To The Varmebaronen Owners

ewdudley said:

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

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

K

kopeck said:

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

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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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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

maple1 said:

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

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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.

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

maple1 said:

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

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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.

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.

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.

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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!

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!

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

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.

Click to expand...

Cool. No info on this boiler in Sweden. Tnx