My plan

[Pdiamond]

As much as you are getting involved in this recreational pastime that all of us await the first hint of when we can tap. I truly believe you would be so much more happy with an arch, flue pan, syrup pan set up. Along with the RO you would be trying to figure out how to add more taps. I am very happy to see how excited you are for the up-coming season. hopefully it will be a good one for your first year.

[Swingpure]

You seriously need to look into the RO Bucket. Since you are going pretty much all out on your first season, why not throw in an RO? Mine saved a ton of time and firewood!

The RO bucket is not readily available in Canada. I believe there is one distributor in Quebec, but it is sold at a premium.

I have not given up on the ideal of building my own RO. I asked enough questions, I am pretty sure I could build and operate it. I have gone over my original budget 8+ times, so I have to watch what I spend this year, keeping in mind I can buy things next year as well.

I still do not have my Shurflo pump yet. I will get a deal on it and maybe even get it for free. If I get it for free, I may go for the RO unit. I realize that it will save boiling time and wood supply, but it is another thing you have to do and another thing you have to clean. Doing all of this myself, I am not sure I need one more thing to do.

After this year, I will have a better understanding of what I need to do. Do I downsize, do I up size, do I move to a larger pan or specialized pan, do I improve my evaporator, do I buy a real RO unit?

Although unlikely, if a neighbour would allow me to tap his property, I could add 200+ taps on perfectly sloped ground for 3/16 tubing. Not sure if I will ask.

But for this year, I have to drill my first tap ever, which I have never seen live done, I have to see my first drop of sap, I have to see sap boil for the first time live and I have to make Grade A syrup.

[Brian]

I think the ro will save you the time of boiling to give you time to clean it and do what needs to be done. Or you will need need a bigger evaporator. This is how the game is played, you change one thing then if only I had a bigger house, Boy if only I had A bigger evaporator, now a bigger ro, and finally now I need more taps. Ps. don't forget barrells. Then your wife thinks you lost it!! Iam glad she loves me.

[LMP Maple]

I agree on the R/O. I have watched your posts and your enthusiasm is awesome to see. I can tell you are excited. I can tell you right now that you are going to be buried in sap. I switched over the 3/16 on most of my trees last year. I had no where near as many trees as you and I was buried to the point where the first thing I ordered after the season was a nano CDL RO. This will be the first year using it but I will let you know how it goes. I spent 52 hours in the Sugarhouse boiling last year. All at night after work and it will never run on the weekends for me anyway. I spent a lot of time making a list of the things I wanted for the 2022 season number one was the R/O. The eight hours that it takes roughly to sweeten my pans is perhaps the most frustrating part of boiling with raw sap. To cut just that down with the R/O will be nice
Have fun. I can tell you will. Don't take anything to seriously. I see a bigger operation in your future. This is the track that most people take the barrel evaporator or turkey fryer and it takes off from there. For me I am at the point where I am trying to get to about the 100 tap limit with maximum efficiency then I will be satisfied.............I think................

[Swingpure]

I agree on the R/O. I have watched your posts and your enthusiasm is awesome to see. I can tell you are excited. I can tell you right now that you are going to be buried in sap. I switched over the 3/16 on most of my trees last year. I had no where near as many trees as you and I was buried to the point where the first thing I ordered after the season was a nano CDL RO. This will be the first year using it but I will let you know how it goes. I spent 52 hours in the Sugarhouse boiling last year. All at night after work and it will never run on the weekends for me anyway. I spent a lot of time making a list of the things I wanted for the 2022 season number one was the R/O. The eight hours that it takes roughly to sweeten my pans is perhaps the most frustrating part of boiling with raw sap. To cut just that down with the R/O will be nice
Have fun. I can tell you will. Don't take anything to seriously. I see a bigger operation in your future. This is the track that most people take the barrel evaporator or turkey fryer and it takes off from there. For me I am at the point where I am trying to get to about the 100 tap limit with maximum efficiency then I will be satisfied.............I think................

Thank you for the advice! A few of my friends who have made maple syrup in the past have also warned me about being overwhelmed with sap. The one thing in my favour is I have the time to boil almost every day, all day long to help me keep up. Without a doubt this year will be a huge learning experience.

