Getting more HEAT from my Whitfield Quest

[LelandWard]

I have a Whitfield Quest and I was looking to try and get some more heat out of it. When its below freezing here and the stove is on high I can keep the main living room around 63'F. I'd like to get more out of it. Is there a possibility of adding a better convection blower that will pump out a few more cfm??? If so any suggestions? I know if I get a few more cfm out of it i'd be good. I'd also like to get the thing to feed a bit faster. I have a fast setting of 1 drop per 3/sec. If I could get 1 drop 2/sec and add a few more cfm I think this thing would really pump out more heat. I'm having a hard time finding out the cfm on this 2 speed fan on the Quest model. I've looked all over. Any ideas? Thanks

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

How clean is the convection blower?

If it has oil ports when was the last time it was oiled?

You could try www.woodheatstoves.com and see if they have a service manual for that stove.

Is the flow rate on the blower plate? Some blowers have it and some don't.

 

[jtakeman]

Assuming the stove is tidy clean!

The easiest fix is what you feed it. What brand of pellet are you burning? Next easiest is a stove with more horsepower(high BTU output).

I was you many years ago, Until I changed stoves. What I had to do was measure the temp output of the stove with each brand of pellet I tried. The brnads that didn't crank out the heat I would burn on wartmer days. The ones that pushed the highest temps out were saved for the cold weather. It will give you the most from the stove. But may also go thru pellets faster. Usually the ones that cranked were the ones that didn't burn as long. But I was warm so didn't care!

You can add more blower cfm. But keep in mind that the larger blower will move more air, But the temp that comes off the stove will be lower. The faster you move the air over the heat exchanger the less time it has to absorb the heat. FYI only!

Keep us posted.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

The trick on adding more air flow on a stove is to make certain the vent air temperature drops instead of rises. If the vent temperature rises you are not removing any additional heat from the exchanger in fact you are removing less. What happens to the temperature of the convection airflow is immaterial as long as the vent temperature drops. If the vent temperature drops too much you can get things condensing out inside the plumbing that can cause problems.

 

[LelandWard]

The whole point of speeding the auger up a bit would add more fuel...More fuel means bigger fire, more heat. So I think if I can somehow increase the feedrate of the auger and get more fuel to the fire when its on high I should theoretically be able to more a bit more through it that will provide the extra warmth i'm looking for. My questions were:
-anyone know how to speed the auger faster than using the "speed dial"
-is there a blower that would give me a more cfm say 100cfm over 80cfm

 

[Stovensen]

. My questions were:
-anyone know how to speed the auger faster than using the "speed dial"
-is there a blower that would give me a more cfm say 100cfm over 80cfm

The answer to your first question is explained in the service manual. I have a pdf of this here on my computer. I'm afraid I have forgotten where I found it, so I cannot post the link here.
If you are interested, please PM your e-mailadress to me and I'll send it to you instantly.

The second question, however, is more difficult. The svc manual doesn't give exact information on the cfm of the room blower. A bit strange actually :roll:

 

[stellep]

+1 to what j-takeman said about pellets. On my Quest an average pellet keeps us warm, but with a high-heat pellet I can get about a 30+ degree increase at the tubes on low with no other adjustments.

 

[jtakeman]

The whole point of speeding the auger up a bit would add more fuel...More fuel means bigger fire, more heat. So I think if I can somehow increase the feedrate of the auger and get more fuel to the fire when its on high I should theoretically be able to more a bit more through it that will provide the extra warmth i'm looking for. My questions were:
-anyone know how to speed the auger faster than using the "speed dial"
-is there a blower that would give me a more cfm say 100cfm over 80cfm

The most effective point of more CFM is the air in the house gets turned over quicker. So the heat will be distributed faster. The 20 CFM you are saying might only show minimal gains. If your gonna go thru the hassle add more than that IMHO. At least a third more anyway. If its to much you can always block off some of the inlet slightly to reduce the CFM if need be.

What is the current CFM of the blower?

 

[Stovensen]

Nobody has a clue, but a Quest sure is a beautiful stove

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Check the plate on the blower. Sometimes it is on there. Depends upon what the manufacturer of the blower had for lunch that day and all.

A lot of the Whits at one time were using a 160 CFM blower, but that was on the single speed ones.

One never just increases the amount of pellets fed above the max feed rate set by the manufacturer, sorry it isn't a really good thing to do. You forget the change has been made and then get a really dense pellet like Cubex and the stove starts hi temping out on you if the safeties are working.

If that is what you really want to do then you need to readjust your air and increase the convection side airflow.

Normally the stoves can stand a faster convection blower provided you pay attention to what I told you in my response.

The condensation products includes creosote. Which is why I warned about lowering the vent temperature too much.