Hi All,

Let me introduce myself. I moved to In-laws farm in Ontario in 2017, from Wyoming. In 2018 I tapped 13 trees, boiled on a steam table tray over a block fire pit, and got hooked. 32 taps in 2019, 63L bottled. 53 taps(buckets) this year, ~55L bottled (we started late).
I grew up a farmer, but I'm a mechanical engineer by trade in the conveyor/ bulk material handling industry. I enjoyed thermodynamics in college, but rarely use any of the acquired knowledge now. Like many of you, i am always tinkering with my setup, and trying to make it more efficient (on a budget of course). I had 4 steam table pans over a homemade block arch with siphons and a float box for this year, we could make about 2 gallons of syrup in a 10-11 hour boil.

We could do around 300 taps in hard maple and 1000+ silver in the woods around our house, and we would like to keep expanding over the next few years, so we are now looking at 2x6 evaporators.

One issue i have noticed on my little rig, is that the boil slows down considerably as soot builds up on the pans. I've added a fan under the grate and let some air bypass the grate to keep the burn as clean as possible, but soot is always an issue.
For those with gasification arches, (force 5, intens-o-fire etc) how much soot buildup do you see on your pans? Would you have a comparison between the amount of soot buildup on a gasifier vs any other type of arch?

I realize the evaporators named above are much larger than a 2x6, but I would like to build my own, and I have a few ideas (no guarantee that they're good ideas, just ideas )