Brian- its not as good as my syrup!!;) hehe lol
but at least your making syrup, its froze up hard around here cold wind to, bringing wood in was actually a chore today, brrrrrrrrrrrrr
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Brian- its not as good as my syrup!!;) hehe lol
but at least your making syrup, its froze up hard around here cold wind to, bringing wood in was actually a chore today, brrrrrrrrrrrrr
Bryan glad to hear that you are back up and running. I like the small evaporator and RO idea though. Somehow it seems to be a lot easier to cut a cord and half of wood for the season and let the RO do the work. I should be at 700 taps by early season and up to 1000 or more next year. The only change I want to make is to add another membrane to the RO. You make the second best tasting syrup around, I make the best!
im telling you guys............ mines best over all the rest :)
been chipping away at the to-do list-
got my thermostatically vac. pump control wired up today...thanks to powerdub for the help- worked well in the shop- hopefully does the same in the field- then cleaned and lubed releaser
also soldered a 90 copper elbow on the bottom of galv. stock tank so drains better...
tomorrow cleaning boil, more taps, possibly trailer-hitch mounted dump station
10 day forecast still looks cold here...
Theron- The Lone Ranger and his trusted side kick Taunto are on the way HI HO Silver and away
went and put in some drops thought i could finish off the pipe i had up allready wit 35 drops, hahahaha i needed like 65 well i think thats a good thing, so i got to sit down and go through the tubing scaps and make some drops, oh yea borrowed the big loader tractor and went up to the house and cut 6 2ftx 3ft logs, for the tank to sit on got them into the pples drive way in which my tank line will go down to, got 4 of them up using my good old rubber maid sled that i used to use when i went sledding back a few years, now adays shes hauling trash barrles full of sap and 250lb logs good rugged sled, i got 4 of them up to the tank shed then i ran out of steam and called it a day, to tuckered out to do the other 2
My plans have moderated. I was hoping for 800 this season, I still have to count my new section but I am thinking I might only have 650 for 09. Hopefully the count will be closer to 700 but I don't think so. Now I am finishing final prep to be ready to tap with the next thaw as. I am going Monday to pick up a new woods tank and will set it Tuesday. Should have the sugarhouse ready with everything cleaned up and ready to go tomorrow if all goes well. At least the snow in the woods has now gone down enough and the crust is hard enough that I seldom broke thru today. That made walking easier for sure. I just finished connecting my laterals and adding the last few drops today before calling it quits.
Just finished up a 2hr boil this evening.
The trees ran alittle today and with the sap I collected yesterday it made it worth while to boil it down. These past 2 days of 50 & 60 degrees days with winds blowing at 30mph really shut the trees down.
Last night we got back down below freezing and with today in the low 40's and to already below freezing I have a good feeling about tomorrow.
We added another 31 taps in the yard sugarbush around the sugarhouse. This is Mikes project the I will need to gather:) I like gathering some buckets so it wont be too bad. He and I finished getting the new tires on the A-100 Wheel Horse today and he had fun in the snow. Some pictures on the photobucket.
Should finish all the taps this week before the next run.
Evaporator is drained and the sap is above 12% in the 10 (5 gallon) buckets. Rinsed the rig down and ready for a clean start up.
Changed the draw of to the right side on the rig.
Chris
It was a productive weekend. Got me my feed tank plumbed and once I get my float box back I'll be able to connect it and do a test fire. I started wiring my sugar house...need some more parts and should have it completed on Saturday. Installed some more laterals and should be over 350 total taps. Getting closer to my goal of 500.
It's been over 32 most of the past two weeks...wondering if I should've tapped already...
