# To The Varmebaronen Owners



## Blevesque (Apr 30, 2012)

How do you like your boiler? Is there anything you don't like? If my house sells I will be buying my grandmothers house and I am looking at these to put in there. Thanks for any info. Brian


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## Clarkbug (May 2, 2012)

Hey Brian. 

Its getting to that time of year where most folks arent thinking heat, so I dont know how many other folks will end up replying to your thread.  I havent been on here in a few weeks myself....

I have a Vedolux 37, and I have been very happy with it this past season.  My wife can use it no problem, which is pretty key to my satisfaction with it also.  Plus there isnt a lot of tinkering that had to go on with it, it was pretty much just put in the wood, light it, and you are off to the races.  I really like how easy it is to clean, and I got a lot of great service/support from Dean @ Smokeless Heat. 

The only thing I dont like is the drain valve that comes with the unit and sticks right off of the front, below the loading door.  Im just paranoid Im going to drop a chunk of wood on it or something.  But thats a pretty minor gripe, all things considered. 

The controls that are on it are pretty simple, and thats one of the things I like about it.  It was also relatively light, so it was easier to move into my house than some other boilers.  (that said, I still dinged mine up pretty badly  ) 

Is it the best boiler?  I dont know, that answer changes with whoever you ask.  Do I like it?  Very much so.  I dont know where in Maine you are, but if you wanted to see one "in the flesh" before you purchase, you are welcome to take a road trip at some point. 

Feel free to post or PM with any other questions you might have, and Ill be happy to chat about it.


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## coldfeet1 (May 2, 2012)

I have a Varmabaronen Vedolux 37 installed and used it all last winter. It is connected to the 500 gallon tank sold by Smokelessheat.com for a total of 536 gallons. Ran 1 1/4" copper all the way from the 2-car garage into the basement to panel. Have water tempered to 140 into heat exchanger on furnace. Keep water heater at 115 degrees because sensor is 1/3 of the way up and it can heat the entire tank in about 6 minutes.

I have learned so much since it was installed- 6 months of research doesn't compare to 1 month of using it.

Since I've had it installed and used it, I am going to put in my 2 cents here for all of you. I hope it helps you all come to a decision. First of all, the boiler is a high quality product. I compare it only to other products that obviously have quality built into them. In other words, I can't compare it to a Tarm or any other boiler, only that is looks, feels and acts like a high quality product.

For the first month or so last winter I was firing it 1 time per day trying to heat the tank to 220 or 230 degrees and get through 24 hrs.. This presents several problems I discovered, only by deciding to try and fire it 2x a day- once every 12 hours and BAM!- I fell in love with it.
You see, you'll never get over the laws of thermal dynamics: The hotter one item is when next to a cooler item (the room the boiler is in), the faster the heat loss takes place. Take a simple glass and pour 180 degree water into it while in a 70 degree room. The heat loss will be much faster than if you pour in 140 degree water. This was my thinking when I started to fire it 2x a day. Just fire it to 180 and call it a day. That evening- just fire it to 180 and call it a day. This way your heat loss through fittings and exposed areas is less. And, you aren't sitting there baby-sitting it putting in more wood to get it to 220 or 230 degrees. Anywhere from 1/2 to a full load (depending on the heat-loss that day) and your're done- walk away. In the 40's I put in about 6 pieces and in the 20's about 10-12, light it in 30 seconds, shut the door and DONE! I clean the ashes out each night (don't even clean it in the morning- just throw in six pieces, light it and that's it).


I light it through the main loading door. Put a tight radius piece of wood in the center so it leaves a gap on each side of the suction hole in the ceramic grate. Then a straight piece of wood on the left and the right up against the middle piece of wood so there's hopefully no gaps. Then I take a handful of pine shavings mixed 50/50 with shredded paper from the paper shredder and fluff it on top, place a small piece of cardboard (4" x 8") on top of that. Push the start button which turns on the suction fan, hold the torch on it for about 15-20 seconds and shut the main door WITH THE LATCH IN THE WAY so the fire is getting air from the top through the main loading door. After about 1/2 to 1 minute you'll know it's firing by opening the bottom draught hatch and see the yellow flame. I start adding wood and shut the door all the way. I would say it takes me 10 min. in the morning and 10 min. in the evening.

I do the heat exchager tube cleaning with the brush every 3 days and use a wet/dry vac to get the ashes out of the top.
That's it! Hope you enjoy the install pics!

If anyone wants to know anything else about it just ask!


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## kuribo (May 2, 2012)

220 or 230??????


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## coldfeet1 (May 3, 2012)

220 or 230? Could you be more desciptive? If you mean the voltage, then yes 220v.


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## kuribo (May 3, 2012)

"For the first month or so last winter I was firing it 1 time per day trying to *heat the tank to 220 or 230 degrees* and get through 24 hrs."


