Need some help from you guys burning OIL

[Ethan]

Hi everyone,
This year was my first year making maple syrup and I tapped 5 trees and used a propane burner. It was a lot of fun but I would like to make something larger. I am an HVAC guy with a few oil burners and fire bricks just sitting around so that’s what I’m thinking about using. After doing some reading here this is what I’ve come up with based on guys here burning 3.00 Oil GPH with a 2’ X 6’ Pan. It looks like they get up to 50 GPH Sap Evaporation rates.
So I’m thinking:
4 sq. ft. pan but ONLY 2.5 sq. ft. exposed to the fire
Firing rate .50 to .75 Oil GPH
Sap Evaporation 8 GPH to 12 GPH

According to my chamber book the height of the chamber needs to be 12 inches for that range. How close would you put the pan to that 12 inch height? I’m going to just make the chamber taller and sit the pan on top of it but I’m not sure how close I should go? I’m going to have a pan built out of 304 SS but I’m not sure on the gauge, it looks like 18 to 20 gauge is common but do you think with the compact intense heat of an oil flame I should go thicker? If so what gauge?

Any other thoughts on this would be great. I’ve got a year to build this but I’m looking forward to getting it started. Thanks Ethan

[KenWP]

Okay if only 2.5 sq ft is exsposed to the fire whats the rest of the pan going to be doing. That sound like a pretty big heat sink to cool off the rest of the pan. You better to have the fire box and then a narrow flue for the rest of the pan then out the stack.

[Haynes Forest Products]

I have 22 guage like most pans wood or oil dont matter. Expose the entire bottom and if the chamber is 12" high and the pan is 24"x24" that wont need 3GPH nozzel I bet 1 1/2 is overkill