Background: I started on a turkey fryer, then made a barrel stove arch that lasted 6 years until the end of this season. We originally started with restaurant pans and modified each year and finally finished with an 18”x 25” flat pan. The barrel stove burned through at the end of the season so I need to come up with a new arch for next year.
We have less than 30 taps but they produce well, so we are looking at a 2’x3” pan which should cook off at least twice as fast as our previous pan. I’ve considered a free 275-gallon oil drum arch but it needs to be moveable and that seems hard to do. Insulating a round arch seems to be more work than a square one. My wife wants a flat plate for pre-heating sap, heating water for tea/coffee/hot chocolate. We’re also thinking of two pans; a 1’x2’ finishing pan and a 2’x2’ boiling pan. The reason for going with the smaller finishing pan is that my wife occasionally is the one to finish and she can’t lift a larger pan off the evaporator.
I’d like to build an angle iron frame arch with a hotplate at the front of the arch and then a 2-3” step between the finishing pan in front and the flat boiling pan in back. I’d like to do this so I can gravity feed from the boiling pan to the finishing pan as necessary. What are the pros and cons of having a stepped arch? We’ve typically only had enough sap to do batches that finish with 1-1 ½ gallons of syrup, so I don’t think we collect enough sap to keep an inch of sap in the bottom of a pan much larger than a 2x3” flat pan. With the stepped arch, my thinking is that I can fill the finishing pan from the boiling pan as I add water to the boiling pan to keep it from scorching. That’s my thought anyway. Will that work? My wife’s not too keen on adding water to a pan that we just spent hours boiling all the water away, but is that the way others finish with a larger pan?
I was thinking of getting a glass front door from an old wood stove at a junk yard for the doors to the arch. Will that work on an arch? Does it get too hot for that much glass? Would I be better off making my own door and putting a smaller glass in it? What’s an ideal door size? I could use the Vogelzang door from my old evaporator but it’s smaller than I’d like.
I could run the stack straight out the top of my arch but wondered if I should make a base stack to transition to the planned 8” stack. Any ideas? If I go with the base stack, what gauge steel should I use considering this is the hottest area of the arch?
Should I make a 45° ramp from the firebox to the area under the back pan (as shown), taper to the stack or just make it go straight back? Which will do a better job getting heat to the pans, especially since my arch isn’t going to be very long?
I’d like to add AUF to this new arch. Haven’t gotten a blower yet though. That should increase my boil rate too.
Need help with Evaporator design
Reply With Quote