Theeeeron,
you are a nut!!!
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Theeeeron,
you are a nut!!!
chris part time job this is all i do have not really worked sence befor x-mas
weather looks good will go out around 4 to see how they ran got a line on a 3x10 raised flue grimm hood and preheater for next year if it make my sugar house home i will be looking for about another 2000 taps for next year
Dave- I hope you have lots of wood with all those buckets! I still question that 25" of vac will beat those things. How much syrup are you hoping to make this year with all those taps? Do you have enough tanks to keep ahead of it till you get caught up with the boiling? Hopefully next week youll be lighting a fire with the weather warming up better get those suckers hung. Theron
Theeeron,
I have 31cords of wood and about 8,000 gals of storage.Once I light afire this year It wont go out till the season is over. I am going to have to hire a man to run the evaporator while I sleep and days I will be forced to go to my day job. I already have about 6 people on the pay roll be sides my volunteers. Just so you will sleep easier tonite, I put out 300 taps after work today.
Dave- Thats what I wanted to hear. 300 buckets- 1200 gallons of sap, now were talkin. Your poor evap is going to be getting some payback. What do you do if you have to shut down for cleaning sand and stuff like that or do you have a spare syrup pan? Your neighbors are going to be wondering what the heck is going on over there. Therell still be steam in June. I dont know If I should hope for a good year for you or not. If you get a good year you get lots of money but your going to be darn near dead by summer. You need a great big rig with a free source of fueloil or something. You ever look into burning waste oil or that kind of thing? Then you could get a super big evap with guns and do it fast but not go bankrupt. Seems like you could get tons of waste motor oil or somehow burn the cooking oil. They pretty much give those big rigs away just need some cheap fuel. Theron
Theeeeeron your killing me with sap envy. Weather here does not open up to tapping till end of month I wanna TAP trust me I REALLY WANNA TAP. I just don't wanna boil snow. If you are missing any sap in that little tank you have it is NOT LEAKING it could be in my holding tank. If I could only figure out how to get it here I would rid you off that evil sap you have on vac. Kidding aside I'M JEALOUS. Keep us sapless bums updated.
3rdgen- Ill keep you guys updated but were shut down for now. Be pretty quiet probly till middle of next week. Then Ill get some BIGSAP updates going. Like to keep you guys psyched up. Theron
Treeeeeeron,
300 taps not 300 buckets. the buckets wont go out until after the tubing is tapped. I tapped buckets first last year and ended up with 500 blocks of ice. I don't want that to happen this year. as far as waste oil or veggie oil goes there aren't enough places around here to collect any of those products.besides the only way i am going away from wood is when my kids put me in the nursing home, and that aint happening as I will die first!
DaveY- HARDCORE!!!! THE BUCKETMASTER!!! I LOVE IT!!! There is a 6x18 in the latest Maplenews for $1200,,Stainless pans to boot,,802-461-7664, I just saw the ad,,never seen the rig,,,but that would give you a littel R&R,,,or time for MORE BUCKETS!!!
I like that BUCKETMASTER thing. Someone tells me their running a thousand buckets I sit up and take notice. Thats SERIOUS! Ive told Matt what buckets will do down here and he shakes his head. I used to have a tree when I was a kid that would fill 3 4 gallon ones before I got home from school and then do it again that night maybe. Sap was running into the bigbelly this morning. It was 33 degrees but had been like that most of the night I think. May get some today. Only going to be 35 but thats all it takes if its already thawed out. West wind too. Took 3 nights off Parker gotta try to get back at it. Lots to do. Got to get back to WANNNNNNNNNNTIN IT! Theeeeron
No doubt buckets will make sap better than gravity. But I had to put up tubing so I wouldn't wear my self out. At my age you have to pace yourself if you want to get to the finish line! I will put out 300 more taps after work today. I hope to be tapped by the 25 or 26th. Parker I have already looked at a 6x16 wood eating monster about 100 miles from home. the only thing that is keeping me from buying it,is a building to put it in. And then if i did have it I would add more taps. there is no end to this crap. Its like if i dont have wood to cut or buckets to empty or sap to boil, or get ready to boil I have nothing to do!
got the tank up on its blocks today, going to run the line down to the nieboring drive way today, i cleaned the tank and found out i not only have to paint the rust spot but the whole tank, as the old aluminum paint the previous owner put on is starting to chip off, bought some latex based aluminum paint yestarday, uncle said it shouldnt matter a whole lot because sap wont be in it much more than 6 or 7 hours, i really dont know any thing about it, but i dont have a replacement tank i cant just throw over there, so im stuck with this one.
DanO,
Instead of painting the tank you could put a sheet of plastic in the tank. when the the season is over throw away the plastic and get a new tank.
Dave Y , u must get pretty tired with all thoes buckets!!! you must have tons of maples in ur area,
Does anyone have a drop line maker that they are not using currently? I've got about 1700 more to do and wouldn't mind borrowing one to shorten the burden. Send me a message if you do.
Glad we still have a few months before sugaring season, right?
Matt, I have one,But there was just a big lay off were she works !! I don't think she would appreciate me loaning her out to do more work on top of what they just dump on to her!! LOL
Jim L.
boiled my first boil today did not get any syrup off but will go to sugar house tomorrow to fire up the finisher had to work out a lot of kinks today but got it running smooth learned a lesson today befor checking to see if the exhaust fan is free make sure it is turned off cause when i trunned it by hand it turned right on tore up my gloves bad good thing a had them on cause it could of been my hand
Jim-
Sounds like you have the deluxe model. I'm just looking for the simple bench, desktop mounted one. I wouldn't know what to do if I had one like you got.
Plus shipping might really be expensive.
Matt, I find that this deluxe model talks back too !! Got try figure whats wrong with it one of these days.
