And after that last post -- sugarhouse destroyed in fire 4/1, have rebuild questions

The first thing I should say is NO ONE WAS HURT. Secondly, we should have full insurance coverage for all this, the adjustor has already been through and confirmed this, and further told me I need to get a local supplier to put together a full list of items and prices that would be current equivalents of the gear I had. If the insurance coverage does indeed work out, this is still one hell of a black eye, but it becomes a covered material loss and then it's just the hassle of planning where to move forward from here.

What happened? I don't know, and I'll never know. I had invested substantial time, effort and money in making the sugarhouse we got with the property substantially safer. The original owner had done a wood floor (who does that?) with a pretty sketchy DIY arch; I had put in a real arch, on top of extensive fireproofing and heat reflection across the entire floor under the whole length of the arch, extended well to both sides. (Arch insulation sheets on floor, with thick ceramic fireproofing on top.

I boiled on 4/1, I finished off 21 pints, I stopped feeding the fire at 5. I checked it at 7 and everything was dying down normally. I checked it at 930 and everything appeared dead. This is the same basic process I've followed for the last five seasons; I'm always cognizant that one spark in the wrong place, and, whoosh.

I woke up the next morning to smoking rubble, and while I'll never know what happened, I have to imagine a spark got somewhere, smoldered, caught on something in the middle of the night, and the whole thing probably went up VERY fast.

I was devastated; now that I know I have insurance coverage and have had some time to process, I realize:
* this is a loss of things that can be replaced and all signs point to being replaced with minimal investment from me
* this was a serious fire which could have caused a substantial, crossing-the-street full on forest fire pretty easily, and it didn't
* this was a serious fire in a building I've had my children in recently. None of us were in it at that time.
* this was a serious fire that I slept through. If I had woken and seen the thing burning, I would not have thought to pull out my insurance policy, I might well have charged in with an extinguisher like a dumbass, stepped onto an already compromised floor, gone through it, and just died horribly screaming under a flood of melting metal and burning wood.

Compared to any of the bottom 3 bullet points there, what happened is simply a tramautic loss of a space I had cared a lot about and spent a lot of time in. But, I still have all those memories. I also still have the 17gals of syrup I'd already finished, we use 5 gals a year, so that provides some, uh, runway to rebuild without running out of our own supply.

So, I am taking this in stride as best I can. My wife is in the middle of a job search. She's an architect by trade and I really want her attention and buy in on any rebuild plans, so, I need to slow my roll a little. Once we have a number agreed on with insurance we're not going to be in any particular onus to rebuild fast. I'd like to do it this year, but if it has to wait for family happiness reasons, that's going to be fine, too.

I guess I should include some gore pictures:
https://i.imgur.com/wkUlncV.png

https://i.imgur.com/aC5b3Gi.png

Okay, so, sadness and gore out of the way, here are some thoughts and questions:

* Assuming we rebuild, then we have total control over what we do. I want to make something that's both ergonomically easier for BOTH of us to use, as well as, to the extent possible in an evaporator setup, as fireproof as possible.

This brings me to the thought: Wood is a pain. We do primary home heating with wood, so I already stack and haul (twice) 6-7 cords a year for that. I don't mind it, but with sugaring I have to split the wood a lot smaller, it's just a ton of work, the fire has to be fed constantly, and wood fires simply present risks that LPG, propane, etc do not.

I dislike the smell and hassle of heating oil (we also use this in the house). Propane seems attractive to me. I know it's less cost efficient per BTU than wood, but at our scale I don't care much, spending $700 a year on fuel instead of $350 is fine, especially if it puts 40 hours of dealing with firewood back into my free time.

Insurance will only pay the cost of a wood arch replacement, so to the extent that a gas setup is more, we're on our own. That's fine.

Any input on propane arches is appreciated.

Secondly, I was on track to make like 25-30 gals this year, and I simply don't know if I want to. I got into this because the sugarhouse was here. I put up lines past what we need and then added vacuum (which burned up, but, well. Another $1200 line item on the insurance claim!).

In my head, what I'd really like, is an efficient setup that can poop out ~1-2 gals over the space of a 5-6hr boil, and also I think I want to only do 6-7 boils a year, in a way that is family-friendlier than just spending endless hours down there alone, and then to the extent I am just bleeding sap, I am happy to offer it up to any locals with a truck who find it worthwhile to come drain a ~200gal tank. Pragmatically, I probably only need 50-75 taps for what we want to do, but I already have 130 setup for vacuum and I don't see a reason to take lines down.

Evaporator advice appreciated! I am substantially likely to go with a CDL product of some kind, as I have a good relationship with my local CDL staff, have good feelings about them, and already have approached them about help getting through the insurance labyrinth here and they are super happy to help me get compensatory pricing figured out, so, I suspect if I tell them that my long plan is to actually go propane, they're going to steer me in the right direction.

