What size coal ?

LsFarm wrote:You can burn wood in any hand feed coal stove, boiler, or furnace,, that is how you start the coal fire.. With a stoker burner, you sell your wood and say good riddance.

Greg L.

Greg L, I'm wondering if you may have heard anything about the Model 140's burning unit as far as quality and its burning efficiency ??

The Alaska model 140 is a stoker furnace.. it burns rice or maybe rice and buckwheat coal mixed. It cannot burn wood,, This is an automatic furnace,, just keep the hopper full of the right size coal,, and keep the ashpan empty.. it will run for days on a load of coal.. It would need more coal every day or two in realy cold weather..

The Alaska 140 comes in two different stoker setups.. an auger feed and flat-bed stoker.. both are well proven designs.. both are excellent know good products that have been sold and in use for decades.

From what I can find to read, the 'Energy King' is a hand feed furnace, with the need for tending every 12 hours or so, maybe more often in really cold weather. This unit is not automatic.. it will not have the even heat of a stoker, or the ease of control.. Once you have some experience with it, you would figure out what is needed to keep your temperature even, the fire lit and the unit keeping you warm. But it is a hand operation, not automatic..


Greg L.

I burn rice in my stoker and i really do not want to stock two types of coal (nut)for a hand fired stove in my garage, can rice be used effectively in a hand fired stove? Don't want expense of another stoker and since i have lots of rice on hand thought maybe? Anyone have any experience with this?
thanks

Hand fed stoves will not be able to consume rice coal as it would fall between the openings in the grates of most normal hand fed stoves.
It would probably be easier to just stock the nut. At least the garage would be warm when the power goes out!
Sell the hand fed and use that to buy another stoker, used, if you could find one at a reasonable price.