Jim L.
NH Maplemaker,
Did your unit come ready to make drops.
Mine needs a kit to get it to make them!!!
Dave
well its been a crappy day anything that could go wrong did. first sap feed line froze so i had to jimmy up something finally i got sick of it freezing so i stacked a couple buckets and put a hose into a 5 gal bucket and did it that way. doors would not keep the smoke in the fire box or the fire for that matter. got burnt; grabbed the door and there was a hole in the glove and burnt me pretty good. but im sure everybody has these days
maplekid i had the same day i had the rope brake on the stack cover and the cover close filled the shack full of smoke
Casey,
If things go right, and they seldom do, I will handle my buckets twice this year. Once when I put them up and once when I take them down. I hire young fellas like you to empty them for me. And yes there is a good amount of maple in my area.
I managed to get 400 more taps in tonite, only 2300 more to go!
some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you!
Dave y,How much syrup to you make a year? u must boil 24/7 without a r/o
Casey,
last year I had 1800 taps. 700 buckets made 445 gal. I hope to hit 600 this year. I usually don't quit till the sap stops running or I run out of wood.
You eventully going to go vac ? i hope to make around 300 gallons to get things going, il have around 900 on vac this year and a r/o will help out alot since i have a 2x6 how many taps do u plan on having? you going to get a r/o or bigger evap?
Managed to work up a little ambition today and ran 1200 more feet of slow measured growth(3 quata main line). Got about 150 misc taps or so that I really need to get on line. Pretty much pressed for time so this stuff is going in on the quick. Just got to get it to the big belly Ill make it fancy this summer. Now that Ive got the belly in the sugarhouse I can put my double across the road so I need to do that. Then I have to make a better fix for my filter press and I should be pretty well set. Then its leak patrol or boiling till she quits running. Making quality product takes a lot of time even the kind of product I make takes a lot of time. Have plenty of time to rest after season. Cant wait for the first big run. Were bypassing the BIGSAP and going right to SH$#ASTROPHE SAP! Theeron
Trying to stay warm in the deep freeze again.:) May have tapped to early? Time will tell!
Casey,
I am maxed out at this level. There are a lot of things that need to happen before I get any bigger. I had thought about an RO but I am backing off on that at this time. I am leaning towards a bigger evaporator. Along with more boiling capacity. I plan to ad vacuum. But I do not like to bank on just one thing so I will hang on to buckets as long as I can.
Sap ran last night, my dad gathered 360 gal this morning, boiled it this afternoon and was finishing when I got home from work at 6. Total for the season is about 1200 gal sap. Used our new 7 inch filter press for the first time tonight, filled two five gal jugs and left another five gal or so in the bottling tank.
Today seems to have been losy for some of us. Well it was for me also. I broke my UV lamp when I was taking it off the wall to clean the quartz tube.
Not going to kill me but it's around a 100 bucks for a new lamp. Now I need to make an extra 2 gallons to pay for it.
keith
Dave, I'm like you. I may get 1000 on tubing this spring, but still plan on running at least 500 buckets. Can't stand to lose those big roadside producers! Now whether I'll have time to collect them or not remains to be seen.
Tim
Yesterday went better for me than for some of you. I did manage to have the tractor and trailer slide down a hill backwards with both wheels spinning madly trying to climb...luckily everything stayed straight and I found another way around to get out of the woods. Got a lot accomplished Finished the last of my ladders and lifts. There are of 23 of them bringing a total of almost 800 taps into the vacuum system. Got my dump and measuring system for purchased sap set up. Will be able to unload the sap, filter it and measure gallons. It will then flow by gravity into a storage tank before the ro. By using the measure tank for storage also, I will have 1400 gallons of storage space at the sugar house and an additional 1700 gallons in the bush.
Got most of the plumbing done on the ro. Need a couple more fitings and she is set to go. In the afternoon, I moved my old hydrovac back to my new bush and got it plumbed in to the system. Had to drain the old gas and start fresh but then it fired right up. Was pulling 25 and 1/2 inches at the releaser. Better than it ever did last year. I have a shorter rum between the pump and the releaser and a larger pipe.
Whats left? finish plumbing the head tanks to the evaporator. Put in about 100 more saddles. Put in some line fittings. Plumb my new vacuum pump to my front bush and set up the tanks and releasers. Oh yeah, farm taxes are due March 1. Maybe I had better get at my bookwork. But this sugaring stuff is much more fun......
Doug
Sapman,
Dont worry you will have plenty of time to empty buckets. You can send anyone to pump tanks for you while you are empting buckets.:)
Doug- Sounds like your pretty darn close to being ready especially for all you had to do. Does it look like those guys are going to bring you a lot of sap? Theron
Theron,
Right now it looks like there will be about 1000 to 1200 buckets being hung. Not 100% sure on the last 200 yet. If my help situation crystalises (how the heck do you spell that?) I may tap 200 her at home on buckets too. I had planned on 50 for show purposes but might go for the rest. Visitors love to see the horses work!
Doug
Some of us had lousy days yesterday, Im in that boat for sure. Outer 4 wheel drive hub assembly on the deere blew up yesterday pretty cheap part only about $1700 bucks ouch. Woke up this morning to 12 inches of snow. I don't recomend john deere to anyone. I have had nothing but problems with the steering assembly and the hub assembly. I have replaced that hub once already along with the ball jaoint 3 times and the steering arm twice. Yep nothing runs like a deere. Should have never traded in the old case.
Not to mention how expensive the green paint is!! Guess there are poor ones out there in all makes. My 2 cents.
Yep I paid good money for that green paint. And still kicking myself for it. Like you said though I think I got that poor one. After doing a little research for parts I found out that yanmar actually made the model I have don't know if that is the difference or not.