Winston Pellet Stoves

[SmokeyTheBear]

The trick to getting the door adjusted was to switch the hinge mounting fasteners from 1/4"-20 hexhead bolts to 1/4"-20 sockethead (Allen) buttonheads.... Then drill and mill these crappy looking access hole/slots so the door hinges can be adjusted and tightened while the door is in proper postition when closed. Both the hinge brackets and the cabinet were slotted by the oem and to try to adjust them perfectly without being able to tighten or loosen them will put you on the fast track to the loony bin.

The answer is of course to cheat. You would think man-machine would mill preportionally correct access slots all nice and neat.
I'm over it, the door seals nicely.

Yup them slotted adjustment can indeed put you in the loony bin, but then I don't know about you or most folks, but I find myself in the loony bin from time to time when doing battle with only two front paws and needing at least three.

Have a good one man-machine.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Now I shall practice what I preach and do a bit of cleaning as it is slightly past due by the bag count.

 

[man-machine]

I replaced my door seal and found this operation to be somewhat of an art form. I'm sure it's been covered but a few things I noted:

The new seal material has to go into the slot sort of bunched up into itself, not pulled tight. This is really important on my stove because the door has those angled sections. Where the flat section makes the radius turn into the next flat section the gasket material has to be pooched out, otherwise there will be a gap there.

Trimming the ends with angles helps as opposed to doing a straight butt joint. The straight butt joint ends up being frayed and leaving a gap. The angles can meet as a visible joint or one end can overlay the other. Either way seems to work fine.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Yup, you never stretch out a door gasket on a stove or for that matter most other gaskets.

 

[man-machine]

My only real complaint on this stove is the darn door. They should have made it flat. The design is appealing appearance wise but the door sealing is too important to be compromised by function following form.

I still want the appropriate oem size convection fan, maybe even a tiny bit bigger.

 

[filburt]

Did you try Edwards and Sons to try to get Winston replacement parts? They bought up the entire inventory abut 15 yrs ago. They are located in W Virginia

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

You mean like this?

 

[man-machine]

Did you try Edwards and Sons to try to get Winston replacement parts? They bought up the entire inventory abut 15 yrs ago. They are located in W Virginia

I ended up contacting site member Ronniebabe who posted in this topic. Him and his associate have quite a bit of Winston NOS (new old stock) and that's where I got the new complete control panel and the blower assembly.

E&S has been very helpful and I will be using both parts sources as needed depending on who has what. E&S said they are getting very short on electronics for Winstons.

 

[man-machine]

I'm still dinkering around with stuff. Thought I tear apart the old convection fan motor just to see why it quit. It's a shaded pole TEFC motor.

Wow! There was a broken wire on one of the windings but thats minor compared to what I saw. It was ROASTED inside. I mean cooked. Black, burnt, pieces of charred insulation and cooked off oil and laquer. I try to look at the bright side of this, I mean having a 20 year old stove with so many problems one after another. I'm learning a lot. If I was rich and bought a brand new stove I wouldn't find and solve so many problems and see so many different things. Like the new age yuppie geeks say:
"They're not problems, they're challenges" ... kinda true.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Yup, nothing like the smell of melting enamel before breakfast. Seriously that is the reason for the insulation that was back in that area. It is the same as what was slowly going to happen to the convection blower on my stove. You just got it done a lot quicker. About buying a new one, I'll just say this, a lot of them have more than their "fair" share of issues. The new age yuppie geeks will at some time come to the conclusion that those challenges are actually problems. It does indeed come full circle.

I'm glad you are learning and really getting to know that stove as you'll have to do all of the heavy lifting associated with keeping it running. At least you have no delusions about how simple and easy it is to maintain and aren't likely to figure that stove shop people will pour through your front door dragging the manufacturers rep with them the second the stove acts up.