BIGSAP UPDATE NORTHEAST PA- Been struggling. Ive had two nights of 8 hour sleep in around 8 days Id say. Usually 4 or 5 between syruping and work for the power co with the storms. Yesterday was a tough one. Nothing worked right. Im fighting freezeups everywhere and this is a tough time to sugar but like a wise old sugarmaker(Parker) says you gotta WANNNNN it. I had roughly 5000 gallons of sap this week to boil this weekend and Mike Christian and Jerry came down and helped me. I cant express the appreciation I have for them to do that. Yesterday we just couldnt get anything to go right. Freezeups were the first part, I have to pump my sap from the bush across the road and it is taking some finagaling to get it reliable. Then this happened. I had the vac running and Im all tired and I go over to lift the flap at the bottom of my double bernard to see if its full of ice and it happened to be the one with the 27" on it. Wrong move. Explosion, The float hit the top of the releaser so hard it almost blew the top off. Destroyed the linkage on top. Then the RO just would not perform at all. Terreble numbers for output and Im not sure if the membrane isnt good or What. Then couldnt get any perfomance out of the evap. Finally gave it up and had a beer and that was really the only good thing that happened to me all day. Went to bed at 1230 got up at 0430 and went back to work. Drained the flue pan and block and tackled it up and had a look. Flues were terreble becouse I cant get my brush back far at all. Cleaned them all out and then Jerry saw that the opening at the end of the arch in the brick was too far back. Took the bricks out and put everything together. Then Jerry had done a super wash on the RO the night before so that was ready to go. Had 2000 gallons of concentrate to do. Fired up the RO big numbers. Ran it all day and the output stayed great so no membrane issue. Now I know how to run and clean it so it will really perform great. The evap is a totally different rig. The boil is unreal. I actually made 20' of stainless stack copper to the top hat. Just stuff the wood right to it. Basically Im doing an honest 600 gallons per hour with the ro running and the boil. Its all 15% when it hits the evap and I think thats going to be the magic number. So this is what I came up with for the week. I sent 150 gallons north with Jerry, Ive got probly 20 in the evap. Took off another 5 after he left and theres probly 500 gallon of 2% down the road. So Id say Ill probly be at 185 for the run. The 150 is 6600$ and Ill tell you what every little bit helps. I feel like Im getting a handle on things now. Nobodys got better friends than I do. Between Matt and Russ coming down last weekend and Jerry and Mike this weekend Ive learned more about sugaring than I would years on my own. Hope everyone likes the stories. Zar
Just think you were also planning on having alot of buckets about six months ago and we were telling you, you would need about 4 people to do the collecting every day.
You can catch up on the sleep in April
Keep up the good work
Keith
Zar, I don't ever go by one of your posts!! So keep those stories coming! As we all are sitting here waiting for our season to start it's great to get here about you guys that are making syrup!! Just don't work your self sick!! That won't help your situation.
Jim L
Looks like cold weather for a few days, so dumped the sweet back in the front pan and made another 4 gallons of dark amber today. Was a great day to boil as the sun was out and the sugarhouse was very coimfortable.
Mike tore up the place with the WH A-100 Dragging the dog around the yard in the wood wagon.
He also canned up the 8.5 gallons of medium for tapping payment.
We ate pulled pork with maple BBQ glaze for early dinner.
Then traveled south the see Father and Son to assist in hanging some 3/4 inch main line. Very nice looking set up Jim and Chase will have this year. They are not going to tap for a week or more.
Got some 5/16 from Jim to finish the last 20 taps on Old Albion road north of town. Looks like we will be just shy of 500 taps for 09. Still have some tapping to do just prior to the next warm up to complete all the drilling.
Regards,
Chris
I just got in from boiling, collected 215 gal of sap today, most of which ran yesterday. This was the third boil we've had, for a total of about 800 gal of sap so far. We added another 93 taps today on tubing, for a total of 756 taps so far. I'd like to go to 900, but if we get a good season I'll run out of wood.
I'm just going to pick up a new woods tank tomorrow and will set it Tuesday. Then, after rinsing the evap today I still need to final clean everything and I am ready to tap with the next thaw. I may add some more taps this week because the forcast has all week below freezing except for a few hours Wednesday. Might be i can get more taps in on my new bush yet. Like to hit 800 total but it doesn't look real good. In the woods the snow is not a factor in most spots anymore. It has settled/melted/whatever enough that many areas I can walk on top if the temp stays below 32. If it gets above 32 it is tap time. I should be able to tap everything in 2 days once I get started. I have 2 decent cordless drills, 2 batteries for one and 3 for the other. I look forward to seeing what it runs like into a tank with good slope and near 400 taps on line there. The most I ever had on one line before was 70 something. And it will really get good next year if I get vacuum. RO first then vacuum, hope i can do both in same season.
