A couple of things I notice. On my 3x8 I never had such an issue, but I did find it important to have the wood split wrist size, fill every 7 minutes by a timer, before I added AOF, (high pressure air over fire). To do that I made a manifold that I mounted all aroundthe top on the inside of the firebox. The manifold was only 2x2" tubing even though instructions from Proctor Maple Research stated 3". In the manifold I had a 1/4" nozzle every 6" each was pointed down towards the opposite side where the grates met the side wall. The nozzles went all of the way, from one side of the left door (It had 2 doors) around the firebox to the side of the right door, each blew into the fire. The blower was a high pressure unit with paddles not a squirrel cage, it had good pressure not high volume.
Befoe I did that, after dark I always saw a large ball of fire just above the top of the stack. That was wood gas reigniting as it got more oxygen and not fire traveling the length of the evaporator and up the stack. Doing that accomplished a couple of things, my evaporation rate increased, while my wood consumption dropped. I was then burning the wood gas under the pans and not above the stack where it did no good. I then went from every 7 minutes fueling to every 9 minutes, all by using a timer. My wood consumption fell by about 10% if I recall and my evaporation rate climbed about 15%. Those changes got the flues pan boiling hard, where it had been somewhat poor before that.
Read the article I've made a Sticky in the front of the Evaporator threads. I think you will find, if you do it, that your issues will go away, you will boil faster and use less wood. However, unless you get lucky like I did, high pressure blowers are not cheap, mine came from a factory that had closed and it was free. When I sold that evaporator the whole system went with it.
My new evaporator is being converted to oil fired and is only a 2x6 raised flue.
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