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## ewdudley (May 3, 2012)

kuribo said:


> "For the first month or so last winter I was firing it 1 time per day trying to *heat the tank to 220 or 230 degrees* and get through 24 hrs."


 
'I don't know how much more she can take, Captain!


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## maple1 (May 3, 2012)

I've got a quick, and hopefully not a dumb one - I don't see an aquastat or temp probe in the top of the boiler, so wondering how the over heat/dump zone is controlled? And what do you have for back up heat?

I'm hoping to have some Varm pics to share this time next year. Planning to take the first big step & bring home some tanks this weekend, then it will be game on. That is a fine looking install, I must say.

EDIT: That was all in reply to coldfeet1, BTW...


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## Blevesque (May 3, 2012)

Thanks for the replys guys! We are selling our current house and will be buying my grandmothers house built in the 60's. My plan is to pull out the existing memco wood boiler and buderus oil boiler that is in there now. Install new wood boiler, tanks, and pellet burner. The varmebaronen fits the bill for what we want/need plus it is within our budget. Whatever we get I do not want to be a slave to it as I am now (wake up every 3 hrs to feed boiler). I have no problem feeding twice a day but I need to get some sleep in the winter. Brian


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## Blevesque (May 3, 2012)

By the way coldfeet nice looking install!


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## Armaton (May 3, 2012)

maple1 said:


> I've got a quick, and hopefully not a dumb one - I don't see an aquastat or temp probe in the top of the boiler, so wondering how the over heat/dump zone is controlled? And what do you have for back up heat?
> 
> I'm hoping to have some Varm pics to share this time next year. Planning to take the first big step & bring home some tanks this weekend, then it will be game on. That is a fine looking install, I must say.
> 
> EDIT: That was all in reply to coldfeet1, BTW...


 
Think the valve on bottom pipe is a NC for overtemp.


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## maple1 (May 3, 2012)

Armaton said:


> Think the valve on bottom pipe is a NC for overtemp.


 
I saw that valve there. But overtemp valves are usually NO ones, and they usually get a signal from the top of the boiler that kills power to them and causes them to open. Just didn't see any wires or anything from the top of the boiler.


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## Clarkbug (May 4, 2012)

Thanks for posting coldfeet.  Nice to know there are more Varm owners kicking around here on the forums.  Im jealous of the amount of space you have! 

Just curious, what kind of adjustments did you make to the air controls, if any?


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## coldfeet1 (May 4, 2012)

The dump zone has an electric solenoid. As long as there is power, the valve and flow to the dump zone is closed off. As soon as the power drops the solenoid releases and opens the valve and flow to the dump zone.


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## coldfeet1 (May 4, 2012)

Oh and on the air controls to the boiler not much. I have it open about 1/8 inch (the glass piece). Also, I bought 1 entire pallet of Eko-bricks and throw 1 or 2 in there. You can't put too many in because the smoke will overpower the stoves ability to burn all the smoke. But man those Eko-bricks kick out a ton of heat.


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## coldfeet1 (May 4, 2012)

On the 220 or 230 thing, you can take a tank up to that temp because it's pressurized. I've even overfired it to the point where the stove shut off. The fan just shuts off and due to thermal draft up the chimney the fire just burns slowly. Of course, I fired up the water heater and heat to suck heat out of the tank when that happened. Yet another reason to fire it twice a day to only 180 degrees- you never come even close to over firing it.


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## coldfeet1 (May 4, 2012)

And one last thing about tank size. I wanted 1000 gallons but I'm glad I only did 500. The reason is the more water you have, the tougher it is to heat up to temp.


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## Blevesque (May 4, 2012)

coldfeet1 said:


> And one last thing about tank size. I wanted 1000 gallons but I'm glad I only did 500. The reason is the more water you have, the tougher it is to heat up to temp.


 
How much trouble are you having heating it up? What is your Sqft? Our new house will be 1300 Sqft. My plan is 2 1000L (264 Gal) tanks, and either a 750L (200 Gal. with hot water tank in it) or the 1000L Teknik Tank with solar coil. So I would be at 730-800 gals. Brian


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## maple1 (May 4, 2012)

coldfeet1 said:


> The dump zone has an electric solenoid. As long as there is power, the valve and flow to the dump zone is closed off. As soon as the power drops the solenoid releases and opens the valve and flow to the dump zone.


 
OK - so I guess that means your dump zone is set up only to handle excess heat in a power outage. It isn't set up to handle excess heat if your system/tanks overheat when things are cooking under power? Or is it tied to a circuit that shuts the fan off in an overheat?


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## Clarkbug (May 4, 2012)

Maple, FYI my dump zone is the same setup, for power outage only.  I have a make-on-rise aquastat that I plumbed into one of the fittings on the top of the boiler.  When that gets too hot, it kicks on one of the zones in the house.  That pulls the heat out of the boiler, and lets me know there is a problem at the same time.  We are keeping our house pretty cold due to how drafty it is (keeps down the wood consumption), but if Im going to just dump heat somewhere, might as well use my house as the dump zone! 

