2 New Home Built Evaporators - Improvements?

My Father-In-Law and I just completed a pair of barrel evaporators. Slightly different styles. It was great fun building them! We both did propane turkey fryer setups last year and we wanted to a nicer wood fired evaporators.

We both fired them today to burn off all the nasties and to see how well we could get a boil going. We were both pretty impressed (our preheaters worked especially well), but I think we can do better. We are looking suggestions what to do next. Firebrick, blowers, insulation, taller chimney, etc. What's going to give us the best bang for our buck.

I'd really like to add firebrick and a blower to mine, but I'm not sure how to configure it.

Here are some pics of the builds...(mine is the better one :) ....with the larger pan)

Attachment 8749Attachment 8750Attachment 8751Attachment 8752Attachment 8753

Here's a few more...Attachment 8754Attachment 8755Attachment 8756

nice looking rigs you both have there. You guys do the backyarder proud.

Very slick on the pre heater...

Thanks! His preheater works really good! My preheater isn't quite as good, but we need to get the pans boiling better!

climb.on,
Nice builds you will find advantages in each style. I like the pan setting on the gasket. Less chance to scorch the pan. The pan looks a little shallow if you get close to syrup. The preheater idea is a good use of the heat going up the stack.
Regards,
Chris

Insulate and add a blower. Might be tough to calculate the improvements.

I build a barrel evaporator last year with two steam pans on it for some friends. This year I am modifying it so we have a float box feeding a new pan that has dividers and a draw off. i got tired of ladling.

Congrats, those look AWESOME!!!

I'm picking up firebrick and ceramic blanket insulation this week. I haven't figured out what I am going to use for a blower yet...I need to keep the cost real low on the blower. I think I'll utilize the door vent to attach to, or blow into. I'm going to lay the insul/brick in the bottom of the barrel, build a grate just above the vent. That way, when the blower air will shoot between between the brick and the bottom of the fire.

You will not need much blower to realy get the fire rumbling. A fan from a direct-vent water heater will be too much. A fan, minus the fuel pump, from an oil furnace also works.

I had 2 barrels welded end-to-end on my barrel arch. Run a 2x5 pan on it. Couple of the things I found on mine was that I burn cheap wood that built up a fair amount of coals. I had a cheapo $12 grate under mine and the coals got higher than the grate eventually which really killed the airflow. Mine didn't have large enough vent holes in the front either which meant I had to keep the door cracked if I wanted any sort of air flow, too. All of this meant a pretty dull boil on a 22 gauge pan- which was frustrating! The problem with a barrel arch is that there's not quite the height to work with between the grate level and the syrup pan that you'd normally have with a standard evaporator so it doesn't take long for coals/ash to build up. So, the fix would either be to raise the height of the grate to get more air under the wood and certainly do my best to get rid of ash and coals that impede air flow. Now, the other and likely most important thing I had to do was make sure I had enough stack to pull air from the front towards the back.... which really made all the difference in the end when I added another 5 feet (which I should have had already up there in the first place). Hope my bummer initial experience helps someone else problem solve. Amazing how adding more stacks solves that "draw" issue. Now it purrs.

jfroe, thanks for the suggestions! Were/are you using a blower? How tall is you stack overall now?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jfroe939

I had 2 barrels welded end-to-end on my barrel arch. Run a 2x5 pan on it. Couple of the things I found on mine was that I burn cheap wood that built up a fair amount of coals. I had a cheapo $12 grate under mine and the coals got higher than the grate eventually which really killed the airflow. Mine didn't have large enough vent holes in the front either which meant I had to keep the door cracked if I wanted any sort of air flow, too. All of this meant a pretty dull boil on a 22 gauge pan- which was frustrating! The problem with a barrel arch is that there's not quite the height to work with between the grate level and the syrup pan that you'd normally have with a standard evaporator so it doesn't take long for coals/ash to build up. So, the fix would either be to raise the height of the grate to get more air under the wood and certainly do my best to get rid of ash and coals that impede air flow. Now, the other and likely most important thing I had to do was make sure I had enough stack to pull air from the front towards the back.... which really made all the difference in the end when I added another 5 feet (which I should have had already up there in the first place). Hope my bummer initial experience helps someone else problem solve. Amazing how adding more stacks solves that "draw" issue. Now it purrs.

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Attachment 8943Attachment 8944Not using a blower. I'm sure a blower would help. Just kept it simple. 5 foot pan... so I've got the stack 12' long. 2 5-footers and a 2 footer. The extra 2 helped believe it or not.