
Originally Posted by
BrutemanAl
Galena that shack is awesome!! That’s what I’m planning doing, I have an endless supply of skids from work, I was just going to go bigger than what you built. How did you hold them all together... like the skids, did you just screw them together? I also have a bunch of sheets of steel roofing I purchased from a barn tear down that I will use for the roof and siding.
On a side note about the poison ivy, yes you can get it in the winter, I just hear someone talk about it and I get it. When I was a kid, I was in Boy Scouts and we would do winter camping at a local Boy Scouts camp north of Cobourg .... we had to stop going because I would get so covered in poison ivy I would end up in the hospital getting bags of stuff pumped into me.... ahhhh the memories lol
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Al, wow it sure sounds like you and poison ivy are NOT a good combo! Poor guy!
I told my friends (who built houses for 25 yrs so they know their stuff - I didn't) that I wanted to basically build a lean-to type structure, more than the usual shack with cupola etc. We got pallets and I sorted through them to find the most consistent size, approx 40x48 to make shack as square (Ok rectangular) as possible. Yes mostly it is pallets stacked then screwed together then clad in sheet metal which was rotting away in a fenceline - you can see by the top flanges that I didn't fasten them down before I ran out of supplies. Must get that finished!
Basically the original idea was to go 8x10 but is close to 7'9x9'6 or so, on the outside, so inside it's approx 8x6. More than enough room for little cast iron woodstove, a corner in which to keep kindling etc and I don't have to stoop to get in and out. And ventilation is perfect, test-fired it yesterday and very glad I bucked up and cured that pallet wood - not a whiff of creosote from wet softwood pallet lumber :-)
Been tapping since 2008.
2018 - 17 taps/7 trees...819l sap, approx 28l syrup
2019 - 18 taps/8 trees...585l sap, 28l syrup...21:1 ratio
2020 - 18 taps/8 trees...890.04l sap...gave away about 170l, 30l snafu'd....23l total for me from approx 690l
2021 - 18 taps/8 trees...395l sap, 12 l syrup
2022 - 18 taps/8 trees....7 sugars 1 red due to #2 having surgery so had the season off....582l sap, 18.5l syrup
2023 - 18 taps/8 trees...all sugars again. 807l sap, so far approx 14l syrup