Automag valve is for power loss, since then my other dump zone idea wont work so well....


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## woodsmaster (May 5, 2012)

maple1 said:


> OK - so I guess that means your dump zone is set up only to handle excess heat in a power outage. It isn't set up to handle excess heat if your system/tanks overheat when things are cooking under power? Or is it tied to a circuit that shuts the fan off in an overheat?


 
 It's very unlikely that you will over heat a boiler with storage that has power unless your circulater fails. most boilers start shutting the air down at 190 F. There are a lot of btu's between 190 and 212 in 500 gallons of water.
If it is a closed system you can probably go a lot higher than 212 before you run into trouble. If your used to the
boiler you wouldn't put enough wood in it to get it that high anyhow.


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## ewdudley (May 5, 2012)

woodsmaster said:


> It's very unlikely that you will over heat a boiler with storage that has power unless your circulater fails. most boilers start shutting the air down at 190 F. There are a lot of btu's between 190 and 212 in 500 gallons of water.
> If it is a closed system you can probably go a lot higher than 212 before you run into trouble. If your used to the
> boiler you wouldn't put enough wood in it to get it that high anyhow.


Not to mention that with the loading unit the system pictured would flow a fair amount by gravity, an elevated tank would do even better.

Such a nice looking and compact install, coldfeet. The vertical flue neck and side-entry supply and return ports on the Varm really worked out.


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## coldfeet1 (May 5, 2012)

In relation to the square footage question I have 1872 sq. ft. 1 1/2 story cape with 3 dormers built in 1999. When it's 24 degrees out the 500 gallons can heat the house for 24 hrs. with the starting temp of 210-220. Firing it to just 180 twice a day took all the worry about making it through a day. Plus, you don't have to babysit it and put in more wood. As far as overheat it's just not a problem anymore since my target temp is 180. When I was trying to heat the thing to 220-230 to get through 24 hrs. then the danger of overheating existed. But 500 gallons of tank can take the heat plus you're drawing off it. One other thing- the water heater is what sucks a TON of heat out of the tank. If my daughter takes her usual 20 min. shower man that tank takes a beating. Also used about 6 cords of wood and we had a mild winter. Not too thrilled about that. Having the entire thing in the garage heats the garage without ever turning on the garage heater fan through heat loss in fittings, etc. I'm sure a better storage soution is a 500 gal. propane tank on end fitted and then spray-foamed.


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## coldfeet1 (May 5, 2012)

Thanks for all the compliments all! I am proud of it and here in Ohio in the country all there is is propane at $3/gal. Heating the house to 68 degrees with an 80% efficient furnace is $400-$600/month in propane. Stack Heating did the install and they did a great job if you ask me. I wanted to do it myself but sweating 1 1/4" copper and all I just wasn't up to the task. Here's to heating my house all winter for $500 in wood for the next 20 years! Also put pool heat exchanger so getting ready to fire up the 27' round above ground pool to 90 degrees. I'll just find dry fallen wood around the yard (5 acres) and use that to heat the pool.


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## coldfeet1 (May 5, 2012)

Blevesque said:


> How much trouble are you having heating it up? What is your Sqft? Our new house will be 1300 Sqft. My plan is 2 1000L (264 Gal) tanks, and either a 750L (200 Gal. with hot water tank in it) or the 1000L Teknik Tank with solar coil. So I would be at 730-800 gals. Brian


 
I don't have any problem heating it up since I started firing it twice a day. Your bottom range is pretty much 140 degrees if your doing DHW.  Say an average 30 degree day, firing 500 gallons ONE time a day, I would have to sit there and put more wood than the fire box can hold. So in other words the entire tank would be dragged down to 140 and it would take about 4 hours to get it back to 210, 220, etc. Then I started firing it 2x a day. So since it's only been 12 hours the tank is at maybe 150-160 average and a full load or less can easily put the tank back to 180 so you're not doing any babysitting and the tank is reheated in 2 1/2 hours (one load or less). Hope this helps.


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## kopeck (May 5, 2012)

ewdudley said:


> 'I don't know how much more she can take, Captain!


 
I was thinking the same thing.  At those temps my boiler would be in over heat mode.

K


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## ewdudley (May 5, 2012)

kopeck said:


> I was thinking the same thing. At those temps my boiler would be in over heat mode.


Just joking around, 230 degF should be a piece of cake I would think.

Varms have a 22 psig blow-off, which puts internal boiling temp way up over 250 degF, so the 'worst that can happen' should be a scary noisy sauna. Then again, catastrophic failure of the tank at those temperatures could release a lot of energy explosively.