 

[man-machine]

Funny you should mention "heavy lifting". When I do the serious teardown work I push the stove over in front of my toolbox and raise it up on two milk crates. So much easier. I'm laid off work right now and spend days relaxing and watching tv. Late at night when tv gets lousy with paid programming I'm out there in my shop.

I don't know how many 8-10 hour nights I spent on this stove but is was many. I must have close to 150 hours in. The latest thing was the convection motor assembly being a little too much on the small side. Priced a new Dayton motor at $80 and decided to adapt the new $30 motor I bought to the bigger oem blower fan (squirrel cage) the stove came with. Problem: the new motor's shaft is an inch too short. Fire up the lathe and make a shaft extension. This one little part needs to be precise on diameters and concentricty, otherwise there will be too much runout. Took three hours to make with two tapped holes and a milled flat but I saved the $80 of not buying another motor. It's fun designing and making the special little thingies I need to make anything fit anything so yeah another challenge crushed.

 

[filburt]

When replacing the blowers, be certain they are rated for high temp performance. I noticed that the combustion fan was rated to withstand 400 degrees. Also, the more unrestricted the combustion air is, the cooler the fan runs. For this reason I feel that any dampering of the combustion air will dramatically shorten the life of the blowers. As I previously mentioned, I have an insert so dampering is impossible. I feel that even a freestanding stove is designed to never be dampered. Realize that replacement motors must be designed for the high temps that occur.

 

[man-machine]

When replacing the blowers, be certain they are rated for high temp performance. I noticed that the combustion fan was rated to withstand 400 degrees. Also, the more unrestricted the combustion air is, the cooler the fan runs. For this reason I feel that any dampering of the combustion air will dramatically shorten the life of the blowers. As I previously mentioned, I have an insert so dampering is impossible. I feel that even a freestanding stove is designed to never be dampered. Realize that replacement motors must be designed for the high temps that occur.

Yes. There is a motor insulation class, duty rating, and the ambient temp rise rating. The motor should at least be a TEFC an not an open frame design with exposed windings (more stuff learned here recently). One thing I don't understand about sqirrel cage blower fan assemblies:

How come when you restrict the air coming is is goes faster and blows harder? What the heck is going on? Is it like an undocumented day laborer that works harder when being choked? I don't get it.

 

[imacman]

How come when you restrict the air coming is is goes faster and blows harder? ......I don't get it.

Just like when you put your hand over a vacuum intake....no air goes in, therefore, no air resistance (drag), so motor can spin easier=higher speed.

 

[man-machine]

This new convection fan motor is a little less capable than the oem one.

1/30 hp instead of 1/20 and draws slightly less amps, all other specs are ok. I saved $50 but for how long I wonder?

 

[man-machine]

When replacing the blowers, be certain they are rated for high temp performance. I noticed that the combustion fan was rated to withstand 400 degrees. Also, the more unrestricted the combustion air is, the cooler the fan runs. For this reason I feel that any dampering of the combustion air will dramatically shorten the life of the blowers. As I previously mentioned, I have an insert so dampering is impossible. I feel that even a freestanding stove is designed to never be dampered. Realize that replacement motors must be designed for the high temps that occur.

Agreed but my freestanding ps is dampered, I wonder why? I see little or no advantage in choking off the supply of combustion air.

Arn't stoves like engines, the better the air flow the more fuel you can put to it and equaling more heat output?

It's preportional isn't it? Am I wrong? Just winging some theory here, no thesis or PhD.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

If it doesn't overheat and fry or the bearings don't blow they can last a long time.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

When replacing the blowers, be certain they are rated for high temp performance. I noticed that the combustion fan was rated to withstand 400 degrees. Also, the more unrestricted the combustion air is, the cooler the fan runs. For this reason I feel that any dampering of the combustion air will dramatically shorten the life of the blowers. As I previously mentioned, I have an insert so dampering is impossible. I feel that even a freestanding stove is designed to never be dampered. Realize that replacement motors must be designed for the high temps that occur.

