What does the coal-trol do exactly?

Sorry, for the newbie question, but I have a Keystoker A120, and have heard a lot about these coal-trol thermostats/controls. I guess what I'm wondering is what they offer differently from the stock controls. Does the coal-trol actually adjust the feed rate screw as needed?

I have one on my Hyfire I, as an add on.

This is a black box computer controller that adjusts feed rate (not the actual screw, you actually turn it in to MAX Feed rate) and let the box control it. You can setup min/max feed rates from the thermostat. It can also adjust fan speed depending on feed rate and maintian a very accurate setpoint.

Read the documentation http://www.automationcorrect.com/

Some of the older stoves you could only vary the feed rate (slow/fast) along with the fan speed. No thermostat control. I wanted complete control of the stove and also manually adjust it remotely (from upstairs).

Plus a future feature is an auto-ignitor for you stove, so it can actually re-light the stove if it goes out.

I had one for a while. The auto ingnitor is a cool devise but honestly most people only lite their stove once in the beginning of the season. Maybe I would use an ignitor to turn the stove on and off during warm days/cold nights if I had one but that is probably only one month out of the season. The other cool thing about the Coaltrol is that it will keep the room it's is in at an even temperature. This is a good feature. However, for me it isn't feasible because my wife likes the house really hot in the evening and while we're at work I like the stove to idle. Some people will tell u that you don't save any coal doing this but I found the opposite. If you 're going to have family members home all the time then the Coaltrol will work great. I bought the Coaltrol to have set points to raise and lower the temps in the house. It didn't work well for that but it did a great job of keeping the house at one temp. You have to decide how you're going to use it and whether or not it will fit your requirements. It also takes some tinkering to dial in. I would try the manual feed for a month and then see if you need to spend extra dollars for a thermostat unit like the Coaltrol.

Since I've only burned coal for one season, I think I'm going to stick to the current feed controls for now. It might be nice keeping the house at an even temperature, but I think I want to get used to how to control the stove manually some more. Also I don't have the best draft and I found I had to close the damper on the combustion blower quite a bit when doing a low feed rate, otherwise I would get a sulfur smell coming back into the basement.

I hope you have CO detectors. That smaell has lots of CO with it. If you don't have a baromentric damper and a manometer, you should get them.

Yeah, I have a CO detector. It's just a matter of closing the damper on the combustion blower slightly. Usually now I can set it appropriately based on the feed amount and temp outside ahead of time instead of waiting for it to smell. I have a barometric damper on my stovepipe as well.