Steaming drill bits- 2012

guess I should get this thread started. We put our first taps in on feb. 6th. 400 or so tapped in by Feb 8th at our salisbury bush. No real runs their yet despite being on vacuum since the 8th. - probably 400 gallons in their all told- have not pumped out yet. Added another 275 as of Feb 14th, but vacuum their yet. All tubing with CVs. Should have another 125 in tomorrow.

Got new 802maple designed arch installed over the weekend. Lots of bricking and blanket later, and we boiled on it for the first time tonight. boils hard, gets hot quick. Need to get a stack probe thermometer to see how hot its getting. need to move blower outside as its pretty loud. Lets of tweaking to do, but love it so far.

We ran through around 1000 gals. of sap from Parker this evening- still have another 200 or so sitting in the tanks as ice. One pass through RO and it was 7%....was pretty sweat to start with with all the ice. Had to open up the output on the RO as the rig was doing a better job at keeping up.

Made about 6 or 7 gallons- looks pretty dark.

tapped a week earlier this year, and had our first boil only a few days earlier than last year, but if the arch had been in place this past weekend, we could have boiled then. So realistically we are one week earlier than last year...

Best of luck to all-

Eric

Good luck Eric. Sounds like your on your way to shorter boils and more boiling soda's. Keith & Michelle

Keith- to give you a sense of how much of a scramble its been to get things going, the PBRs that we had for boiling sodas last night were ones that we had left over from our last boil of 2011. Tasted just fine...

was at bascoms this afternoon to pick up a leader style watertight roof jack. done with them collar style roof jacks.

not much of a run here today...Kat began tapping our third bush this afternoon- should have 800 tapped by tomorrow afternoon.

With the temps that we had yesterday I'm surprised that it didn't run better.

Hi Eric, ya the roof jack is are next investment also. We didn't start getting any sap till around 2 in the afternoon. The main that runs up through the pines never started to run. Maybe 75 gallons or less. Michelle managed to lock her self in the sugar shack last night. Very pist off when she got back to the house. Door repairs for today. Keith

Keith...that's not good...is the door still in one piece?

Eric...new arch?? I didn't think you were getting one this season. Looking for a full report on how it runs and gph.

Josh- yes wasn't sure it was going to happen, but about 3 weeks ago the guy who does my welding said sure, lets do it. We copied the one Ryan, from Breezy Lane Sugarworks made with the help of 802maple. It has a high pressure blower, two dampened air circuits, and the thing just rips. The lower air circuit puts air under the fire, where we used drilled fire brick instead of grates. The second air circuit puts air to the door, above the door, along both sides just below the rails, and on the vertical wall at the end of the firebox. One layer of 8lb ceramic blanket on the sides with firebrick inside of that. Two layers of blanket around all air nozzles and in the door. I think I might try and double up the blanket because the sides do get pretty hot.

as for GPH, I could only guess based on RO output. The first night we boiled we started with about 50 gallons in the feed tank and set the RO to around 1gpm of concentrate output. The RO was not keeping up. So we set it to 1.5gpm and it was about even. So I am guessing in the 80-90gph range? All I can say is that the feed tank empties a lot faster and there is way more steam in the sugarhouse than last year.

We worked on our salisbury bush yesterday, fixing the releaser that would not reset after it dumped. adjusted the spring tension on lever arm on the main chamber cover and away we went. Pumped 300 gallons out of that tank. Picked up 300 from parker and we boiled it all in last night. Think we are in the 15-16 gal. range so far. still need to finish and filter.

Looking at the 10 day forecast it looks like it might be time to hang some buckets. Sure felt like mudseason around here yesterday. Squishy dirt roads and all. Have already heard of some towns posting their roads.

goal for today is to get second vac system up and running, then see if we have enough to boil again tonight.

Cheers-

Eric

well, didn't get the second vac system up and running yesterday as hoped. problems with the new-to-me BB4 over in salisbury set the tone for the day- lots of little set-backs. Did manage to hang probably 100 buckets with my girls- a nice antidote to vac problems- just drill a hole, put in tap, and hang bucket. Like the simplicity.

did manage to boil in 100 gallons from salisbury, 100 from putney rd, and 600 from parker. sugar content low- 1.6

after finishing and filtering, the first batch of syrup has a funny taste. need to try and pin point if it was from early sap, not enough rinse of perservative out of membrane, or something else.

vac pump repair and vac set-up this morning, then cleaning everything this afternoon once it warms up...hoping for a better day today...

-Eric

day of vacuum- reassembled BB4 after getting head valve re-machined. cleaned up and new oil, so hoping for best with that one. Got spare SP-11 head repaired as back up. Set up Putney road vac system. Need to chase leaks there once things thaw out tomorrow. quick and dirty update...

Good luck Eric. Sounds like everything is coming together over there. Why are you getting Parkers sap? Is he not up and running or to much for the mighty Marvin? Keith