Dsaw, I learn a lot from your posts because we have had parallel growth and both have to travel to collect and boil. How are you preheating before evaporating? I use a bucket heater to warm some of the sap to boost the ro, but need to preheat before boiling...I'm only getting 2/3 to 3/4 of the pan boiling. You had double my volume of sap this weekend!...I was at 150 gallons or so (it comes into 3 containers and I am terrible about tracking it to the gallon). Granted, three of my 3/16 lines don't have 30' of fall from the last tap, and they crawl compared to the two that do. I want to try a vacuum on them next year. Boiling on Saturday I was in shorts and hot, 74 degrees...flies around the sap and peepers at night... not good sign. but I like next week's forecast. My stats: Help - none, Miles walked - 26, pounds lost - 5, hours of sleep Friday night - 2, gallons of sap - +/_ 150, homemade ro rate (with warmed sap) 5 gallons of water removal every 38 minutes, exactly 3 gallons of syrup bottled.
2014 - 8 taps, turkey fryer, 130 gallons sap, just under 2.5 gallons syrup.
2015 - 50 taps and counting.
2016 - 60 taps on 3/16 and a Bill Mason evaporator on order.
2017 - 115 taps on 3/16, homemade r/o.
2018 - 150 taps on 3/16, r/o a big help, but lots of leaks killing yield.
2019 - sticking with 150 taps or maybe less, focusing on good vacuum and less waste to increase yield. Doubling up my r/o, and made a vacuum filter that looks promising.