Thanks Theron for a fun time, just got home
I got almost 300 drops in the woods today. One more day should finish up the hill. Then several hundred reds to hook up in the lowland, and a bunch of screwing around to do making connections, setting tank and vacuum pump, run pipes to saphouse, etc. Hoping to be ready by March 1.
Tim
Got the new rig moved into the sugarhouse today.
Took the pans off, unloaded the loads of stuff into the sugarhouse. Spent the rest of the day with a wire wheel and went over all the iron, and then hit it with a rattle can. Looking pretty nice now.
Cleaned out the ash pit and removed the grates and cleaned below. Had one side of the brick fall out during the move. So I got them back in place and just have to put the pans on and clean them up.
Big suck is going to be here this week. Theron better hurry up and get what few runs he can till I turn that sucker on.
Hope to have the evaporator all done tomorrow so I can focus on the woods. Pleanty to do there. Hopefully things don't get going for a few weeks. This thaw is a bit weird for us, should have been about 3 weeks ago.
There is talk of roads being posted in the near future, yikes. Gotta move some wood.
Made up a list of things that needed to be done before I could tap and threw it in the trash last night. Had a good weekend and got everything on the list crossed off. I still have a small list of things to be done when I have sap but things are looking real good now.
Theron it was a pleasure to go down with Matt and help you out. I learned a lot of stuff that will help me out up here. One of the first things that I did was run a recirculation line from my RO to my bulk tank.
Matt those rattle cans make a big difference don't they. Glad to hear that you have your new rig home and that the big suck is on the way.
Runs have been slow. I've collected 113 gal. of sap over the week. I've made 1 5/8 gal of syrup. Sugar content from the reds has been low. Looking for things to improve soon.
The new rig is working great. Boiling rate is what I expected. My preheater is not keeping up now with the amount of sap I'm flowing to the pan. I may work on a parallel flow preheater during this cold spell. It keeps going on and on and on:)
Finished putting together the west pump house, and ran wire and 1.5" line for vacuum to it, and wire and 1" line for sap transfer. Connected the big lines to the vacuum pump.
Also ran wire for 1 of 5 mainlines I still want to get in before March 1. This week is a busy one at work, but I am hoping to get the releaser and tank down to the pump house and mainlines runs.
Next week the laterals and connections, then put in the drops and tap at the same time.
I am wondering THERON, do you think hyper concentrating your sap to over 20% jammed up the RO filter? I am hoping to go to 12-15% on one pass through the RO, and match the output volume from the RO to the evap rate of the 3x12.
