UPDATE OF THE LITTLE EXTRA P2

Weather is great today, so I jumped into my monkey suit (coveralls) and went to work on the little Prodigy II I bought back earlier this winter.

The chassis is pretty well good to go for the most part, but the upper casting and the fan box were nasty dirty.

Tore them apart, removed the exhaust booster and the cooler fan blade

The motor is the newer unit with the heavier 5/16 shaft instead of the earlier 1/4" diameter.

The fan box attaching bolts had been over tightened a bit and the area around the bolt heads pulled up a bit.

Thinking about making a pair of little metal stiffeners to lay over the area to spread out the bolt torque.

The fan and box look as though the stove has never been used much, as does the inside of the cast front door on the fire box.

No real layer of carbon that is normal on these areas.

Just a tiny bit of soot, and if this stove had been used much, it would show it.
Even the rope seal on the door looks perfect, with hardly any soot.

The heat tubes also show no buildup of carbon.

The fact that the draft booster motor was replaced is not all that unusual, but the rest of the stove does not show the sort of wear and tear that you expect to see on a high mile unit.

The booster fan relay had been replaced with the much later model relay ????
The old one was stuffed under the auger motor and left there.

I checked the old relay out and it's dead.

A lot of unanswered questions.

I wish this little fellow could tell me it's history, Well maybe not


I ended up applying a lot of elbow grease to get all the left over silicone off the area where the vent attaches.

All cleaned up and spiffy now.

There is a round access port in the casting with a cast plug that allows access to the draft fan to clean it and the housing, and it was gooooooooooped way nasty with silicone.
Took serious oooomph to get it out of the hole it sits in.

The plug just sits in the hole.
Originally they used a lytherm gasket, but I will likely lay a piece of plastic wrap over the hole then silicone the plug and stuff it in and then let the silicone cure.

Marking the plug with a witness mark will allow it to be replaced the same.
Once the silicone cures it will pull loose of the thin plastic wrap.

I did this on our other P2 and it works sweet.



Just need to get busy and silicone the new rope gasket to the fan housing and then bolt it back to the casting assembly.

Once that is done the casting and fan assembly can go back onto the stove.

At that point it just needs a fire brick to complete the refit.

I think this little critter is going to be a sweet little unit when all done.

Will likely sit in the corner, as it was purchased as a backup JUST IN CASE

Maybe I can sneak it into a vacant corner and nobody will notice

 

Sneak it into another corner. The more fire horse power the better. Right? That's the way I see it anyway.

 

Me too.

Actually, we have the Whit Prodigy 2 in the living room and the Advantage 2 T in the family room which is a straight diagonal from one end of the house to the other.

These two, either separate or in concert do a sweet job of heating the 2400 ft

There is also a Quad 1000 in the far corner of the living room just in case.



With it we can leave over night and let it handle the chores automatically.

The cost savings of the shells is the big factor.

I bought the extra pair of identical stoves to allow a quick swap should we get a heat exchanger failure, or some other thing that is not a bolt on fix.

I do not want to add more holes in the walls as would be the case with another brand/type/model stove.

So we are set.

I also do not want to have the extras sitting about so that a rodent sets up housekeeping in it.

An extra adornment to a corner would be fine by me.

No need to connect it, just use it as a table for a lamp or ????

Then if need be, a quicky connect and zoooop. Good to go

Our stoves have 4 bolt quick connect flanges at the back that allow fast access.

 

Hi Snowy
Good deal! So which corner is the 2nd P2 in?
Do u have a pic?

Talking about corners, I just cleaned out a corner for our new workshop heater and my new helper just built the raised hearth for it. It would be a little boring to get a 3rd P61 so I found an old 1999 Advance. Still has the same parts as the P61s tho.
We are always tight for space so there is full access underneath with 3 doors!

 

No corner yet.

Not sure if I will bring it upstairs yet.

Being a spare, it needs to be ready to go.

Will, in due time test it, then refit the wiring in the chassis to allow my new controller that's ready now to just plug right in.

Today I went after getting the fan housing and top casting mated back together with the new rope gasket installed between the two.

A bit of a tedious task to get it right.

Part of the reason the stove did not work.
Part of the gasket had been left out and the draft fan was sucking air from the stove cabinet instead of the fire pot.

Had a 1/8th inch X about 6 inch gap between the fan housing and the heat tube housing that allowed a HUUUUUUUGE internal leak.

Just too many questions unanswered about this little beast.

Here are some pix taken today.

Getting the flat rope all stuck down to the fan housing, then bolting that to the casting takes a tad bit of finesse to get the gasket just right.

Not hard, but takes a bit of fooling, then snug the bolts down.

 

Nice raised hearth

I could have done the cabinet door thing, but don't really know what I would stuff in the hole.

Where our big Whit sits used to have a large Earth Stove pellet unit, and when we tore out the carpet and put down vinyl I had them just lay the vinyl around the hearth pad.

When we changed stoves back in 2010 it left this big AZZ blank place in the vinyl.

Sooooo, decided to just build the corner raised hearth and cover all the ugly up

No worries

Here is a piccy of the old stove and the approx outline of the new hearth, then a piccy of the finished setup as it is now.


