January Journal

[Thad Blaisdell]

I will update my photobucket pretty soon. I designed my sugarhouse for this purpose. I just couldnt afford it last year. I will start tapping on February 7th give or take the weather conditions.

Anytime you want to come and take a peek come on up. I love to show it off.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

100% coal burns the hottest yet you'll spend most of the rest of the day cleaning the flus coal bakes on, I burn 2/3 barn boards and pallets, 1/3 coal.
coal has a lot of btus and hottest fire you'll ever see come out of an evaporator, Do not use a blower when using coal you'll have a melt done. Mix wood and coal together is a good combinantion. Just my opion.shane

Shane,

How long have you been burning coal?? Have heard it would damage the pans and wondered how long you had burned it under your pans. I know it burns hot, parents heated house with it for 25+ years.

[shane hickey]

This will be my fourth year making syrup, So I have burned coal for 3 years. I think it would burn cleaner if you could filter the coal like they do in nuclear plants but I have no way indoing that. So it burns a little black heres a picture shaneSDC13237.jpg

[mapleack]

I was able to get all (3) of my new tanks upstairs in my sugar house. I hired a local lumber company to come with a boom truck. The tanks are 4' w 5' h and 16' L. I am now set I have 6-2100 gallon tanks upstairs waiting for sap, water and concentrate.

Wow, 12,600 gal of storage would take some really serious structual support to put in the second floor!

[shane hickey]

Wow, 12,600 gal of storage would take some really serious structual support to put in the second floor!

yeah thats just under 100000 lbs or near 50 tons hopfully it made out of 20'' I beams.

[shane hickey]

I meant 50 thousand pounds 25 tons
shane

[Randy Brutkoski]

Shane, you were right the first ntime. More like 46 ton. wow.I just put an 8 inch pad with rebar to hold 2, 3200 gallon tanks which is 24 ton.

[Bucket Head]

I don't know why, but when we throw some Elm wood in the arch, we get black smoke out the pipe. A good, hot fire is almost smokeless, but when we fire it with elm it resembles the coal fire smoke in Shanes photo. Not quite as much as above, but a lot for bone dry firewood. Any ideas as to why elm does that?

Steve

[tuckermtn]

I've had a lot blacker smoke from my stack burning pallet scraps...my neighbor thought I was burning tires...

[Thad Blaisdell]

I consulted a structural engineer when building the sugarhouse. I have 3 beams carrying the load 7.5 feet apart these are 8x10 and I doubled the joists underneath I was told that one every 16" was fine.... what I did was I used an 8' on the ends and 2-16' in the middle, making a sandwich out of the end of the 8'. There is now 3 tanks on each end, the outside two each have one side that sits directly on top of one beam and the middle one is centered on the middle beam. Last year I only had two on one side and at the beginning of the season I had them both full-(running over full) and the bulding didnt even groan. no sag. no nothin. Very happy with it. My photobucket has a few pictures that show it somewhat.