I'm starting the fourth year with the Vedolux 450. It burns about 5 cords a year where as the Jetstream burned 4 cords but I had hoped to improve that with a plumbing change. I added a second circulator and Danfoss valve in parallel to get more water moving when the boiler is at its higher temperature range. It used to idle a lot when the storage got into the higher temperature range but since the change has been made, there is no more idling. The boiler is really easy to clean. It takes 15 minutes about every 10th firing, and I have not had to clean the chimney yet. The Jetstream took a good hour to clean about once every cord or 4 times a year and I never had to clean the chimney. The Vedolux is much cleaner. NO Smoke into the room when adding wood. It's too bad the EPA chased this Boiler out of the North American market with Red tape. It's a good product.
Does the second circulator help stratify the storage tank(s) better so that's why there's less idling now ?
The Laddomat 21 -100 set up was not moving enough water the boiler would be up to high temperature shut down and the storage was no where near up temperature.The easy fix was to put another circulator and Danfoss valve in parallel .
Surprising yes ! The first year was not surprising with the boiler idling a lot like 40/50 % of the time !Year 2 was much better with no idling. Year 3 was a surprise burning 5 cord !The wood in year 3 was red alder a very low value wood 13/14 million BTU,s per cord. We usually burn Hemlock or Fir at around 21 million Btu's per cord . With the correction for the lower value wood the Vedolux did really well!
Those numbers seem off. Most charts have red alder and doug fir much closer such as this one that shows 17.2 for alder and 18.1 for doug fir. I've also burned lots of red alder and I like it except the orange hands from the sap. BTU Values of Wood Species