I think the main disadvantage would be loss of heat capture efficiency and larger heat losses from the tank and piping.


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## Clarkbug (May 6, 2012)

So I was looking to pull the Varm manual down to try and post a reference to the internal shutdown temp for overheat (it should shut the fan down at 220F), but instead I found this.....

http://www.smokelessheat.com/productpage.aspx?pid=78

Varm with lambda control.  Sweet.


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## maple1 (May 6, 2012)

That is a sweet looking boiler.

130c/266f flue gas temp - thats down there.

Wonder what the smaller ones will come in at?

Must read more...


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## hobbyheater (May 6, 2012)

ewdudley said:


> Varms have a 22 psig blow-off, which puts internal boiling temp way up over 250 degF, so the 'worst that can happen' should be a scary noisy sauna. Then again, catastrophic failure of the tank at those temperatures could release a lot of energy explosively.


 
30 PSI at 250 degree Fahrenheit  = a expansion factor of around  300,000  to  1


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## Blevesque (May 7, 2012)

Clarkbug said:


> So I was looking to pull the Varm manual down to try and post a reference to the internal shutdown temp for overheat (it should shut the fan down at 220F), but instead I found this.....
> 
> http://www.smokelessheat.com/productpage.aspx?pid=78
> 
> Varm with lambda control. Sweet.


 
Well there goes the budget! Hopefully the the 35kw will be quite a bit less.


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## maple1 (May 7, 2012)

Can any of you Varm fellows comment on the turbulators? Yes/no, and deciding factors?


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## Clarkbug (May 9, 2012)

maple1 said:


> Can any of you Varm fellows comment on the turbulators? Yes/no, and deciding factors?


 
The turbs come with the boiler, and are pretty easy to pull out when you want to scrub the tubes out with the brush.  I havent ever run without them or anything, so I cant comment on their effectiveness.

They look like they have held up pretty well after the first year, just need a good cleaning.


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## maple1 (May 9, 2012)

Ok, thanks - I was thinking they were an option.


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## Clarkbug (May 12, 2012)

maple1 said:


> Ok, thanks - I was thinking they were an option.


 
I thought the same thing, and that was one of my first questions when I was looking to buy one....

I guess the idea would be that if your flue temps were too low, you could pull one to make sure you werent condensing in your chimney.  I was almost there at one point this year from wet wood.  I need to actually clean out the boiler for the season this weekend, so I should be able to see how the flue fared.


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## flyingcow (May 12, 2012)

Don't have a Varm, but my thoughts on theses posts-
IMO, coldfeet1 is doing his firings the right way. He can drive his storage to 180 easy with no idiling. But i would disagree with his statement about harder to drive up more gallons of storage to that temp. Just means he might have to refill the boiler, or partially refill it. Thats what i do. But in the summer just using DHW I fire the storage to about 160-ish. Thats basically what my boiler will do on one filling and lighting. just light and not go back for 4 days. Seems to use up more wood to drive it hotter, and as coldfeet pointed, you loose those btu's quicker.

Someone commented about the hot water heater pulling alot of BTU's. The first few weeks my tank was hooked up, DHW was run thru the boilermate off of the oil boiler. And it was about 140 the tank couldn't heat the water very good. And this did knock some btu's put of the storage tank. Once the DHW coil was installed in the storage, I can run my storage down to 110 and still get a decent shower.

I think if coldfeet1 had a more gallons of storage, he might be able to do one firing in the winter. But his system looks very neat and professionally done. And those firings are twice a day, for what? Maybe 6 to 8 weeks out of the season. After those few weeks, once a day, or once every few days.


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## ewdudley (May 12, 2012)

flyingcow said:


> Once the DHW coil was installed in the storage, I can run my storage down to 110 and still get a decent shower.


Yeah you can get a decent shower, and I can, and most reasonable people can, but for my spoiled darling anything below 140 is the end of civilization!


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## flyingcow (May 12, 2012)

ewdudley said:


> Yeah you can get a decent shower, and I can, and most reasonable people can, but for my spoiled darling anything below 140 is the end of civilization!


 

understood completely. but 110 I can handle, but 120 makes everyone happy.


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## Blevesque (May 13, 2012)

ewdudley said:


> Yeah you can get a decent shower, and I can, and most reasonable people can, but for my spoiled darling anything below 140 is the end of civilization!


 
HaHa isn't that the truth. If she isn't glowing red when she gets out of the shower there is something wrong with the hot water.


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## Hansson (May 14, 2012)

Clarkbug said:


> So I was looking to pull the Varm manual down to try and post a reference to the internal shutdown temp for overheat (it should shut the fan down at 220F), but instead I found this.....
> 
> http://www.smokelessheat.com/productpage.aspx?pid=78
> 
> Varm with lambda control. Sweet.


 
Cool. No info on this boiler in Sweden. Tnx


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