Whitfield III will only burn on setting 5

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shafer14

New Member
Oct 16, 2011
37
Kirkwood, NY
Newbie here: what would make our used Whitfield only run on setting 5? When set on 5 we have the damper completly open and it runs beautiful but the house is heating up to 80 degrees by 3:00am.... When we try and put it down to setting 1 the fire always goes out, do we have to have the damper all the way closed on setting 1? We have put on an OAK, a new gasket for the combustion, new auger endplate with a new bushing. Thanks all.
 
Your stove may have a large amount of sawdust/fines accumulated in the bottom of the hopper. Last season i had a batch of bags with so many fines that I had to sift them.

My stove behaved more or less in the same way as yours and the only way to make it run again was to empty the hopper and vacuum the whole area around the auger intake, and then, of course only to use sifted pellets.

Note: The sawdust doesn't block the rotation of the auger, but it is not able to transport these fine particles... they are just stuck down there in an infinite cycle, blocking the pellet feed in a very efficient way.

As for the ideal setting of the damper, please have a look on pages 21 - 25 in this Advantage II T operation manual ( link below ). I believe it should apply to most Whitfield stoves, except the Prodigy stoves, I guess, since they have positive combustion air flow in the fire box.

http://www.whitfield.com/resources/...vantage_II_Installation_Operation_775096M.pdf
 
I had a Whitfield Advantage Plus insert which I believe operates very similar to yours. I always had to adjust the damper when switching from one setting to the next even though the manual said when you adjust it properly, it will automatically adjust to the correct air setting when switching heat outputs.

When I would start the stove, I always had to push the damper in completely. After an hour or so, I would have to start pulling the damper out little by little.

Although it depends on your exact install, I would bet that the stove is getting too much air on setting one with the damper pulled out fully. Push the damper in until the flame dances nicely but pellets do not build up in the hopper. Setting one on my stove was the hardest adjustment to make with the damper.
 
Welcome to the forum, I have a couple of Whitfield Advantage's and I would say you need to clean your stove out completely, behind the brick shield and the baffles also. You shouldn't have to open the draft that far to get a good draft on these stoves, that leads me to believe its a dirty stove! Look at the yellow notes at the top of the forum for info on cleaning your stove. Good luck
 
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