Quote Originally Posted by Mikeh View Post
Hi Bigb, I guess I'm not sure why you wouldn't just invest your time and money into a bigger evaporator? 10-15 gph would get rid of that sap relatively quickly.
Evaporators still need to be attended and burn fuel. RO's can run unattended and use very little electricity which is important to most hobbyists who have day jobs. I collect my sap and then turn on my RO and walk away. 9 hours later 45 gallons of sap is now 20 gallons of concentrate and I didn't have to do a thing. Also, you can build a little RO for about $300. You can't even buy a small pan for that. This RO has essentially allowed my to more then double the capacity of my evaporator without having to upgrade it. I use propane and I have calculated that it is saving me 58% on fuel cost and boiling time. That said, I thinks it's a balance. You still need an appropriate size evaporator to keep up with the concentrate produced from your sap by the RO. Also, these small RO's are only good for a max of 100 taps. Once you go over that a bigger RO is needed and you would need to balance the cost of that with versus upgrading your evaporator.