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Today was such a beautiful day I really feel the maple itch.

My brain tells me it is too early, but the warmth of the sun and the warm air pouring in ahead of the rain tomorrow was hard to...

I am wondering if the lack of thorough chilling will mean a shorter season also. Any opinions on that?

A single pre-filter by itself won't do much for you. I stack four to six inside the orlon/felt/wool filter to protect the orlon. It seems that if I use only two prefilters that the sugar sand will...

I think I remember you are on the coast? Night time temps have been too warm for the past week for sap to run properly. You need nights down below freezing and days above freezing for a good sap...

We can turn 150 gallons of sap into stem every hour with a wood fired 4*12. Maybe more as it is hard to figure with constant gathering and whatnot.

When you put on a coat for the first cool day in the fall and find the pockets full of spiles, tee's, connectors, and whatnot, and instead of taking them out you decide to leave them there so that...

Right or wrong we are using the same outlook here. Only a few percent of our trees are roadside anyway, there is still a lot of snow around the trees in the woods here. The half inch of rain we are...

M106 is a fairly versatile for a lot of soils here. Keep it pruned using a tall spindle type system and it will be small enough for your yard.

Figure out how much his sap was worth if you had to buy it, pay him that amount in syrup.

This calculator is good to play with.

http://www.ohiomaple.org/sap-app.html

You can play with the...

If we get another 99 degree increase next year I would say you might have a trend.

On my evaporator the float box is in two parts. The box that the float is in is hooked to the evaporator by a 2" tri-clamp fitting. When the level goes down to trigger the float then the fresh sap...

Maple dealers sell a "pan gasket" which is a strip of ceramic blanket. If you wanted to buy a lot of it to line your arch you could use a little of the same stuff to lay under the edges of the pans.

I would think that you could lift the pot partway out of the hole it sets in so that the heat only comes up the sides as high as the liquid level to minimize the burning on. We had a recessed flat...

Looks like standard sanitary flange fittings common to the dairy industry. Ask your neighboring dairy farmer who around you would have the equipment to install milk pipeline and equipment.

Why does everyone stand the oil barrel upright? Lay it flat on it's side and make yourself a 36 by 48 pan. You want that fire just as close to the pan as you can get anyway.

I suggest 8 inch...

My first thought is larger diameter, but you could try getting rid of the cap first and see if that helps. Also if you can eliminate that S-bend in the pipe you will be farther ahead also.

I...

What are you using for defoamer?

I have taken to hanging a cup of powdered defoamer above the flues, so that when we do get a runaway foam-up that it will hit that powder and should even itself...

As you change the level you lose the gradient. You need a steady input of fresh sap at the start of the evaporator to push the more finished stuff around.

Also it takes longer than you thing to...

I remember my Mother talked about having to filter the syrup sometimes when it got closer to being done to get the sugar sand out of it and then it would finish boiling properly. I never actually...

36 inch if it needs to be split. Let it run longer up to 42 on limbwood and slabs.

It did not, which surprised me. Previously we had used stove cement and other high temp things that just didn't hold the blanket well. Tried the Super 77 spray adhesive as we didn't have the cure...

We use a mix of half hardwood and half softwood to keep the coals from building up too much. Forced air under the grates makes a big difference in keeping the coals burning.

I would go with the 1/2" sap line for the additional cost of a half gallon of syrup over the black plastic. I have always been told to avoid black plastic as it gets hotter in the sun and bacteria...

Uline is a good place to look for food grade plastic bags to line all sizes of containers.

https://www.uline.com/Grp_3/Poly-Bags-Flat-Open

Boil some down, if it takes 70 gallons to make 1 gallon of syrup you will know it was correct.