“ In 2373, Chakotay told Kathryn Janeway a parable he heard as a child, about a scorpion and a fox. In his own words:

"A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river, wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly he saw a fox. He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river. The fox said, "No, if I do that you'll sting me, and I'll drown." The scorpion assured him, "If I did that, we'd both drown." So the fox thought about it and finally agreed. So the scorpion climbed up on his back, and the fox began to swim. But halfway across the river, the scorpion stung him. As the poison filled his veins, the fox turned to the scorpion and said, "why did you do that? Now you'll drown too." "I couldn't help it," said the scorpion. "It's my nature.” “

You must saying what does that have to do with anything. Lol. When I first started this summer, I decided on acting on a desire to make Maple Syrup for the first time. As a kid or an adult I had never seen a sugar shack or sap boiled. The last few years, I started to chat with my neighbour’s about making maple syrup and decided I would go for it. The original plan was to do 16 buckets just to see if I liked it, with a budget of around $500. 16 buckets grew to 26 and grew several more times. I am an all in type of guy, “It’s my nature”. My wife totally knowing who I am, and is for the most part turning a blind eye to what I am doing. (Except building the sugar shed within eyesight)

If I was still working, I would go out and buy a good RO, without thinking, but 11 years retired and too much of my savings spent on improving my paradise, I have to watch my money a little bit, especially when my $500 limit, closes in on $5000 in expenditures.

I have read so many posts on how people after two/three years of boiling, have switched to a RO unit and wished they had done it sooner. I asked a ton of questions about the RO unit and tried to find an inexpensive way of making one, but I haven’t. It always adds up to $500+ dollars, all of which I have to get on line and it includes some items that will not fly under the radar.

I have not given up on a RO unit for this year, but it will be on the radar for next year. I will improve, “It’s my nature”.

[Swingpure]

I iced fished yesterday and caught a nice lake trout and pike. Today was chilly out and without the ice hut in place yet, I worked in the garage getting my pumping system closer to completion. The quick connect cable on/off switch arrived yesterday and I attached that to the wood form on the ATV trailer, that will hold the five gallon pails and ran the cable to the ATV.

I also cut the board that will sit on my 55 gallon collection barrels, which the pump will eventually be attached to. I added the posts for the electrical connection between the pump and the quick connect cable. My ATV will power the pump. The on off switch attached to the trailer will allow me to control the pump as I fill the 11, 5 gallon pails. (The pump in the picture is not attached and is not in it’s final position.)

The one issue I am having with the pump, is that other than the plastic barb fitting that comes with the pump, I cannot find a fitting that will screw onto the 1/2” npt male outlet. The plastic barb fitting will screw onto the pump and onto different 1/2” npt pipe. The different 1/2” npt pipe will fit into some female fittings, but those female fittings will not screw onto the pump. I am still working on that one. It is a puzzler.

The third major component for the RO arrived today, so I have the pump, the housing and 5 micron filter, and the two 150 GPD membranes and housings. I am still waiting for the pressure gauge and needle valve. I then have to get some fittings and hoses, but that will be the last thing I do.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ddx...P2OpCBvif7CBBg

https://share.icloud.com/photos/002m..._tv2lbTvoCwm-Q

[MajorWoodchuck]

Welcome to the addiction Swingpure. As a "experienced" veteran.. I mean junkie... with one whole season behind me, I can relate to where you are think you will be happy you are starting out with a RO. Reading post on this forum and being able to see what is working and not working for others put me years ahead of someone starting out with a pot over an open fire - like my sister had tried a few years earlier. She said it was interesting but the syrup was smoky tasting and it took forever to boil down to get the couple of resulting pints of syrup. She never caught the itch.