Considerations: I do want a flued pan again. I don't know if I want another drop flue, or raised, but I [B]do[B] know that I do not want to have to drain the flues between every boil on nights when it's dipping below freezing. I also know there's solutions to this, some people locally tell me they put a small heater in their arch or whatever overnight.But, I am curious what the BEST solutions to that issue are.

Finally -- if we rebuild, it's going to make my wife a lot happier (and me) if we end up with something that's also usable as a detached office. In fact, I had a detached office setup in the old shack (there's another $1000 in electronics claims!) but it was pretty uncomfortable to use.

My idea is, if we rebuild a 16x12 shack, designate a 10x12 area (plus a little) as "evaporator, small RO unit, working surface for filtering and bottling, small sink". No significant insulation in this part of building.

The remaining 6x12 space would be split, such that an interior wall boxes off a 6x8 area behind a door. There would be a large glass/plexiglass observation window, between the "office" area and the evaporator, and I'd have a couple cameras to make it super easy to keep an eye on stuff from in there. This area would be fully insulated (so 6x8 prolly turns into more like 5x7 internal), set up with the same sort of monitor + internet setup I had in the old shack. During boils, this would be the "command center" where I can keep an eye on everything easily. During the rest of the year -- it's just a 5x7 weatherproof space with some kind of small electric heater in it, which can be used as a detached office by my wife or I.

So, those are my ideas and thinking now, and I am looking for any feedback before I start approaching builders.

CDL also told me they could set me up with builders who do this work, so, of course I intend to make those calls and double check whatever the insurance offer is for the structure, against actual quotes. The adjustor implied that whatever number CDL came up with for a complete rebuild of my evaporator setup and all other sugaring stuff would likely just be accepted, but, I won't know anything until I see insurance numbers.

It's likely that if we rebuild, we're going to exceed the insurance budget in any case by virtue of wanting to do the interior work I mentioned, and also have the building properly hardwired electrically to the house (small job inside the house, bigger job to bury 100' of 14g wire that needs to go down a steep hill). As much as I'd like to line all this up this summer, that may be unrealistic (and insurance doesn't care; they cut us a partial check and if we don't rebuild instantly the rest goes into escrow for long enough to deal with this next year). I know prices move fast, so waiting isn't the best plan, but I have to be real sensitive to my family needs right now because my spouse has strong opinions on this stuff but also doesn't have the mental capacity right now. So, I am doing sketches and I will be talking to builders etc, so that when she is able to think about this, I have some coherant ideas on paper.

Condolences are, of course welcome, but I think Sunday was my day of grief, Monday was the day of finding out what the general insurance trajectory looked like, and yesterday was my day of thinking through nightmare scenarios about how much worse this could have been.

Both the insurance adjustor and the guys at CDL told me not to beat myself up and that they have seen this happen a fair amount even among experienced people, but, of course it's a super feel bad to know that I was sitting in there boiling at 5, I shut it all down at 9:30, and then it turned into a pile of rubble.

Finally, I should say -- the heat from the fire was sufficient to start to melt the tarp that was covering my 240gal stainless tank. I think the degree to which the tank was full, absorbed a lot of heat, and the full infrastructure of mainlines and droplines was completely unaffected. So, that's a small blessing (those were all new mainlines, droplines and fittings this year).

And, since that is the case, even if we don't rebuild this year, it's going to be easy to collect next year and it's easy to imagine doing a couple super-oldschool boils with hotel pans on cinderblocks. that would be the total opposite of what I've been doing so far, and it could even be fun to do a couple boils that way this next year.

Condolences and good luck with your rebuild. Don't rush the process right now...take a little time to think about what and how you want to do things.

Really sorry to hear about this. It's every sugarmakers worst nightmare. Glad you have insurance to make you whole again. Keep us updated.

My condolences as well. These posts, and the posts about the loss of a loved one or close friend, are the hardest to write and the hardest to read.

Obviously, this is a significant loss, nothing is going to change that fact. However, the building and equipment can and will be replaced. And in time, the joy of planning and building the new one, along with the new memories created in the new one, will overshadow the current unpleasant memories.

Everyone on here will be looking forward to reading your "Chapter 2" of the family syrup making. Good luck with it!

Steve



Steve

I'll piggyback with "my condolences as well". I also fire with wood and have considered the same thing.

My personally, I'd stick with wood. Get a high efficiency arch with RO and you can make 150-200 gal of syrup per cord of wood, if you burn hardwood.

Don't rush this. You want to do it right from the start because you'll have to live with all of your mistakes and things you wish you did differently. I would spend time visiting sugarhouses this summer. Start contacting people on trader. I've done that before on my travels. You meet some cool people that way.

Wow, that is something that no sugarmaker wants to experience. So sorry to see all that you have lost. I agree with looking at the positive aspects and not dwell on the negative. Dr. Perkins is correct, don't rush the process right now. Good luck with whatever you do and continue to count your blessings.
Gary

That sucks. I'm glad no one got hurt. Good luck rebuilding.

And I suggest a little more space than you're currently thinking.

Where in Vermont are you located?

