![]() ![]() 3) I would think a lot of heat is also lost on the end where the wood is fed in to the fire. If you filled the voids with vermiculite (or even gravel) you'd insulate the firebox and keep the heat siphon from happening. 2) the blocks on the sides are acting like chimneys that draw heated air up and out. It also eliminates the issue of ashes getting into or blocking the elbow. To get more heat from less wood, and have even more 'rocket' action, 1) a steel or brick/block baffle, the width of the heater (21") and maybe 6" less than the height to the bottom of the pans, in front of the elbow leading to the stovepipe will force the exhaust to go around, instead of directly out, and the longer path will cause more heat to be extracted. We are about to start tapping any day now.Ī couple thoughts on your concrete block evaporator setup, as that's a fairly common design many of us 'non-commercial' producers use. Nice write up, sounds like you had a great season! We are too far north for maple trees, but tap our birches, which requires closer to 100 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup. I'm afraid our sugar maple syrup producers might have to roll the dice: Tap early as the sap is running or go by the calendar? Some of our largest snowfalls are often in March. The overall snow amounts we get over the winter will melt, regenerating more sap: low snowfall could mean less sap. Folks will assure me that with one spigot on the South side, the tree loses only a tiny fraction of the sap it makes. I am extrapolating here, and while this is logical, I do not know if it is correct. An extremely long season might mean a weakened tree, like if you take too much blood out of a person. If we were to start tapping right now because the sap is running, what kind of a *growing* season would we have? As humans, we tend to take, take, take but are not so willing to give. Independently of when to start tapping, as we say in French: "The prettiest girl in the world can only give what she's got". It has been abnormally warm all Fall and now winter. So are we having our mid January thaw? If we do, it seems to be extremely long lasting. It is pretty much expected every year and I've been living in WI since 1970. In Wisconsin we usually have a "mid January thaw". Technically, the maple season is when we have temperatures above freezing during the day and freezing temperatures at night : The "usual" season runs from sometimes in March and ending in April. They are noticing that the season is more random, starting and stopping. I came across this interesting article dealing more specifically with Wisconsin, where I live. The switch is all the more tempting that all these dead oaks will produce lots of BTUs to cook the maple sap. ![]() Since our red oaks are all dying of the wilt, I'm looking at replacing them with sugar maples, adding one here and there, every year. Sugar weather depends on occurrence of cold nights, which may occur almost anytime during the winter Our study area has a mild climate with frequent warm days. The eastern sugar bush has a continental climate with prolonged periods of freezing weather, and sap flow is delayed until warming trends occur in the spring. or lower, followed by warming conditions up to 40º to 50 º F. Here's a handy quote from it:Įxperience with eastern sugar maple has shown that sap flow is correlated with cool nights when temperatures drop to 34º F. I had to search the Wayback machine for it, because it was no longer available on it's original site. I attached a study done back in the 70's on Big Leaf Maples in Oregon. If it's freezing at night and above freezing during the day, why not try a tap or two to see what happens! Some years we have a warm November/December, and we have no sap then, but have sap later on. Some years are just too warm and the sap doesn't flow. Our maple season is often over by February, if not earlier. Basically, once the leaves have fallen off the maples and before buds have formed-and when temperatures are below freezing at night and above freezing during the day-sap can flow. Here in the Pacific Northwest, our maple tapping season often starts in November. ![]()
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