Agreed but my freestanding ps is dampered, I wonder why? I see little or no advantage in choking off the supply of combustion air.

Arn't stoves like engines, the better the air flow the more fuel you can put to it and equaling more heat output?

It's preportional isn't it? Am I wrong? Just winging some theory here, no thesis or PhD.

You need to consider that at higher air flow rates the heated gases that normally would transfer some of their energy to the heat exchanger are just going to be more quickly exiting the stove and heat transfer is proportional to time as well as temperature difference and the conductivity of the heat exchanger material.

It turns out to be a balancing act, which once set for a particular fuel doesn't need further adjustment.

The goal is to get as much time in contact with the heat exchanger as possible for the exhaust gases and the largest temperature difference between the sides of the heat exchanger as possible while having the highest possible conductive heat exchanger material that can survive the environment. This also means that the convection fan must be able to move enough air to keep that side of the exchanger to as close to ambient room temperature as possible.

 

[man-machine]

Well from stone cold it will heat up my 768 sq ft shop from 40F to 60F in less than two hours on high burn.

I don't know if thats really good or not good at all but it looks like thats as good as I'm gonna get. Again, this is a stove with only two burn rates, high and low. I set high burn with an aggresive firing rate and low burn with a slightly more than moderate firing rate. It's still kind of a PITA to keep the shop at a steady temp and I try not to judge all ps's based on the 20 yo unit I'm using.

Even though this project was or maybe still is a nutcruncher I wasn't going to let it kick my butt. Something that is a little worrysome right now is the fact that when I switch from "run" to "shutdown" mode the auger will sometime keep feeding. So I switch it again back to run and back to shutdown and see if it stops feeding, or turn it off and back on and then to shut down. Pisses me off it's not doing exactly what it's supposed to and I hope nothing more serious goes wrong with the electronics.

 

[filburt]

To heat your shop up 20 degrees in less than 2 hrs is excellent. Remember, you're not running a 120,000 BTU forced air furnace that runs intermittently. Your heating unit will produce less than 1/3 the output of the average furnace. It is designed to run constantly rather than giving you a blast of hot air. This is how the higher efficiency is maintained.

 

[man-machine]

What did I say the btu rating was before? I'm too lazy to look. I think it was 9k to 32k, something like that. Yeah, I though a 20F rise in less than two hours was at least ok but I wasn't going to brag unless I was sure lol.

What I'd really like to do is copy the steel heat exchanger into an aluminum one. Making all the pieces is easy but I don't have a way to weld aluminum otherwise I'd be doing it right now.

 

[man-machine]

To be really fancy this stove would have a remote temp sensor and a flame sensor plus a temp feedback loop with a variable speed combustion fan tied into the firing rate and also tied into the convection fan's variable speed controller. 100% automatic control regulated by a thermostat. I don't know if the new mega-trick stoves are like this or not but mine seems rather crude when it comes to holding a steady room temp.

 

[man-machine]

So if you have a Winston WP24 pellet stove and it's performing poorly plan on taking it all the way apart for a complete cleaning and servicing, just like I was told early on in this topic. It's the only way to eliminate all possible causes and return the stove to peak operation.

Any questions or problems PM me or post up. There is a few tricks to how it comes apart and pitfalls that need to be avoided. These arn't bad stoves, being discontinued in the early 90's means it isn't state of the art by any means but with a lot of careful attention and cleaning it will perform well. I'm glad I stuck it out with this stove and all it's problems, despite the time invested along with $150 in parts I'm happy with the end result. Buying a new replacement wasn't an option money-wise and I'm glad I didn't.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Yup and buy stock in high temp silly con sealant companies ;-).

 

[man-machine]

Trick #1:

Before you slide the hopper assembly out be sure to vacuum the pellets out from the front of the auger.

Otherwise they fall down between the insulating sheet material and the the bulkhead firewall barrier (thing).

Then the next time you fire the stove up those mentioned pellets sit there and roast and stink up the whole area.