Kicking off my 2023 Season (Chassell, MI)

Well, my wife is 36 weeks pregnant and full blown maple season looks to be 1-2 weeks away for me (Chassell, MI). I took advantage of some free time this weekend and put out 47 taps and started to convert my shed to a "Sugar Shed". Tapping for me took close to all day and is a process:

1. Take a dirt shovel out to identified trees and dig out the 1-3' of snow to place a 5 gal bucket on the ground
2. Haul buckets, lids to each dug spot
3. Haul roll of tubing, drill, hammer, taps to each location and tap, cut tubing to length so it's just an inch or two into the lid of the bucket

That was all Saturday!

Sunday I started to convert my shed into a "Sugar Shed". My father let me there was a bunch of free triple wall stove pipe he had in the family camps crawl space so I spend the time digging out the entrance in the middle of nowhere and hauling all that awesome triple wall out and started my shed conversion. Pictures included below.

Next up:

1. Install cement board with spacers around the left and back side of my stove
2. Install some sort of barrier under the evaporator (Cement board, stone, something!)
3. Install chimney flashing/boot
4. Build my homemade RO (Ordered all the parts last week). Plan is to mount it directly to the shed wall with the pump under and in front of the tote. I also purchased all the fittings to take my tote outlet to 1/4" fittings
5. Add supports to existing shelving and mount a 50gallon bin to hold concentrated sap for feeding into the pan with a valve.
6. Thinking I may want another Tote for storage outside the shed, shaded side, and only pump into the shed once I'm ready to RO and Boil. (Crazy how warm the shed gets with sunlight when its still pretty dang cold outside)

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My suggestion would be to use the cement board under and on the side walls. It has worked well for me. Menards or Amazon sells a high temp flexible roof boot that you can cut to the size of your chimney pipe. It works really well whether you have a shingled or metal roof. Why do you have the 275 gallon tote inside the building? You could set that up outside on a couple of cement blocks and raise it up off the ground so you could draw off from it. That would give you more room inside.

I have the tote inside as I plan on mounting my RO inside, its not a 4x40 just a small scale 500gpd housings and membranes. The pump needs to be lower then the tote, so I placed the tote inside raised about 10".

Be sure to check clearances for your chimney. You may have to cut away more of the roof sheathing.

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Originally Posted by ecolbeck

Be sure to check clearances for your chimney. You may have to cut away more of the roof sheathing.

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Second that. I would be putting some cement board up on the rafters to protect them and the roof sheathing. Last thing you want is to catch your sugarhouse on fire.

Thanks guys, the clearance on the stack is 2" to combustibles, my boot comes in on Friday and the plan is to wrap the pipe in 2" ceramic blanket before installing the boot. I will have to cut a bit more of the roof away to fit the blanket!

Looks good to me. I would have a 5 gallon bucket of sap on stand by for fire suppersion if needed. and if that dosnt work a fire extinghsuer as last resort. at least for the first time you bring the stove up to temp.

My first week of boiling in my small sugar shack I had 2 of the wall get a bit warm and had to use ice/water to cool them off. I run 4 stoves in my shack and had to take 2 offline due to walls being to warm and starting to smoke all on there own. I put up some metal to protect the walls and all is fine now. Keep ladder outside handy if you need to climb up on roof and dump water on that if it gets to hot.

for the first start up will need to keep close eye on stuff. Mine I was 3 hours into the boil when I had wall problems. Nothing major just a bucket of water put the walls out and all was fine.

My roof is metal so didn't worry about the roof at all. I also put metal on the rafter to protect them from the stove pipe heat.

for the buckets we run twine string around the trees and put a hook on the twine string and then hang/hook the bucket to the hook to help keep the buckets from tipping over.

Use hook's from old bungee cords when the bungee cords get busted up. save the hooks and use them to hold the sap buckets from getting tipped over.