Ken

As everyone else has said my condolences go out to you also. I believe you have very good ideas and plans after reading what you have written. You are not going to rush into anything just so you can be ready for next year. From what it sounds like you are going to have a well layed out building, with all the features you are going need to produce syrup in the future.

First of all, I never had to experience what you went thru, sorry for your loss!
A thought, whether raised arch or drop flue, no need to drain the pans once fully sweetened, if you are running an RO, 3-4 hrs boiling concentrate and the pan is safe from all but the most extreme cold spell. In that case, just put a 100 watt lighted bulb in the firebox and no freeze issues. Size, you may want to consider more like a 14x20 up to a 16x24, especially if you want an office in that space too. Then make part of the space beside the office for a heated RO room. In my sugarhouse I built a very tight RO room, that was 3.5x5.5' in size, it was heated by an 8000 BTU wall furnace, just the pilot light heated the room until outside temps dropped to well below zero, but in such case the thermostat was set at 41F and it came on. In the 12 years I had the RO, I only once heard the furnace fire up, I think the temp was about -10F when it did. To run that furnace I added a small bulk propane tank and had the pilot on for about 7 months each year. With that (50 gal) tank I also had in the beginning a propane bottler, a 2x6 propane finisher and a propane tankless water heater and I got about 8-9 months on a filling so the cost worked out to very reasonable for what it heated, in fact before I got that small bulk tank I heated all but the RO room on 20# tanks of propane and it cost me more than what I paid for adding the bulk tank and the RO room each year. For water I used permeate and between seasons I hauled city water from home using a 275 gal IBC tote and pumped it into my 1000 gal permeate tank.
Best wishes in your planning for your future, God bless and your family.

Sorry for your loss. As others have said, don’t rush into your rebuild without doing some planning and thinking. Maybe reach out to other sugar makers of similar size and visit their sugarhouses to get some ideas. Find out what works and what doesn’t. What they would change if they were to do it over. I don’t know where you live in Vermont, but I live just over the river in NH and you are welcome to come see mine.

Sorry for your loss. As others have said, take your time and plan for a "little" larger rebuild than you feel you will need. I would plan to have off season storage for all of your equipment without being too cramped. Even though you are not doing syrup it is nice to have the room. I did and 18 x 18 addition on my garage and put an 8 x 10 kitchen in it and it is workable but would like more room to store tanks and totes in the off season. They keep much better without being in the sun. I heat my kitchen area with 1500 watt electric heaters on a "cube" thermostat. I have 2 of them on separate circuits in case one trips. I keep my RO, and bottler in there during the winter and have had not problems so far. I have 2 inches of insulation under the concrete, 4 in the walls and 6 in the ceiling. It is rare that I find the heaters on unless it is very cold out.

all very good points, thanks.

My spouse's background is in architecture (on the path to licensing). She's also very active on the local zoning board, so she has a lot on her plate. My feeling is that if I can slow my roll enough to wait to have her full attention, by that point we'll also have hard numbers (and likely an initial check) from the insurance company. If we don't rebuild this year then the remainder of the money goes into escrow somewhere to get it off the insurance books, but that's just one more piece of paperwork.

If I want to do something more grandiouse than what we had, that's obviously going to exceed insuruance funds, but I can work with local builders on that once I have numbers, and if we kick the can on this another year then I could potentially put several thousand additional dollars of my own money in (just means less funds for other hobbies etc, but that's fine and preferable to touching house money for this). Flipside, if we really design something with a fully usable year round detached office in it, then that's got significant utility for us beyond sugaring and it could be reasonable to put some house money in.

it's a lot of variables, and a lot of lessons learned, and at this point I just need to make sure I am getting a square deal from insurance and then relax and take the rest of the summer to work with my spouse on a plan for the following year. Builders around here, generally, love it if you can call them in August and say "hey, I know you're bat**** nuts until it snows, but call me as soon as it does because I have a sugarhouse to build, I have CAD diagrams and a site survey of the whole thing, and I just want to talk prices and be first on your list next spring".

Having a spouse that can generate stampable CAD drawings as well as doing a professional site survey for free, is a tremendous blessing I need to be patient enough to take advantage of :)

Also, FWIW, my thoughts of rebuilding with propane or oil are more lazy/pragmatic, than fire related. The way this sugarhouse had been built (not by me!) involved some thinking I would not repeat, and, I had taken significant steps to better fireproof it. I realize on a per gallon boiled basis it's impossible to beat wood for BTUs at a small scale, but at our scale the fuel cost doesn't really matter, I am never trying to make money off this, and the idea of an arch you just turn on and then turn off and don't need to feed a continual stream of wood into is pretty attractive.

We actually have enough syrup to hold out through the end of 2025 if I freeze some of it, haha, and if we did run out it's not like I lack sources of really good syrup here.

One thing to consider if you plan to rebuild for next season is to keep your eye out for a used evaporator and other sugarhouse equipment. Now is a good time to look as people get done the season and are selling to upgrade to a bigger evaporator. Watch the classifieds on here, Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. It will help stretch your insurance payout.