got about 500 taped today got another 500 or so to do tomorrow my new 100 taps coming from maple pro are on back order with no sign in site so it looks like i will be not putting out the other 100 buckets i will have plenty with what i got
Jeff- I know it jammed it up. We didnt really do it the right way when we did it. I thought it was maybe not quite right overall becouse after washing it it still wouldnt perform and I had reason to believe it wasnt good to start with. It came back from CDL this year and the paperwork said it was 80%. All I could figure was must be I didnt wash it right so I just took it in stride and figured it was my fault and told them to send me another one. Then I got a call and they said there was a paper work screw up and it was 110%. So by this point I wasnt really sure what to think. So when we did it I figured if it was bad cant really hurt it, that kind of thing so we played around with it. The way we did the first stuff was we recirced a long time bringing everything up. Well, we had 4000 gallons and it ran a long time. Then we pinched it down hard and put it up in the head tank at that high percent. That did clog things up. Well after being mean to it like that it really needed a serious wash not the way I was doing it. Jerry showed me how to really wash it so it was clean and when Jerry did it we had 5000 gallons. We recirced that till it was pretty sweet and did a really really good wash. We also rinsed it every 4 hours. Then we went back to recirculating it and fired up the evap and as I needed some concentrate we would shoot some up there but we would leave it at the recirc settings. Like half and half. So we were not jumping it way up when we put it to the head tank just putting it in at the same level. We would get a little ahead of the evap and send it back to the tank again to recirc. After a little while everything in the recirc tank became so sweet that you could put it all to the head tank and when you did you still didnt have to pinch it down hard. So when we did it that time we never probly concentrated as hard as I would have even if I single shot it just to 8%. Most that whole day running like that the R.O. either exceeded the rating of the machine or at least matched it. At the very end as everything became so sweet I think it dropped to 480 and that was after a good long time of doing it. That batch leveled out at the end to be going in the headtank at 15% and I think that is the magic number for my machine and setup. Thats about as good as I can get with my rig without hurting it. I think the only way you could go higher would be with a bigger machine which I wish I had but I dont so thats that for now. At the 15% I couldnt tell any taste difference what so ever. I think the 22% stuff tasted lighter like light beer compared to a lager or something like that. It tasted good but not as flavorfull to me but that was our first syrup too so who really knows. I know maple grove considered it just as valuable to them as the stuff I did at 15%. I wish I had more rig and make it all to 22%. Less wood, less time, more profit, what the heck. If the customers happy Im happy. Theyll mix it with everything under the sun anyway and if I send them stuff done to 8% theyre not offering me a premium or anything. Anyway thats the story. Should have put it in the RO section but maybe others will like the info. Theron
Hi Jeff
It wasn't anything to do with 22% sap, It was more that no one ever told Theron how to do proper washing and rinsing. We ran 22-24 percent sap at our woods for 7 years and never missed a stroke and all 6 membranes were still over 100%. That was after they had processed 30,000 gallons of syrup.
Even at 5 % you need to wash and rinse the right way. This is not Theron's fault either as he was never told how to do a proper wash and rinse. I don't think he is going to have much problem's now, I would certainly head for 22% sap again with his unit just as long as he keeps on the 4 hour max and then rinse and do a good cleaning at the end of every day. No matter how much you concentrate to a clean RO is a happy RO
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff E
I would also like to say that I had a great time down there to Therons making "Pennsylvannia Fancy", meeting some new people, sharing good stories about previous encounters, talking deer hunting and fishing, and best of all seeing what can happen to releaser when you force a flapper open under vacuum, I am just sorry I missed it. You can't say that I am not able to see into the future though as I just happened to bring another releaser with me.
Hung the last 20 taps on short run tubing north of Albion. Hope to tap the last 86 on Wednesday. Jim Bortles I did not use a inch of the tubing you gave me:) I ended up with 2 feet of tubing left from what I had laying around.
May go with Keith to check on tank he is going to look at tomorrow night.
Things are starting to look like syrup season. Temps may come up enough for a run mid week.
Doing paper work tonight making labels for jugs and glass.
Regards,
Chris
Chris,
Thanks with the help with the main line last night. Now I'm ready to string the laterals and hope everything flows the right way.
Hang on to that roll of tubing, it may come in handy for that next 100 taps you find. Spent today finding plugs for the poly tanks. Had some luck at the Western Reserve Co-op in Andover, Ohio. Fixed me up with what he could and sent me to a plumming supply store for the rest. Now my woods tanks are ready. Weather looks like one or two days of minimal run mid-week then another cold spell. Maybe I'll be tapping on my birthday instead of boiling.
