Adjusting combustion air - Whitfield Quest Plus

[Ro3bert]

This seems to be a new development with my Whitfield Quest Plus. When I light it in the morning (after cleaning the front end) I have to turn the combustion air up a bit (trim pot) then after the stove warms up to some sort of operating temp I have to turn it down or the occasional pellet jumps out of the pot and there are an awful lot of sparks roaming around the burn area.

Now here is the odd part; once the combustion air is tweaked it seems as if the pellet feed interval reduces as if I’d turned that down also (I don’t). Is this normal?

The only other Quest Plus I know of belongs to Stovenson so not much seems to be talked about on this stove. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of information to be gained either from this forum or any where else that I’ve been able to find (Dave Gualt has been helpful). Still the only time I’ve seen this stove discussed has been myself and Stovenson.

So Stovenson do you have an answer or has anyone else an idea?

Robert

 

[Stovensen]

Hi Robert,

My best guess would be an electrical instability somewhere.
The weakest links in this chain are most likely the trimpotmeters on the pcb... they are placed in a rather dusty environment. Even a few small dust particles on the carbon trace would make the trimpotmeter act very scratchy/unstable.
A little cleaning with some contact cleaning spray might do the trick. It's available in any electronics shop.
But, you'll have to shut down your stove and pull out the control board. Also, you must make access to the trimpots by unscrewing the bottom lid, so you can lift out the pcb.
If the problem still persists after this cleaning, we'll have to search for another likely instability... if there are any electrolytic caps on the pcb they may also be the culprits.
BTW, if/when you get inside the controlboard, please take some sharp close up pics and post them here, I can't wait to get a closer look of what's hidden in there.

Good luck
Bo

 

[arnash]

There may be a clue in that the blower is slower when cold and faster when warm. It seems very possible that if the blower lubricant is more viscous when cold, that would present more resistance to its spinning velocity, which would fade-away as the lubricant warmed-up and became thinner. The auger turn-rate is doing just the opposite but only after you turn-down the blower, so there may be a connection between the slower blower speed and and slowed-down auger speed. If so, it would seem that you would have noticed such a connection long ago.

Perhaps a working solution might be to leave the blower speed at the initial speed and instead of reducing it use the damper to reduce the amount of air sent to the burn pot. If that doesn't result in the auger slowing down, then it would seem that the auger speed is related to the blower speed. I'm only going by common sense reasoning here because my Whitfield doesn't have a control knob for the blower speed. It's one constant speed all the time.

 

[Stovensen]

Arnash,

The lubrication issue was a thing that I ruled out based on the knowledge of the combustion motor in my Quest Plus. As you can see on the pic it's a 230 Volt motor requiring no oil.
The 120 Volt version in Robert's stove is probably different, so a few drops of oil may do the trick ;-)

 

[Ro3bert]

Stovenson

Whether or not the situation is as I mentioned is questionable i.e. I don’t know for sure if the pellet feed changes with the trim pot, it just seems like it.

My intention, when the weather changes, if it does, (or when I run out of pellets) is to tear the stove down as far as possible to clean it, at that time I will take before during and after pictures and will post them here. I suppose I should have done some of that in the past but with it running so nicely and without a hiccup along the way I have been neglectful of basic maintenance (until I found this forum I was unaware of the possible problems pellet stoves are subjected to) beyond daily cleaning (and feeding it regularly).

Arnash

The damper has been closed as far as it can be for the life of the stove, if I open it even a little sparks and pellets start flying. Not so sure that’s a good idea.

My question was as much rhetorical as it was for information. I am not unhappy with the operation of the stove; just curious to see if anyone else has/had noticed this anomaly with this or any other stove.