Cannot get syrup pan hot enough?

[Brent]

As noted above a cold draft hitting the front of the pan will really slow down the boil. It sure does on ours. If the door
in the sugar shack is open and the wind blowing, the front pan does not work so well.
I think your 10 minute firing cycle is too long. Add wood more frequently in smaller batches.
Before we started messing with air over fire air injection, 6 minutes seemed ideal.
Also check the gasket between the pan and the arch. If you don't have a good seal there cold air
will get sucked in under the pan, cooling it. When it's cool in the moring, lift up the pan and look for tell-tale sign
of leaking air. Color changes in the soot around the edges on the bottom of the pan will guide you to the leaks.

It also sounds like there is too much under fire draft. You may have to settle for a slower overall boil by
restricting the draft a bit and avoid having too much heat going too far back too fast.

Do you have a stack thermometer. It is possible to tell from that
1) when to fire ... you see the stack temp drop
2) if the draft is too high. Temps at about 1100 should be a good target. If you start hitting 1400 or so
on a small rig, you are sending too much heat to far back and up the stack.