Bosch MES boiler installed

[Freefromoil]

I just had the MES Bosch boiler installed in my basement and came home to a warm home in the first time this season. My Burnham oil boiler leaked like a sieve and I finally tossed the leaky money stealing inefficient hunk of metal in the recycling heap.
I thought it would be important to start a thread on the experience with this new boiler system. Here's what I have:
MES 6000 6 section boiler manufactured by Bosch with a Janfire burner
Top Performer 50 Gallon indirect water heater
4.5 ton pellet bin

This system is heating a 2400 square foot 1860 post/beam structure and replacing a 165mbtu oil boiler. Here's what I have found so far. My impressions so far: surpisingly quiet, larger than expected (bin takes up half of my basement and boiler twice the size of my oil boiler), expensive (estimate installed was 5000 more than listed on MES), impressive and intimidating controls.

Overnight I went through 3 bags of pellets which seems like a lot. Also, my installer told me not to use and adjustable thermostat as system will shut down and have to be restarted which reduces efficiency due to the amount of time it takes the systems to get up to temp. I was always under the impression that adjustable would save me money by reducing fuel consumption. Has this been the experience of other pellet boilers?

 

[Gooserider]

Moved this to the boiler room as it seemed more appropriate - seems like it should be either in the boiler room or the pellet place, not sure which would be better...

Gooserider

 

[sinnian]

Welcome to the forum I look forward to hear your experiences with the MES Bosch/Janfire pellet boiler. If you do a search of your boiler on these forums you will see that we have had some pretty lively discussions about them. Particularly with MES and their cost analysis ~ sorry to hear about your 5k overrun! Fortunately for me I saw that was inevitable and went with the Treager/Pinnacle PB150 instead.

 

[Freefromoil]

I considered the Traeger, but for me the cost of relining the chimney for the system would have made it comparible in price. Also am happy to have a qualified trained professional install and maintain my system. After four days we have burned close to 400 pounds. This seems to meet the consumption expectations. Could not have arrived sooner as we have had cold windy nights nearing in the teens. The Janfire burner is fairly simple to adjust once I realized that the functions were for. The burner has had two errors so far once for ashscraper, which required a sight adjustment to the time setting to correct and also once for temp sensor (no idea why the installer will be back tomorrow to check it out). So far the heat and hot water is superior to oil. It is surprisingly quiet the only thing I hear is a gurgling as the hopper loads a handful of pellets at a time. I have read that MES signed with Maine Woods Pellet to supply as well as several other Canadian pellet dist. I am calling tomorrow as I refuse to have the hopper filled with Maine Woods Pellet. I have burned them in my Englander stove and they spit out ash and leave chunks of carbon. I can't imagine what it would do to the Janfire burner.