It’s hard to believe that we’ve been renting the Farmhouse at Nova Maple for almost five years now! We’ve recently added a second rental house on Conneaut Lake, checkout the Lakehouse on the Canal, available to book now on AirBnB/VRBO!

Welcome to our beautiful lake house rental located on the Conneaut Lake canal, perfect for a relaxing getaway in Pennsylvania. This spacious and modern house offers breathtaking views of the tranquil canal. Located on the northern tip of the lake, you’re just a short paddle down a private water driveway to open waters.

The lake house features an open-plan living and dining area with large windows that provide plenty of natural light and picturesque views of the surrounding area. The fully equipped kitchen has everything you need to prepare delicious meals, including a stove, oven, refrigerator, microwave, and dishwasher. There is also a grill outside, so you can enjoy some outdoor cooking and dining on the deck, around a gas fire pit overlooking the canal.

The house has three bedrooms, each with a comfortable queen sized bed and plenty of storage space for your belongings. Additionally, there is a sofa and love seat in the living room that could accommodate extra children.

For your entertainment, the lake house is equipped with three smart TVs and Wi-Fi for all of your streaming apps and services (bring your own login info). You can also enjoy the beautiful views while playing a game in the three season room, take a leisurely stroll down our quiet neighborhood, play a game in the backyard, or take a dip in the lake.

Our location features canal frontage with cleats to dock a boat, jet ski, kayak, or canoe. Please note that our personal boat may be docked there and we reserve the right to access it during daylight hours. Don’t worry about your privacy though, there is a path through the side yard and we won’t access the house, garage, or driveway. While the canal was dredged out a few years ago, the frontage water is relatively shallow. We recommend only outboard motors and to keep the propellor near the surface while docking.

The Conneaut Lake area offers plenty of outdoor activities, such as fishing, boating, hiking, and golfing. You can also explore the charming town of Conneaut Lake, which has a variety of restaurants, bars, shops, and historic Conneaut Lake Park. Meadville is only a ten minute drive east, while Erie, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland are close enough for day trips.

Whether you’re looking for a peaceful retreat or an active vacation, our lake house on the Conneaut Lake canal is the perfect place to relax and recharge.

The lake house has a four car driveway, the garage will be locked and off limits. Street parking is not allowed and vehicles must be limited to the driveway. This is a family neighborhood so please limit guests and excessive outdoor noise/partying after dark

One benefit of our chilled concentrate tank is that we know exactly how much syrup we’ll make when we boil. In 1946 C.H. Jones discovered the rule of 86, which states that you can estimate how many gallons of sap it will take to make a gallon of syrup by dividing 86 by the sugar content of the sap. For example, 2% sap takes 43 gallons to make a single gallon of syrup. Our 2023 season sap averaged 1.20% and took ~72 gallons to make each gallon of syrup!

Our concentrate tank holds 3000 gallons, and lately we’ve been concentrating to 18% (20%+ tends to prematurely clog our last membrane). Using Jones rule we know our final ratio is 4.8:1, so a full boil will yield 625 gallons of syrup, or more if we’re adding to the concentrate tank while boiling.

On March 3rd we noticed one of  our vacuum pumps running a bit louder than usual. The very next day our Datacer system showed a vacuum level of only 18″. Before we had a chance to investigate, the vacuum ended up dropping to 0, and the next morning we found a seized up pump. This is exactly why we have a backup for every piece of equipment.

While navigating the wet area near our Robinson road pumphouse is not something we like to do, we ended up successfully swapping the pumps, though we did get the tractor stuck for a while! After hooking up the backup, we were disappointed to find that the wires leading into the motor were damaged and shorting out. This left us with a good motor attached to a bad pump and a bad motor attached to a good pump. Luckily the motors were compatible and similarly sized, after swapping a few couplings and re-attaching the motor we were up and running again! The two days without vacuum most definitely shortened the tap hole life on this property, but we ended up getting several more loads of sap before the season ended.

We’ll check out the seized pump next month. Based on the noise leading up to the seizure our guess is the bearings failed first, leading to additional failures. We’ll be sure to purchase another backup over the summer, one without wire damage, to be ready for next season!