Keystoker vs. Harman

[vandalay714]

OK so I have narrowed down my choices for replacing my oil fired furnace with either the Harman sf2600ss coal/wood/oil combo unit or the Keystoker A150 coal oil combo unit.
The questions I have now are:
Are there disadvantages to having a stoker with hopper such as jamming or uneven burning problems, etc.
Would I be better off with a hand fed furnace (Harman) for more control over fire, ability to use different size coal, etc.
Does anyone have any experience with these two companies. The keystoker website doesn't give all that much info on these units and specs are sparse.

It seems that the Keystoker is about $900 cheaper and comes with the hopper and has a more powerful blower. But the Harman stove is sold by a store right in my town and has more copious info and specs on their website.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[lmjr]

Old post...but others may find interesting:

Coal Answers

 

[CSCPeter]

Had an answer for the OP, but then I realized the age of the post, never mind...

 

[vandalay714]

Still interested in your opinion. Thanks!

 

[ewdudley]

Still interested in your opinion. Thanks!

Instead of a combo unit I went with a tandem solution, a KA-2 and a wood boiler side-by-side. At the time I opted for an Attack DP45, which is performing quite well, but I believe now I would get a Varmebaronen sight-unseen.

The KA-2 is a sophisticated and robust implementation of a seemingly simple design. I used a Taco 007 boiler pump and Taco 5000 mixing valve for return temperature protection and the combination does the job nicely, at least up to about 60000 btu / hour, which is as hard as I've ever needed to run it.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/68776/

--ewd

 

[wood thing]

I put a keystoker in for my cousin. It was coal only. After a power outage, the stoker came on (fire had gone out) and piled coal pellets all over, what a pain.

 

[CSCPeter]

The Keystoker is a less maintenance unit. Customers of mine that use the boilers tend to them about twice a week and maybe 3 on cold weeks. If you are running a wood unit, you will probably be tending to it 2-3 times a day. Yes if the electric goes out and the fire goes out, when it turns on it will keep feeding coal, happens with any coal stove as well. They are not maintenance free, if you want that, then you can go with propane, natural gas, or oil, but if you want to save money and have less work the automatic stoker is the way to go.