Suggestions on a forced air setup

Hi, I have been thinking about installing a keystoker a-120, or koker 160 (http://www.keystoker.com/koker120.html) to hook into my existing hot air ductwork in the basement. Are there any advantages to one or the other? The koker looks like it throws more BTU and has double the hopper size. Also I've been reading on the forum that you guys recommend a boiler and heat exchanger setup for forced air applications, what is the advantage there? Thanks for any advice.

Hello szembek, welcome to the forum. The big advantage of a boiler is that the water can store a lot of heat, and not have it get distributed throughout the house. If the house thermostat is satisifed, and the air circulation fan shuts down, the coal fire doesn't just imediately cool off in the furnace, the coal keeps burning [slowly making less heat] and the furnace gets hot, and it has overheat protection so the air circulation fan will come on and move the heat into the ducts to keep the furnace from overheating.

With a boiler, the air circulation fan turns off, the coal fire slowly makes less heat, but the water can rise in temperature, storeing a lot of heat before any overheat situations arise. The other nice advantage is a boiler is real easy to use to heat your domestic hot water as well as the house. This is an additional savings in oil, gas or electricity used.

A boiler can be placed just about anywhere, there only needs to be two pipes running from the boiler to the heat exhanger in the air plenum. So there is very little ductwork modifications to hook up a boiler.

During warmer weather , a boiler can idle all day, using very little coal, putting no heat into the house, then fire up for the cool evenings within about 20 minutes. With a furnace, you will have some residual heat getting into the house during the warm days, making the house too warm.

So a boiler can be used earlier and later in the heating season.

Hope this answers your questions Greg L

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That makes sense. I'll have to look into the cost differences at the stove shop. So I would need to have my furnace fan work on a thermostat correct? I think it works that way right now, but my oil furnace is in rough shape, so I'd probably be replacing that at the same time.

Your existing thermostat and fan controls would remain the same. The boiler controls would maintain it's operating temp as required. The circulator pump could run on a call for heat from the control or just run continuously if you didn't want to get fancy (two wires). Its pretty easy to hook up.

As far as boilers go how are the EFM coal/oil units? (http://www.heatall.com/furnaces/efm_coal.html) And what type of cost are we looking at. The forced air units I was looking at were around $2500 for the furnace.

The EFM is a great boiler. I think the boiler is a lot more than $2500, probably around twice that. The additional oil fired option would add about $1000-1300 I would think. Since your furnace is shot it may make the most sense to just replace it with a combo furnace. I don't believe EFM makes one, but there are a number of good ones out there and will be considerably cheaper than buying a boiler combo. I would find one with a hot water coil too while I was at it. It will cost you a lot less in the long run that way as there is a lot less labor and material involved that way.

Actually, EFM does make a coal and oil version of their EFM 520 boiler. One of the forum members has one and posted photos, I'll look for the thread and post a link if I can find it.

There are a few people who recondition EFM boilers for resale. If I can find a phone number I'll post that too.

Greg L.

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