Jim
Dave y you crazy bucket dumper- Where the heck are you, we need a status update soon? Theron
went and got my 450 gal tank that comes with my evap on sunday, me and my moms boyfriend got it out of the truck and over a snow bank, but just us alone werent going to get her up into the woods, we went back and got the pans for the evaporator and brought them home, i went back up that night and took the bricks out of the back part of the arch, went back up last night and decided we ought to take them out of the front to, i was going to leave them in and use a tractor to lift it into the truck because in the fire box of a 3x8 theres only like 200 lbs of bricks, but the mortar was loose in the bricks around the fire box so i took them out last night, (kindof funny the fire box bricks were fire brick and their mortar was loose but the bricks in the back were red brick and their mortar was rock solid, took about 2000 blows with the hammer to get those out) but i gues a slab for the evap is going in this week, maybe.... my moms boy friend is handleing that part so we will see, if its not in by friday im going to go get my arch and put it in the sugar house my way slab or no slab, then on sat i will brick it ( idont know how but im going to learn in a hurry, probably will just take some mortar and the bricks and just do it, shouldnt be to hard) i want the evap, set up and ready to go because i leave for FL on sunday morning and dont get back until 4pm march 1st ive got to get the carpenter back becasue the roof jack isnt the same pitch as my roof and he didnt build the jack up to match the pitch, so if i put the stack through it it would be slanted side ways, gotta clean the tanks and get them sittuated and plumbed gota move the materials pile out of the way of the door to the sugar house for the supposed cement truck, then gotta get some 1" and run it down to a drive way, i want to get that stuff DONE before i got, YES I HAVE LOTS MORE TO DO BUT THOSE ARE THE NECESSITIES before i go so i can process what ive got up, i will finish adding taps after i tap, when i get back i gues, lots of fine tuning and adjusting needs to be done, (i.e. fixing sags in the older lamb laterals, need to drive a couple of posts where my main line crosses my log road as thats not supported by wire so i can still use the road) and other stuff, got alot to do and i have found my self running through the woods with out knowing it, and moving faster than ever with out purposely trying to, hmmmmm maybe sugaring adrenaline?
hung two buckets today that are on our two earliest running trees- check tonight at 5:30 pm and about a cup of sap in each...glad to know were not missing anything yet...
got them all tapped today the count is 972 tapps and maybe another 25 buckets but will see how tomorrow run will go befor i tap more
Boyd,
Yikes 972, we are about half as many and that's plenty for a part time job.
I think I may gather tomorrow afternoon just to get thing cleaned up. there may be several gallons out there?
I did get the last of the taps in tonight just at dark, and the count is around 530-550? so that may help provide a little more syrup if the season is good.
Chris
Chris,
Put that roll of tubing to work. I know you can hit 600!
Still not the right weather here to tap, SO..... I decided to add more taps. I picked up another 300' of mainline and some 5/16. Busy with a honey do tomorrow but will put that up Thursday (or get it started). Just extending my line up into my new bush farther and to maintain 2% rise I am getting higher on the side of the hill. Will now have about 50% missed until I add vacuum on the new part. Will need sap ladders to get those. The 10 day forcast looks like next week about Thursday to tap unless they revise again. If this keeps up I really might actually hit my 800 tap goal for this season yet.
Dave K, Sounds like you are going to be right at the planned tap count hope the sap flows don't swamp you. Or like you say the boil time will be a little longer.:)
Regards,
Chris
Well this was the 1st chance that I had to do an update!
The sap has been running down here, it is all I can do to keep up with the sap and boil what I get that day, well today was the day I couldn't do it.
I somehow picked up the flu and that is what did it! I have about 30 gals yet to boil so that will be about 3 hrs worth.
The temps for the next 7 days look just as good as the past 7.
It sounds like more and more of you'all are getting ready to go or just started.
Theron it sure sounds like you are representing PA nicely! You go get that BIGSAP! I know I sure am trying down here.
Might be a little early, but i'm tapping this weekend.
I have been out of town and under the weather the last few days. I am ready to tap and will begin to do so tonite after work. I hope to be tapped out by the 1st of march.
Dave Y- Good to have you back. Hope you get to feeling better soon. Take plenty of time to recoop. Say like till this evening then theres one thing you need to do. GO!!!!!GO!!!!!GO!!!!!! TAP!!!!TAP!!!!!TAP!!!!!GET THOSE BUCKETS IN THE AIR!!! BIGSAP!! BIGSAP!!!! Theron