I am just catching up, but i can answer a few questions. I have a Maxum 250. The Maxum has two water outlets, My first outlet heats three zones and hot water in the house. My second outlet goes into the garage and heats a small workshop. I have the 48 bushel hopper. My house is 1870's era farmhouse with extensive remodeling, not by me...the insulation is suspect or of not very good quality.
My setup for the house is run by the one pump on the furnace, and i am going to change that in a year or two, I want the water coming into a manifold and then being pumped to the different zones.
On really cold days, my furnace will run at high or medium nonstop. My pellet consumption depends a lot on the weather. From mid December until Mid March, I can get ten to twelve days out of a ton of pellets. In the months before and after, I can get up to three weeks out of a ton.
Two things about the Maxum, I would strongly recommend the add on hopper, and make sure you have a good thermostat in the house. The big hopper so you don't touch pellet bags every day. A good thermostat, i found especially one that doesn't have large temperature swings, will help the furnace run much more efficiently for shorter time periods. My original thermostat was allowing almost six degrees of swing, which made the furnace really work hard to get the water back to temp when it was really cold. I had a new one installed, because I wanted to be able to use my propane furnace as an additional heat source, so the furnace runs much less at the high setting and stays in the medium setting a lot more.
I live live about ten miles from a pellet mile, so i am a great customer of the mill. I haven't bought more than 5 tons at once, but i want to change that. I do know that i burn between 16 and 18 tons a year. I should also mention that I burn year round to heat my hot water.
I hope this helps guys, I will be glad to answer anymore questions if I can.