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Look at Johnny Cuervo's pictures. He made a pre heater that works real well, out of copper and in contact with the stack. He even regulates the temperature.
On my evaporator I must shut down when I have 18 gal of sap in the head tank. Then when the fire burns out I have ended at the perfect level. It will just take time to find where you need to shut down.
Maple Flats
Thanks, I'll check out those pictures. The first time I boiled I run the sap down to low and the batch scortched before the fire died out. The next night I stopped it with 8 inches in my head tank (55 gal drum) and it worked out just about right. By the time the fire died I still had a few inches in the head tank and no scortch.
David your a quick study. Sounds about right with the amount of sap you left in the tank for "flooding" the pans at night.
I placed a mark on my sap gage showing when to stop firing.
Chris
It went real well today. Just have got back in the house from cooking all evening and entertaining passerbys. Had a lot stop to check out the action. At 2PM we had 150 gal of sap and we started cooking. Almost pushed a batch out before we again ran out of sap. It would just float the hydrometer about 1/2 inch out of the syrup. Really too thin to register on the hydrometer. Tomorrow will be the day. I had to take my four wheeler down into the woods at 9pm and check the tank. still running.
I went ahead and wrapped the copper coil preheater with sheet metal to help hold in the heat. It raised the temp up to about 69degrees from the 35 it is in the tank, still not hot enough. Tomorrow I will line it with ceramic wool and see if that helps.
David
AFretired,
In a pinch, cover the tubes with tin, then wrap it with fiberglass building insulation.
I'm interested in those tips about the copper! I did a test run with my barren evap today and the water coming out of the copper was hardly heated up at all!