Coal Pilot Vs Coaltrol

I am researching a better way to control my Alaska Kodiak stoker stove and it has come down to Coal Pilot vs. Coaltrol. I've searched both here and found almost all positive comments/experiences for both. The Coaltrol has been around longer, has more options available, and appears to be able to vary the rate of burn as needed ...but is significantly costlier.

I understand the maker of the Coal Pilot was banned from this group for whatever reason but is selling his product thru Craigslist. The Coal Pilot appears to be a simpler design going from idle to max (whatever you choose to set max at) when heat is called for from the thermostat and back to idle when the thermostat is satisfied.

Does anyone have direct experience or comparisons with both?

It appears that the Coaltrol, when set up properly, should be able to maintain a more constant temp. than the Coal Pilot. I wouldn't mind a small amount of temp. over/undershoot as the way it is now, if I'm not home to constantly monitor indoor temp, outdoor temp, time of day, etc. we get pretty wild temp swings. I know I'm wasting coal and sacrificing comfort because of this.

Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

The one thing nice about Coaltrol is stove independant, you can use the same unit on Keystoker,Harman, leisure line and the newer alaska , anything with two separate motors can benefit from a coal trol, if someone is about to come out with a new stove that uses two separate motors, they can use a coal trol. But if you are to experiment, ( make a pizza oven, hot water heater, low end boiler ) it's not for you. You have addressed the other issue, and that is cost.

The Coal Pilot on the other hand , is very specific to the mechanism of the stove, at the time of the design, the inventor did not know that Alaska is phasing out the carpet feed, so his market is limited.

The unit built for the Leisure line, is very impressive design, it works extremely well, but most if not all leisureline stoves come already with a Coaltrol unit.

There is no Coalpilot for a harman, or a keystoker, but I do understand, there is a blue print design for both, but again there is no market demand to justify manufactring.

The other nice feature of the Coalpilot, is you can buy the spare parts separately, and very inexpensively,in case you need to do your repair. a standard carpet sells for 15 dollars plus another 15 for shipping from Alaska dealers, but a Coalpilot with laser drilled holes( for triburner ) is only 25 Dollars plus 10 Dollars shipping.

If you do your search on here about the CoalTrol, you will see Many have it and love it. It automatically varies the feed rate and blowers based on Demand. All computer controlled and maintains perfect temps once setup correctly. There are fancy features too that you can manually adjust feed, Blower speed, etc....if you need to. (and a lot more). read the thread about the V3 Features in the coaltrol section and you can see all it does.

Coal-Trol V3 Firmware Features

Plus the guys at CoalTrol stand behind their products and frequent this board a lot for questions, concerns, updates, suggestions, etc.....

I have one on my LL Hyfire and never had a problem with it.

As I stated, I've searched both units on site. I am hoping to find someone who has used or compared both units.

After the searching I've done I have no doubt that the Coaltrol is an excellent product with very good support. Question is, how much better is the Coaltrol at keeping temps regulated than the simpler Coal Pilot?