Used Whitfield Advantage I

[Pinyon Pine]

New poster here, been studying this forum for several weeks and appreciate all the information. So my pellet stove story: We have a small 1000 sq ft summer cabin in eastern Arizona and just bought a low mile Advantage I stove and 8 bags of pellets for $100 bucks from a neighbor. I just temporarily placed it on some plywood - see pic. Our cabin also has electric baseboard heat. We use the cabin mostly in the summer but sometimes in the fall and winter for hunting or a holiday. His place is also a summer cabin so the stove did not see that much use and he just changed to propane heat because he is getting on in years. He said everything works.

So I have a ton a questions but thought I better piecemeal them out to not overload the post. Here are my first couple:

Do you see any issue with this stove where I should not install it such as it being too noisy, unreliable, unsafe, etc.

I stored the pellets he gave me in the crawlspace under the cabin. It is a dry but cool location. See any problems?

Thanks

 

[Lake Girl]

Welcome to the forum! Need to get a hearth pad and loose the plywood to start. It will be noisier than electric heating due to the blowers (exhaust and convection). Only you can determine if that is an acceptable noise level.... Give it a good cleaning and get to know your stove. Unplug when working in the cabinet and set it up with surge protection. Many forum members are off doing summer activities but you can search (box top right) to find threads on problems/troubleshooting. Stovensen and Snowy Rivers are long time Whitfield owners. Snowy has modified hers (not recommended) but she has the technical background...

http://www.butkus.org/whitfield_operate/whitfield_operate.htm
http://www.butkus.org/whitfield_operate/whitfield_cleaning/cleaning_a_pellet_stove.htm

While this is an upgraded model manual (not sure what the upgrades were), this will be helpful for install requirements:
http://www.pelletking.com/pellet-stove-manuals/whitfield-advantage-iit-pellet-stove-manual.pdf

Keep us posted

 

[Pinyon Pine]

Welcome to the forum! Need to get a hearth pad and loose the plywood to start. It will be noisier than electric heating due to the blowers (exhaust and convection). Only you can determine if that is an acceptable noise level.... Give it a good cleaning and get to know your stove. Unplug when working in the cabinet and set it up with surge protection. Many forum members are off doing summer activities but you can search (box top right) to find threads on problems/troubleshooting. Stovensen and Snowy Rivers are long time Whitfield owners. Snowy has modified hers (not recommended) but she has the technical background...

http://www.butkus.org/whitfield_operate/whitfield_operate.htm
http://www.butkus.org/whitfield_operate/whitfield_cleaning/cleaning_a_pellet_stove.htm

While this is an upgraded model manual (not sure what the upgrades were), this will be helpful for install requirements:
http://www.pelletking.com/pellet-stove-manuals/whitfield-advantage-iit-pellet-stove-manual.pdf

Keep us posted

Thank you Lake Girl for the info. Probably should have mentioned that I have not installed it yet nor have any vent pipe installed in the cabin - just brought it in from the neighbors and put it on some plywood to keep it from squishing the carpet. Before I go any further I was hoping to get some opinions here if there is any reason to shy away from this particular stove. I am not in a huge hurry, so hopefully some of the Whitfield gurus you mentioned will chime in later in the summer. I have done some searches , but most of the posts are on the Advantage 2 models, not on this older #1 model. It appears not much difference in the successive models, but I am not sure.

 

[Lake Girl]

I think most of the upgrade was in the controls. Does yours have an igniter?

If you have the man power to move it outside, you can give it a good cleaning with compressed air in exhaust passages and blowers. Some folks use a leaf blower hooked up on the exhaust and use the vacuum ability (search leaf blower trick). Just be sure to disconnect vacuum switch (aka pressure) and be careful with the firebrick panel. If inside, a shop vac with drywall bag will keep dust minimized. You likely should start out with fresh gasket for the exhaust and check the door gasket The exhaust blower will need a couple of drops electric motor oil ie 2-in-1 blue label.

If you get it outside, you can give it a test run to determine noise level and general function of all components.

Forgot to mention about Snowy Rivers, she burns shells instead of pellets
Stovensen is from Denmark... usually some lag time on conversations

 

[Pinyon Pine]

I think most of the upgrade was in the controls. Does yours have an igniter?

If you have the man power to move it outside, you can give it a good cleaning with compressed air in exhaust passages and blowers. Some folks use a leaf blower hooked up on the exhaust and use the vacuum ability (search leaf blower trick). Just be sure to disconnect vacuum switch (aka pressure) and be careful with the firebrick panel. If inside, a shop vac with drywall bag will keep dust minimized. You likely should start out with fresh gasket for the exhaust and check the door gasket The exhaust blower will need a couple of drops electric motor oil ie 2-in-1 blue label.

If you get it outside, you can give it a test run to determine noise level and general function of all components.

Forgot to mention about Snowy Rivers, she burns shells instead of pellets
Stovensen is from Denmark... usually some lag time on conversations

It is an early model without an igniter, did not write the serial number down but I remember it was about #2700. Been reading more on these Whitfield stoves on this site, seems like they are considered workhorses by many, so certainly worth moving on the porch, cleaning, and seeing if all is working as well as the neighbor who sold it says it is. Will be going back up to the cabin in about a month to start that process.

 

[DneprDave]

I use the leaf blower trick to clean my Whitfield. I don't disconnect the vacuum switch, I just make sure the stove door is open when I start the leaf blower.

Great stoves and parts are still available for them.

 

[Bioburner]

Stove will and can run for your purposes for many more years with a bit of attention to cleaning and a couple drops of oil.