I set myself a budget of about $100 for trying this out:
$40 for 9 used half sized hotel pans and a file cabinet to make an arch from.
$40 for tubing and 30 taps
I knew I wanted a RO for starting out - but couldn't quite justify $300 for a full RO system - just to try out this syrup hobby. I thought I could just increase my budget to $150 and got a 400 GPD RO membrane and housing from Ebay, and a 10 micron hose filter from our local building center for $10. I had a bronze gear pump and thought that would be fine to drive the RO. I connected it to a variable speed 10:1 gearmotor because I was worried about creating too much flow and pressure - being and positive displacement pump. When I fired it up for the first time - first week of the season, I was disappointed to find out to pump was only able to deliver 20 psi. Maybe I was running it too slow or there was too much internal leakage.
I spent the first weekend boiling down sap for from scratch. I didn't have time to figure out the problem with the pump as the sap was running so I opened up my wallet and purchased an Aquatec 8852 pump for $100. So much for my budget...I was all in at this point.
I added this pump to my system and VICTORY, I started pulling water from the sap. I was a little surprised how little the trickle was coming from the condensate and concentrate lines. I had envisioned a fully pressured stream like what comes from my sink water filter faucet. It was more like a slow trickle one notch above a dribble. But it was still saving boiling time all the water collected was water I didn't need to boil off. I found it worked best to run it overnight on recirculating a 55 gal barrel of sap with another barrel collecting the permeate (water). By morning the sap barrel was only 1/4 - 1/3 full with the remainder of water in the other barrel.
By doing it this way I could run a higher flow rate on my sap concentration side than my permeate - which I believe will cause less clogging of the membrane.
I would then start boiling this off as I started the RO on the next barrel of sap. I was running 40 taps on 5/16 drop lines going into 5 gallon cleaned out fry oil jugs.

I am now building my second file cabinet arch to run besides my first one - kind of like a double barrel boiler. I bough 4 new full size pans to do less ladling compared to half sized pans. I also forked out another $50 for an additional 400GPD RO membrane to double my output for my second year. I am basically doubling everything to double my output with about the same amount of effort. The whole family is in on this too and everyone is looking forward to the sap season starting.

From what I am reading it is possible to have too big of a pan in that a larger pan requires a larger batch of sap to be able to finish it down to syrup or even near-up. The great thing about hotel pans is that when you start to run out of sap you can transfer everything to less and less pans and fill the empty pans with snow or water to keep them from burning - finally ending up with a single pan of syrup. I have a 2ft x 6ft stainless pan from a buffet serving line I want to turn into my next arch but i too wonder if that will be too big. i calculate it would take about 11 gallons to fill it to 1.5 inches. That means 550 gallons of sap to make one batch (11 gal) of syrup.

An important lesson I learned was to have a can of spray cooking oil handy when boiling for when the "foam monsters" start to attack. A quick half second spray and the foam disappears...for awhile.

[Swingpure]

MajorWoodchuck are their support groups for people like us?

Thanks for sharing your story!

I also think there is an advantage in some respects with steam pans, that in a way it gives you more control. I also think with multiple pans you could make two batches in a single boil.

I didn’t have the budget to go for the 400 gpd membrane, but I am already wishing I had found a way. Something for next year.

For me, it will be likely for 98% of the time, just me doing it. The kids and Grandkids are in different cities/towns and my wife, at least for the moment has only signed on to help bottling. I have tried to tailor my “operation” to be done by one person.

I am sure I will have a lot of learning experiences this year. It is kind of neat just saying this year. We are getting closer to the sap flowing.

There are a number of trees that were not on the plan to tap. I am debating tapping them a little early, and whatever they produce before I tap for real is bonus, and that may give me some experience boiling, before the big show starts.

Good luck this season!

Gary

[MajorWoodchuck]

You might be surprised how many people take an interest once you get it setup. Last year it was mostly myself that initiated everything but my father in law (who originally owned the woods before passing it on to me in a deal I couldn't refuse) helped me for two weekends and my wife and two of my adult kids came up for another two weekends. This year they are all waiting for the sap to start flowing and want to ask their friends and other relatives to come up and be part of the process. If you setup a little wind block there is nothing cozier than gathering around the boilers with the steam rising ladling sap from one pan to the next. You'll find their is nothing better than ladling some of the almost done syrup in your coffee or waffles as you hang out by the boilers. My mistake last year was not tapping soon enough. I had a Florida trip planned for the end of Feb and planned on tapping trees the beginning of March when I returned. Well I found out from people up the road that they tapped 2 weeks earlier and some of the heaviest flows were in those first 2 week. My land is in Northeast Wisconsin so it looks like about the same elevation as you but maybe being east of the Great Lakes affects your season differently. Just remember that it's time for the season to end when the buds come out or you stop having fun.
As far as deciding which trees to tap...not sure what your woods is like. I don't think there is a problem tapping a little early. Are your trees mostly maples? I have a mix of 25% red maple, 75% oak, pine, and aspen. It's surprising how much the oaks and maples look alike in February. Spent a lot of time last year scratching my head trying to determine which tree was which. Think I only tapped one oak. That tree didn't produce sap (never heard of oak syrup). This year I learned and started painting a red dot on the Maple trees in summer when it was easy to tell the difference. I think I have about 100 trees marked with only about 1/4 of the 40 acres that are accessible in Spring by ATV.

