Whitfield Profile 20 problems

[Michael Mayo]

My wife and I recently purchased a used Whitfield Profile 20 stove. I installed it in our newly renovated front room and we ran it for about a week with no issues. So the wife decided we needed to turn it off as the temps were going to be warm outside and she wanted to clean it. So she cleaned it and we attempted to restart the stove and have had problems ever since. When I brought the stove home I cleaned it thoroughly using my compressor and was outside as it created a huge cloud of ash. I completely blew out every orifice I could get to trying to not have top disassemble the whole stove. I have no issues with taking it apart if need be but wanted to forego doing that until we tested it. So now we have problems. The stove will start up and pellets will load into the Ultragrate it will then fireup but we get a huge flame that covers the entire inside of the combustion chamber. I have completely closed the damper and it has no affect on the size of the flame. Initially tonight when my wife tried lighting it again it had embers glowing in the pot but no fire and there was a lot of smoke inside the combustion chamber. It finally lit off with a small boom as all the smoke combusted. But we had the very large flame and could not adjust it? I took apart the photoeye on top of the pellet hopper and cleaned the eye and the amber glass cover thinking this was the problem. After vacuuming out the whole front of the stove and the ports to the side of the pellet trough I turned the stove on for 2 min. per the manual and then turned it off. The hopper was loading when I went outside to check the flue for excessive ash buildup. When I came back in there was a small flame in the Ultragrate but the stove was still off? So I turned it on and immediately got a large flame that was impossible to adjust and would certainly cause an overtemp shutdown if left on it's own. I am totally stumped and can usually fix anything? Tomorrow I am going to remove the blowers and clean them really good and oil the bearings but I don't think that would cause the current issue. This stove ran perfectly for over a week and now won't run for crap? Why would we get a huge flame in the combustion chamber even with the damper fully closed? Thank you for your assistance.

 

[mralias]

My first guess is that you are getting too much air from a source other than where it should be coming from. Thus the reason for the large lazy flame. Check all gaskets (gasket test as per your manual) and make sure if something was taken apart during the cleaning it was put back together correctly (i.e. ultragrate).

 

[Michael Mayo]

We'll I replaced the door gasket today and removed the exhaust blower. I cleaned the exhaust blower with compressed air and installed the new gasket. Started the stove up and it fed pellets fine but it smoked a ton before I got a flame. Then the flame was and is quite large a lazy but the stove continues to run and does not shutdown like it did previously. Now I have to figure out why I have a very large lazy flame? The stove seems to be very clean I don't know where there might be any air flow restrictions? Adjusting the damper seems to have little effect so now I am thinking it might be the Hamer pellets we bought just are not a good pellet for this stove? Although it ran quite good for a week before we shut it down. We did have a large amount of ash build up inside the burn area and little in the ash pan?

 

[Phil Do's fire.]

I owned a Whitfield for many years, great stove! A large lazy flame is an indication of not enough air. If you did not remove the firebrick panel when you blew it out with compressed air, the most likely cause is the exhaust chamber plugged behind the panel. Remove the panels and the blower and blow it out again.

The second is open the damper at least 3/4 way. I ran mine for years at almost fully open with very good venting. Last but not least, make sure the venting is clear of obstructions.

 

[Michael Mayo]

Well I got the stove working perfectly. It ended up being a cleaniness issue as mentioned by many of you great members. I want to thank you all for your very helpful reply's to my question it was a tremendous amount of help and I appreciate it immensely. Now we just have to find a good pellet that this stove likes, we are currently burning Hamers Hot Ones and they just are not very good in this stove. We bought 1 ton of pellets and it is increasingly evident we are going to need maybe 2 more tons based on what we are currently burning every week now.

 

[smwilliamson]

You need to clean out the hidden area in behind the firewall where the air passes down from the heat exchanger to the combustion fan. You gotta take off the combustion motor to do it and you could use some assistance from 150PSI of air. There are no cleanout traps on that stove (thanks to Lennox) common issue and the thing will run like a new stove once you do it. Do it 4 or 5 times a year.

 

[smwilliamson]

ah...I see someone already chimed in! carry on.