The P2 and the Quad are both sitting on hearth pads tossed on the carpet.

That plan does negate some of the transmitted stove noises

 

Hey

That hearth is big enough that I could move the ADV 2 T over and put the second P2 right along side of it.

Now that would be different.

 

Thanks, Your raised Hearth is very nice too. A big improvement over the old Earth stove setup.

Hey Snowy what do you think of adding a positive draft fan on the Intake tube?
The Enerzone pellet stoves like Dexter's, has a positive draft fan.
Adding a speed control would be good too.

I found this one at Home Depot! See pics

 

Thanks for the Good vibes

Not sure about the ++ fan

The Quad 1000 has a booster fan that adds air to the plenum under the fire pot.

The Quads fan is very small with a tiny little squirrel cage of maybe 3 inches in diameter

It has a slide gate on the entry into the fan to adjust the flow.

The Quad also has a large negative pressure draft fan as well.

The old Earth stoves were totally a positive pressure stove.

This design really made keeping the fire door gaskets and such sealed well.

Getting smoke in the room was always a worry.

Having a tall chimney that would get a good draft going was a must have.

 

When we installed the old Earth stove it was Winter when we moved in and not a lot of thought was given to aesthetic's, just get the place warm.

The raised hearth was planned over a month or better before anything was moved, cut or otherwise done.
The old EARTH was good, but even on low would run us out except in COLD weather.

We added the Quad 1000 to handle the duties most of the time.

Then I got the bug and bought the P2 and that really helped cut the costs, so then all eyes looked at swapping out the Earth stove and then I found the ADV 2 T

The entire setup now works very well.

The past few days we are on the P2 and likely will stay that way, unless we see some low 40's

Getting on towards spring, so the big Whit may not see a lot more action this season.

I joke about having a stove in every corner, but more would just be a waste of time

 

Here are a couple pix taken from the same spot, just in opposite directions.

This house has no hallways to waste space, just lotsa room.

The master bed room is just on the other side of the wall the raised hearth is on.
All the bed rooms are on that end of the house.

The family room with the new (to us) bath vanity waiting for me to install it.

Too many projects.

A great diagonal shot from end to end making heating easy.

The "Living room" jogs to the right of the corner of the dinning room table and goes back about 15 feet and the Quad is back in the opposite corner on the same end of the house as the little Whit (shown)



Note

The cat turned on her lights to help illuminate the area some

 

Here is that little old dirty faded Travis I found.
A new upgraded exhaust blower, new hi Quality auger motor, and suped up hi temp Nylon auger bushing and some ultra modern paint makes it a real looker that burns like a house on fire!

The rich deep Satin Black outside hi temp paint has a nice sheen and the firebox has Ultra High Temp flat black while the Iron brick backing has Surf Sand color hi temp paint and sharp white brick mortar with a nice flat aluminum color grill.

Click pic to enlarge:

 

Sweeeeet.

That is lovely looking rig

 

Got some more work done a bit ago on the P2

I installed the flat gasket on the top of the heat chamber.

Takes a bit of finesse to get the rope all silicone'd in and laying just right.

It is best when you can get it set, then walk away overnight to let the silicone set up.

Also lets the extra silicone between the 2 pieces set good.

The top piece folds over the back inside edges and the back vertical piece folds over the top right in back of the scraper.

The rear portion at the bottom was missing when I took it apart to clean and service it.

Getting the entire assembly back down in the pocket it sits in takes a clever bit of SHOE horning.
A thin piece of sheet metal slipped in by the white rock wool blanket allows the fan assembly to slip in easily and not bunch up the blanket.

 

did someone get a new generator from harbor freight

 

Why? Is it yours?

 

OOOOOK
I admit to being an HF addict.

I get those Frequent buyer advertiser papers withe the deep discounts.
The flyer came a while back and I had a 25% off coupon that was about to expire so we went in and grabbed a gen set.

My Daughter and Son in law bought one like it and it seems to be OK.

Have not even unboxed it yet.

Made a good work bench to sit and fool with Whitfield parts

 

Looking at the piccy with the loooooooong fan shaft showing, and the design is just hard to get my headspace around.
Having a fan (even though it's small) hanging waaaaaaaaaaay out on the end of that long TWIG is really poor engineering.

The original motors on these had a 1/4" diam shaft, and subsequent aftermarket units have gone to a 5/16" and better yet the new ones have a full length flat on the shaft for the set screw to snug into.

Even a small imbalance of the fan impeller makes for some nasty vibes.

Very important to reach in through the top port and clean the fan petals with a small wire brush.

I'm of the opinion that the addition of the fan may have been given far less thought than maybe it should have had.

The Prodigy 1 series did not have a draft fan and absolutely had to have a tall chimney to function.

Never seen one, and they only made a small number of them. (A good thing)

 

I don't know about the gen. Itself but I put one of those predator motors on my kids minibike 2 yrs. Ago and it runs like a champ.

 

HF has a lot of pretty good things, ya just have to know what to stay away from.

Their screw drivers suck

I have air tools that I have owned for years and beat the H*LL out of and the still work fine

I bought one of their pressure washers and it works great.

Best part is, if you take care of the stuff, it is pretty good, and when it dies you can afford to toss it and get a fresh one.