Help decide what stove to get

Well I have done some more research and thinking. I think I want to put it in the basement and connect to the ducts. A friends dad has an older harman hand fired hooked to ducts and it is always nice and evenly warm. I believe I will power vent my furnace since I hardly use it. By putting it in the basement I will also get some heat down there. I was thinking about maybe one of those wood and coal furnaces. I read on here that someone had a harder time buring coal is this. Is that all of them or just a certain one. I think I can get one of these for about $1,000 new. Plus $500 + for a power venter, and $500 plus for a chimney lining kit (since I will also be burning wood on warmer days where a coal fire would be too much). So I think between $2,000 to $3,000. Any positive or negative feedback on these furnaces? I am sure there is negative but does any one use one of these succesfully?

The wood/'coal' furnaces are a big compromise for burning coal. I made the mistake of using many of these compromised design features when building my 'Big Bertha' boiler.. The style of firebox that will work with wood, and 'can burn coal' is not very good for coal at all.
So if you are planning on burning and relying on wood, then I'd get one. If you are going to rely on coal, get a coal furnace or boiler. They are designed to burn coal.. and it is a very different firebox and heat exchanger design... don't make the mistakes I did...

That said, there are a few people who have with patience and a lot of tinkering made a wood/coal combo work.. but even they admit that it is not designed for coal

Greg L

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I have a wood/coal boiler and it is as Greg describes, anytime there is a compromise in design for dual fuel the coal loses. Wood has little trouble burning in a unit designed for coal, coal however is not happy in a firebox designed with wood in mind.

Coal must be considered as a grumpy old fuel.

Do you think something like a harman Mark II in the basement with some vents in the floor would work. Are there stoves that connect to ducts that are not stokers?

Chris,
I agree that there is a lot of good information on the forum and have been reading it for about a year but just got around to adding a post to it. I will attempt to add some photos. I took a complete set of digital photos as I was assembling the Keystoker A150 furnace but have no idea how to make them assessable to folks. But I will take some low resolution photos of the coal delivery pipe. It really consist of no more than 4 inch schedule 40 sewer drain pipe from Lowes that starts in a cupboard in the garage around which I built a small box that holds about 1 bag of coal. I had trouble getting the coal to slide down the pipe by itself so added the vibrator which consists of a small $4 motor off the internet to which I attached the smallest cable clamp available to the shaft to make it vibrate. I added a T to the 4 inch pipe with a plug in the side of the T through which I mounted the motor. The motor is hooked up to a 3-way switch so that I can jog it from the garage or from the basement. So far works great.
By the way, I used a toilet bowl flange to mount the 4 inch pipe to my wood box in the garage. I have a set of some 20 pictures I have been able to e-mail to some folks and could add some more of the chute set-up. Now if I could just get those ashes to go back up that pipe and into the woods.

Karl