![]() Hemlock and white pine, however, contain fewer BTUs than hardwood. Thus hemlock is a waste product of our sugar bush maintenance and it only makes sense to put it to good use rather than purchasing fuel oil. While we can burn hemlock in an external wood boiler, 10 cords per year is way more than we need. This quantity of wood barely even dented our abundant hemlock supply, and much more cutting is required before our sugar bush will be ready for operation. In preliminary work thinning our sugar bush to allow more light for the maples, we cut roughly 10 cords of hemlock and white pine this summer. They’re also usually burning wood that cannot be sold commercially because it’s not suitable for use in home wood stoves (hemlock, pine, etc). By and large, they’re cutting their own, which drastically lowers the cost per cord. In reality, those choosing to operate wood-fired boilers are not purchasing the wood. Though I hate to admit it, it may actually be cheaper at this point to burn oil than wood. The cost of a cord of wood divided by 20, so this year 300/20 gives you a cost of $15/gal of syrup. One cord of dry hardwood can make 20-30 gallons of syrup, but 30 gallons assumes high efficiency and very dry wood, so we’ll stick with 20 gallons for calculations here. It takes 4 gallons of #2 fuel oil to make 1 gallon of sap, which at this year’s prices would cost $12. This year (2015), however, fuel oil is remarkably cheap due to various international tensions, while dry hardwood prices were averaging an unheard of $300 per cord (normally closer to $200).Ģ018 Update: Wood prices have continued to rise locally, and a dry cord of wood is often as much as $350 delivered. Generally, wood is the cheapest fuel option, even if you have to buy it rather than cutting it yourself. All and all taps and buckets total $3,850. Buckets and lids are considerably more expensive at $23.80 each, or a total of $3,570 for all 150. ![]() Stainless steel taps bought in bulk are $1.85 each, or a total of roughly $280 for all 150. ![]() Tubing, while more convenient, presents a problem in our mixed-use sugar bush that is used extensively for forest gardening and recreation, and once set, the tubing stays strung through the woods year-round at head height for the duration of its 5-year lifespan. Plastic bags need to be replaced every year, and plastic tubing has a 5-year lifespan, whereas stainless steel buckets and taps last indefinitely with proper care. First, we’d like to limit both our exposure to plastics and the amount of plastics diverted to the waste stream. We’ve decided tubing, plastic taps and plastic bags are not an option for us for a number of reasons. That puts us at the largest “hobby” sized boiler of 2’圆′ for roughly $4,500.Įvaporator Cost (Approx.) $1,500 $3,800 $4,500 On a good day, each tap produces about a gallon of sap, so assuming we allocate 6 hours a day to boiling, we need an evaporator sized to boil 25 gallons per hour. The size of the arch needed depends on the number of taps and how much time you’re willing to devote to boiling each day. Old-style sugar shack standing the test of time. We’re going to conservatively estimate $5,000 to build the sugar shack. The cost of a sugar shack can vary widely, but for a 100-150 tap operation, our local extension recommends a simple 14×16 building, plus additional wood storage space.Ī similarly sized structure built on our land this year cost $2,500 in materials and $1,800 in labor. Ongoing cost includes fuel, labor and bottling. These costs could be higher if you decide to go all out and invest in a fancy vacuum pump system or reverse osmosis filtration, but that’s hardly necessary at this scale. Upfront costs include collection equipment, be it buckets and taps or tubing, along with a sugar shack and arch. Now comes the fun part: figuring out costs. Based on average Vermont yields, 150 trees tapped should result in gross retail sales of $2,300-$2 ,800. After a sugar bush survey, we estimate that we have roughly 150 mature sugar maples suitable for tapping within a short distance of the proposed sugar shack location.
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