My best sugar % this season has been 1.8%, just one day. It started at 1.2 and after 2 freeze thaw cycles in a row it climbed. Today it is 1.0, my lowest, was also 1.0 2 days ago. If it falls any lower I will shut down and call it a season. Even with an RO it doesn't seem worth the time to process under 1% sap. Maybe if I had an RO that could give me 12%+ in one pass, but on mine it takes 2 passes to get between 9-10% and running the RO longer raises the concentrate temp too much. Based on the fact that I am cutting back on taps and will never again have more than 500 taps, I don't see a better RO in my future. I can however do better thinning to help with the sugar%. I have about 1/3 of my bush never been thinned. The issue there is that that area is heavy in poison ivy, thus all thinning has to be done in the winter. I seem to be ok working there in winter, even though I wasn't good to years ago.
Dave Klish, I recently ordered a 2x6 wood fired evaporator from A&A Sheet Metal which I will be converting to oil fired
Now have solar, 2x6 finish pan, 5 bank 7x7 filter press, large water jacketed bottler, and tankless water heater.
Recently bought another Gingerich RO, this one was a 125, but a second membrane was added thus is a 250, like I had.
After running a 2x3, a 2x6, 3x8 tapping from 79 taps up to 1320 all woodfired, now I'm going to a 2x6 oil fired and a 200-425 taps.