a 2x4 pan should beat 14 gallons a hour US.
The better you can get the heat on the pan and keep up a good boil the better your going to do. If you can ever get flue pans you can expect better then that for the same size pan.

If you are getting 10 to 11 gph on a 2x3 pan, then you are getting way above what most others could dream off. Guys with half pints and blowers on them can't normally get that. Usually 5 to 7 gph is about the normal rate. Not saying you can't get 10 to 11 gph, but that's about the highest number I have ever seen. Definitely not likely to see that, especially starting out.

[Big_Eddy]

I use a 2x3 pan on a cinder block arch. I run about 1" deep, and usually fire it heavy every 20 minutes - reasonably dry wood, all less than my wrist in diameter. No blower, good grate and good draft. I remove ashes every day.

Consistently - a 14 hour day gives 60-75 gals (CDN) boiled off (that's 75-95 US Gals) and leaves me with 1/2" of syrup left in the pan. Avg 5-6.5 US gals/hr including start up and shut down. I do go in for lunch, but it's fired pretty steady all day.

Two things to think about.
More length = more evaporation for the same amount of time and the same amount of wood. A 2x4 burns no more wood than a 2x3 and you're going to get 30% more evaporation in the same time. That's good.

What's bad is that it also takes 30% more sap / syrup in the pan to keep to as reasonable depth. Not a problem when you're starting, but a problem at the end of the day. 1/2" is as shallow as you want to run syrup in a 2x4 flat pan, and 1/2" equates to roughly 2.5US gals. In other words - unless you plan to do a lot of finishing off the fire, you need about 100gals US of sap to start. With 50 trees - that can be a challenge. Of course you can store your "almost syrup" from one day and add it to the pan at the end of the next day (add at the end of the day- not at the start - lots of reasons why) and only finish every 2 days.

I run 100 trees. It's nuts with a 2x3 flat pan. But for 50 trees I think a 2x3 is about right. If you want to go bigger - you'd be much better off adding a 2x2 or 2x1 in front, rather than having one bigger pan. But I don't think you'll need it until you add more trees.

Just my opinion after 20 years with the same setup.

[steve J]

I rin a 2x3 and was getting 6 gallons per hour with very dry wood prior to modifying my arch now I can get a whopping 8 gals out of it and I am tapping 110 trees and killing myself I need a bigger arch badly buy the 2x4.

[Loun]

I am planning on buying an inexpensive turkey fryer for finishing. I dont think the finishing side will be too much of an issue. Those numbers help me see how things shake out though. I upgraded my order last night to the larger pan. There will be at least 2 days a week that I will not be around to boil so I will be playing catch up on that third and 4th day im sure. The bigger pan will help with that.

[Brent]

I hope the new pan will had some dividers like the Leader Half Pint. With that you can set up some real flow that will get you to "near syrup" at the draw off point.

[Toblerone]

In my last year with a cinderblock arch, we carefully pointed a shop vac set to "blow" towards the fire. Carefully meaning far enough away so that the plastic hose didn't melt and yet still effective. The pans really got to rockin then. If you ever try that make sure to have some good defoamer, especially when closer to final density, as it can really foam up in an instant. One downside is that it did kick up a lot of ashes and some did make it into the syrup.

However you do it, you will have fun for sure. Good luck.

[RileySugarbush]

Im lost in regards to this part. I guess I just cant picture it. Also how does one hold the firebricks in place? If I wanted to line the fire box with them, how would I do that? chicken wire or something to hold them together or? I imagine just dry stacking them would cause them to fall over?


If you follow this link and watch the little video you can see the short leg of the galvanized duct work that our pans were sitting on. Home Depot has them and a pair is intended to slide together and form a rectangular air duct for home heating. Cheap and effective. They will also hold your fire brick in!

I suggest you use full bricks on end to hold your grate up, then use splits ( half thick bricks) up to the top and capture them with these sheets. Even though the fire bricks do not need these for protection from the high temps, like you say, they will fall over if just dry stacked in a block arch.

http://web.mac.com/jabushey/iWeb/Riley%20Retreat/Sugaring%202006.html

[KenWP]

I am hopeing for 9 gallons a hour this year with one two square foot flat pan and two two square foot drop tube flue pans. I think the back pan might end up as a really hot preheater. If it at least boils some I will be time ahead as i will have two pans boiling hard and one simmering. I just go by what I was able to do but I would think the fire under a 2x4 pan would have to use some serious wood to keep things boling hard.

[Just for fun]

When yoy say a 2x3 is good for 50 taps that is considering you boil every day or second day but for someone like me who can only boil on weekends and plan to tap 30-35 taps should I build a 2x4 or stick with a 2x3..

2018 15 taps -> 20gal/week first year doing it and half of my taps were leaking so I plan for approximately 30-35taps and expect 50-60gal/week... That would take 12hours if I plan my evaporation rate at 5gph on a 2x3 flat pan.

The beauty of the thing is I am building my arch and pan so I can build it to whatever I want.. I think next year I want 50 trees and that would be my max.. Converting a woodstove into an arch just need to decide between 2x3 or 2x4. Should I make a 2x3 with a 2x1 pan in the front or just straight 2x4 and finish on stove inside house. I feel like a 2x4 would be a little more forgiving if I get distracted in the house. I have 4kids thats why 12hours is a long time to just focus on one thing

[ecolbeck]

If time is limited I would suggest a bigger pan. For example, I ran a 18x48 pan with small RO and could process sap at 20 gal per hour. That way I could boil a 100 gallon midweek run in a 5 hour evening.

Based on previous experience, I believe that a 2x3 pan can get 9 GPH on a well designed arch with a blower.

[steve J]

I have boiled on both 2x3 and 2x4. The 2x3 with no blower is about 6 gph and as said above with a blower I would guess 8 to 9. I currently have a 2x4 with a blower. Last year with flat 3 section pan I was getting 12 to at times 14 gph. But the last week of season I had a new Leader Supreme Pan and was getting about 18 gph. I think with some tweeking that I am doing I may get 20 gph out of the supreme pan.

[Woody77]

I have heard 5gph for the 2x3 what kind of gph would I be looking at with a 2x4?

I did a search for 2x4 gph and I dont know if the terms were too short but nothing came up. Thank you!

Im trying to see if with 50 taps it makes sense to go with a 2x4 instead of a 2x3 or if the difference would be minimal

-LouI believe the simple answer is a gallon per hour per square foot of pan .
So you would gain 2 gallons per hour. That's a 33% increase for $75

[maple flats]

Another thing to realize is that even with a flat pan, the 2x4 will likely consume the same or nearly same wood as the 2x3, you gain evaporation rate with little or no additional wood burned. The longer the useful portion of the arch, the more efficient it is.