As I mentioned earlier, my brother was coming to split the blocks from that big sugarmaple. Today was the day. Initially he had suggested I line up all of the blocks beside the driveway, at a angle, so he could drive up to each, lower his splitter, mounted on the front of his big skid steer, split, move over and repeat. Then this morning he decided a better approach. He had me get my 16 yr old grandson to load the big rounds into the bucket of my tractor loader (only 3 would fit), then I hauled them out to where he had me dump them near where he was going to split them into big pieces into a pile next to where I will resplit them. Wow, that worked fast. My grandson (Logan) loaded 3 blocks into the loader bucket, then I took them to where my brother was set up, tipped the bucket and the blocks rolled off onto the ground. Then Logan faced them so my brother could lower his splitter, clamp onto the big block, then lift it, turn about 90 degrees, drive forward a few feet and split, then repeat. In less than 45 minutes, all 34 large blocks had been split into a pile. Then Logan lifted the end of my splitter and pulled it in place, rolling on the 2 tires and positioned it so I could start resplitting. As my brother split the big blocks they were split into 6 pieces. All blocks were without knots except 1, where the trunk devided into 2 large limbs, but that didn’t phase the splitter at all, because it has a 5″ hydraulic cylindar and 3300 PSI hydraulic pressure, never even slowed it. Next my wife and I will go down, back the truck up near the resplitter ( a Super Split with a super fast action) It has a 5.5 HP Honda engine and has about a 2 second cycle time. If I encounter any pieces I can’t lift, I’ll push them aside and Logan will lift them after I make a pile. Based of last year, we only work about 25-30 minutes, fill one row across the back of the truck and go home to stack it. Once split I think we will likely have enough wood, all sugarmaple to heat our home for 2 seasons. We only burn wood rather than run the furnace when the temperature is about 35F or colder, if we burn it in warmer temps we need to leave a patio door open a little or it gets too hot in there. Our home is only 1500 SF and very well insulated.
I won’t be burning wood next season to make maple syrup, the new 2×6 evaporator is being set up to burn oil. The new door to mount the oil burner in arrived 3 days ago. I already have a tank , 150 gal, to put the oil in. The burner will burn 3.5-4 gal per hour, depending on the nozzel I use. I’ll experiment with water before the season. I should be able to evaporate about 55-60 gal an hour feeding it with about 10% concentrated sap from the RO, In 1 pass I can get 8%, in 2 passes I can get 12%, I often average in between those. For this next season, I’ll only try for about 300-350 taps, for the following season I’ll add about 100-150 more taps, to bring it to about 450 total. After that if I want to do more, I’ll see if my neighbor will lease some trees to me at about $1.00 per tap. About 45 yrs ago, her dad planted a few rows of trees parallel to my property line, a mix of sugarmaples and red maples. She likely has up to a potential of 100 more taps, and I could run them all directly to the sugarhouse. The $1/tap is based on current rates for my area, in 2-3 yrs it might be more.
My plan is to set the evaporator up so in case oil becomes hard or impossible to get, I can just remove the door with the oil gun, put the woodfired door back on, put the grates in, dry set the firebrick in and burn wood. If that becomes necessary my evaporation will likely drop to 45-50 GPH, mostly because with wood, the boil stops every time the fill door is opened to add wood, then once closed it takes a few seconds before getting back to full boil, then a short while before opening the door to add more wood, every 9 minutes, it slows slightly. On oil it’s always at full perfect boil, no ups and downs.