Went to the syrup building to work on setup.  Got into the kitchen, but the door to the evaporator room was locked.  Must have been bumped the manual lock when the door closed.  Its an old style lock that uses a skeleton key. Tried the other external doors.  All locked too.  We couldn’t get into our syrup building.  Finally figured out a way to get the sliding door open.   We don’t ever recall this happening before.  Syrup season always brings something new.

The task for the day was to repair firebrick in the evaporator and add a fitting to the new R/O water tank.  We fitted 12 new firebrick to replace the crumbling old brick that we not real firebrick.  The need to replace all the firebrick but that’s a task for the summer.  And we need to replace the metal side panels first.

After a trip the local hardware store we found the fittings we needed for the 325 gallon R/O water tank.    We had a 200 gallon tank for R/O water but that was too small.  We always ended up  using pails or the milk cans to store extra water.  We need to save the water for washing the membrane.

Successfully completed both tasks.  And placed the pans on the evaporator for cooking.  We’re ready to start cooking if needed.