Trianco / WES

[Worcester]

Might have stirred up a hornets nest here!

WoodEnergySolutions and marketing a small 15kW biomass boiler very similar to one sold by Trianco.

WES claim to be making them.

So - spoke to Trianco - now TR engineering, bought and now use the Trianco brand. and they claim emphatically, yes it looks the same, but it is absolutely a different boiler, the Trianco one is 'Made in Sheffield' and we don't re-badge it or sell it to anyone else. They know WES, and where emphatic it is NOT the same boiler.

Anyone believe they know anything different?

WES are emphatic 'Made in Ireland' - I've got a bunch of photos of the insides of the WES units - anyone got details of the Trianco ones?

 

[Nostrum]

http://www.trianco.co.uk/uploads/20121026-GreenflameInstructions28kWIntExt.pdf

http://woodenergysolutions.co.uk/uploads/pdf/17fbd649d85bfd06c820c3e5cd25e895e48f38d1.pdf

The word for word instructions are a bit of a give away.

 

[efficiencyman]

Don`t you reckon they are Irish clone / copies ? Just like so many of the Chinese clone / copies of heat pumps that are flooding the market at "half price" of the big brands often with the same named components inside, with usually a different case & badge stuck on it ! Perhaps the Irish are trying to catch up with the Chinese clones !

 

[Worcester]

@Nostrum,

Thanks for that, looking in detail, there are some similarities and also some significant differences - the internal control box, the burner/grate and self cleaning mechanisms are clearly very different, looks like WES must have done significant development. So same family different engines!
(Reminds me of the crappy WM diesel I had in a Ford Scopio about 15 years ago, yet the WM engine in the Jeep Cherokee was fine...)

That still begs the question though - what was/is wrong with the Trianco products and or Trianco as a compnay and why would some people steer clear of them?

 

[Worcester]

@efficiencyman, From further discussion, I think the clone is the Sheffield One ...!!

 

[Nostrum]

The differences may be due to the outputs? Most of the components look identical, the circuit board is the same although has some differing components attached.

Nothing in particular from my experience, but they had been struggling financially and went down the line of re-branding other peoples products to remain in the market (air souce, possibly this). Maybe ask in the oil section for other peoples views on Trianco.

I'm not overly taken on this product, moisture and wood pellet don't mix, what happens when you need to top the hopper up in the rain? I would like to see it in the flesh though before making my judgement on it. The concept is good, external oil boilers have their place, as would this I should imagine.

If i'm selling a product to a customer, I want to be able to have confidence that the manufacturer will be around to honour the warranty, that parts are easily obtained and that the product itself is built well, and tested thoroughly. We tend to take this for grated from the big gas/oil boiler manufacturer's but I would have no idea if that were the case from someone like this. (WES or TR engineering)

The sales of goods act make me or you responsible for the goods we provide so it's in our interest to provide quality products. I don't want to be associated with fitting mickey mouse products.

ETA, Windhager etc are probably to expensive for the majority of domestic customers, so a compromise has to be reached. I'm not sure if this is to far the other way though, which is why i'd want to see it before making judgement.

 

[Worcester]

That's exactly the sames concerns as we have.

For large commercial installation's we frequently specify ETA, though they have an interesting take on installer support (there's ya boiler off ya go...), we are getting a fair few leads from them as well

Looking for a middle ground product that is affordable to consumers, and the product support will still be there in 20 years is the challenge. There is a lot of cheap *** comming over from the continent, and loads of people importing, bearing in mind that only about 1500 boilers will be installed this year on MCS and there's only about 3,000 installed in total, the challenge is who's in the market to stay?

 

[Nostrum]

I've been on the grant spira course, only to see they have excluded condensing wood pellet boilers from the RHI! Not sure why or whether this will change, but there are other products about to consider.

 

[missplumb]

@worcester, what issues are you having with ETA?, who do you use to buy them, we get them from innasol and if i have a problem i just ring their technical guru in austria and 99% of tht time he can tell me how to sort it, or he'll go online to our boiler and make remote repairs if he can. If he cant solve my issue he rings ETA and has always rang me back with an answer the same day.

 

[Worcester]

@worcester, what issues are you having with ETA?, who do you use to buy them, we get them from innasol and if i have a problem i just ring their technical guru in austria and 99% of tht time he can tell me how to sort it, or he'll go online to our boiler and make remote repairs if he can. If he cant solve my issue he rings ETA and has always rang me back with an answer the same day.

Kind off sums up my comments
International calls for installation support.....