And after that last post -- sugarhouse destroyed in fire 4/1, have rebuild questions

[BAP]

Sorry for your loss. As others have said, don’t rush into your rebuild without doing some planning and thinking. Maybe reach out to other sugar makers of similar size and visit their sugarhouses to get some ideas. Find out what works and what doesn’t. What they would change if they were to do it over. I don’t know where you live in Vermont, but I live just over the river in NH and you are welcome to come see mine.

[Super Sapper]

Sorry for your loss. As others have said, take your time and plan for a "little" larger rebuild than you feel you will need. I would plan to have off season storage for all of your equipment without being too cramped. Even though you are not doing syrup it is nice to have the room. I did and 18 x 18 addition on my garage and put an 8 x 10 kitchen in it and it is workable but would like more room to store tanks and totes in the off season. They keep much better without being in the sun. I heat my kitchen area with 1500 watt electric heaters on a "cube" thermostat. I have 2 of them on separate circuits in case one trips. I keep my RO, and bottler in there during the winter and have had not problems so far. I have 2 inches of insulation under the concrete, 4 in the walls and 6 in the ceiling. It is rare that I find the heaters on unless it is very cold out.

[linearb]

all very good points, thanks.

My spouse's background is in architecture (on the path to licensing). She's also very active on the local zoning board, so she has a lot on her plate. My feeling is that if I can slow my roll enough to wait to have her full attention, by that point we'll also have hard numbers (and likely an initial check) from the insurance company. If we don't rebuild this year then the remainder of the money goes into escrow somewhere to get it off the insurance books, but that's just one more piece of paperwork.

If I want to do something more grandiouse than what we had, that's obviously going to exceed insuruance funds, but I can work with local builders on that once I have numbers, and if we kick the can on this another year then I could potentially put several thousand additional dollars of my own money in (just means less funds for other hobbies etc, but that's fine and preferable to touching house money for this). Flipside, if we really design something with a fully usable year round detached office in it, then that's got significant utility for us beyond sugaring and it could be reasonable to put some house money in.

it's a lot of variables, and a lot of lessons learned, and at this point I just need to make sure I am getting a square deal from insurance and then relax and take the rest of the summer to work with my spouse on a plan for the following year. Builders around here, generally, love it if you can call them in August and say "hey, I know you're bat**** nuts until it snows, but call me as soon as it does because I have a sugarhouse to build, I have CAD diagrams and a site survey of the whole thing, and I just want to talk prices and be first on your list next spring".

Having a spouse that can generate stampable CAD drawings as well as doing a professional site survey for free, is a tremendous blessing I need to be patient enough to take advantage of

Also, FWIW, my thoughts of rebuilding with propane or oil are more lazy/pragmatic, than fire related. The way this sugarhouse had been built (not by me!) involved some thinking I would not repeat, and, I had taken significant steps to better fireproof it. I realize on a per gallon boiled basis it's impossible to beat wood for BTUs at a small scale, but at our scale the fuel cost doesn't really matter, I am never trying to make money off this, and the idea of an arch you just turn on and then turn off and don't need to feed a continual stream of wood into is pretty attractive.

We actually have enough syrup to hold out through the end of 2025 if I freeze some of it, haha, and if we did run out it's not like I lack sources of really good syrup here.

[BAP]

One thing to consider if you plan to rebuild for next season is to keep your eye out for a used evaporator and other sugarhouse equipment. Now is a good time to look as people get done the season and are selling to upgrade to a bigger evaporator. Watch the classifieds on here, Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. It will help stretch your insurance payout.