[Swingpure]

You might be surprised how many people take an interest once you get it setup. Last year it was mostly myself that initiated everything but my father in law (who originally owned the woods before passing it on to me in a deal I couldn't refuse) helped me for two weekends and my wife and two of my adult kids came up for another two weekends. This year they are all waiting for the sap to start flowing and want to ask their friends and other relatives to come up and be part of the process. If you setup a little wind block there is nothing cozier than gathering around the boilers with the steam rising ladling sap from one pan to the next. You'll find their is nothing better than ladling some of the almost done syrup in your coffee or waffles as you hang out by the boilers. My mistake last year was not tapping soon enough. I had a Florida trip planned for the end of Feb and planned on tapping trees the beginning of March when I returned. Well I found out from people up the road that they tapped 2 weeks earlier and some of the heaviest flows were in those first 2 week. My land is in Northeast Wisconsin so it looks like about the same elevation as you but maybe being east of the Great Lakes affects your season differently. Just remember that it's time for the season to end when the buds come out or you stop having fun.
As far as deciding which trees to tap...not sure what your woods is like. I don't think there is a problem tapping a little early. Are your trees mostly maples? I have a mix of 25% red maple, 75% oak, pine, and aspen. It's surprising how much the oaks and maples look alike in February. Spent a lot of time last year scratching my head trying to determine which tree was which. Think I only tapped one oak. That tree didn't produce sap (never heard of oak syrup). This year I learned and started painting a red dot on the Maple trees in summer when it was easy to tell the difference. I think I have about 100 trees marked with only about 1/4 of the 40 acres that are accessible in Spring by ATV.

I did mark all of my maple trees in the summer with orange tape, and then eventually a darker paint dot. I ran my lines in October. My nine bucket trees I know exactly where they are. I also know exactly where my extra taps are that I might tap early.

Our forest is a mixed forest. 95%+ of the maples are sugar maples, we have lots of oak, white and yellow birch, basswood, poplar, ironwood, then lots of coniferous trees, white pines, cedar and hemlock. I just have 1.7 acres, but with my neighbour’s sharing, it adds up to maybe 4 acres of possible trees.

We are at a similar latitude and our sap may start flowing at a similar time. I like Wisconsin, I have been there a few times on my Railroad past.

If after my first season, I want to do more, I have other neighbour’s that have perfect sugar bushes with lots of slope and lots of trees. It will take some real finesse and maybe 500 gallons of free sap, to have a chance at tapping their untouched property. But first things first, to get my first drop of sap this season.

There is lots of winter left, including the coldest months, but I just feel the sap will run early this year. That may be more of a hopeful wish than an educated one, but so far winter has not been too bad. We do have snow on the ground, but not a lot and we do have ice on the lake, but not a lot.

I do have some friends that are up for part of the winter that might help a little. In the spring and fall we harvest a lot of firewood together, but most of them have had some experience with maple syrup years ago and it is sort of, been there, done that, and they did things the old fashion way and when I talk about Brix or lines, or RO units, their eyes just kind of roll over. The sap was syrup, when it looked and tasted like syrup and how it sheeted off a spoon. Nothing wrong with that for personal use.

We are getting closer. In little over a months time, I will be shoveling out the snow around my evaporator, then reassembling my sugar shed, then I will look for opportunities to try a few early season bonus taps. In January I want to finish building my pumping system and finish building my RO.