PowerSwitch

Hi,
I'm hoping a few people on here can help me as I took the plunge and had a wood pellet boiler installed last year and it's been nothing but trouble since.

In May 2013 I had a company install an MCZ RED365 Compact 18 wood pellet boiler and it has been a nightmare with LOADS of issues. since installation I have had the installers back out about 20 times to fix all manner of issues.

The main issue is that it keeps tripping the electrics (MCB) in the boiler room but am guessing that is caused as a knock on effect from some of the other issues.

- 3 x faulty igniters
- 1 x faulty turbulator
- 3 x faulty motherboards
- leaks due to the boiler not having the right UK connections
- many blown fuses
- overheating issues
- constantly tripping the electrics

In January, after being without heating and hot water for over 2 months I had them rip it out and replace it for a new one (the same model) and 4 weeks later, that has just tripped the electrics, blown fuses and caused other issues and I am now without heating and hot water AGAIN !!!

has anyone else had similar experiences? I just have no idea what to do now other than to instruct the installers to take it out and refund me in full.

has anyone else got a RED 365 Compact 18 or Compact 24 boiler with issues?

i'd love to hear from you to share your experience

thanks

Rob

I am not familiar with the boiler in question, but I and others have rather negative views regarding wood pellet boilers in general.

As you have unfortunatly found out, they contain many rather high tech components that are liable to expensive and troublesome failure.
They are also reliant on an electricity supply

I see no harm in the modest burning of wood, preferably either waste or locally and sustainbly grown, but would prefer a simple wood burning stove, perhaps with gravity circulation for radiators.

A wood pellet boiler MIGHT make more sense for a larger industrial or community building since the costs of repairs and call outs are then spread over a larger heating load. A larger installation also facilitates the provision of a standby oil or gas burning appliance.
Reliance on an electricity supply is of less concern than it would be domesticly since larger facilities would nornaly close in a power cut. (unless equiped with a standby generator)

Yeah, I did some research before going down that route but didn't find too much negativity at the time.. now I have issues and am digging deeper i realise it's not uncommon for people to have constant issues.

what I want is to find other people with the same boiler with the same issues so I (and possibly anyone else) can build a case with enough unsatisfied customers to enable us to get full refunds so we can get more suitable systems installed.

Rob

Sorry to hear you have problems, but do not blame them all on the installers, they probably recomended the boiler to you in good faith, as a good economic boiler.

What a mistake that has been, we have installed MCZ stoves for several years, and had good results and when the RED Compact boiler came on the market through MCZ we thought that this was an ideal boiler for the utility room or garage.

We fitted our first about 18 months ago and for a while all seemed to go well and carried on fitting them. Then after a couple of months igniters started to fail, after a lot of hassle MCZ sent an egineer to Scotland to investigate the issue for another company and thought that the problem lay in the grid voltage being higher in the UK than Italy, so they supplied a different igniter, but these still fail in anything from a matter of months. We also have had problems of tripping electrics.

Then we had problem with the turbulators falling out and corroding. MCZ (RED) admitted that there was a problem with these and changed them to stainless steel, but the support bars are still mild steel so these corrode now and the Turbulators still fall out.

We have not had any motherboards fail so do not understand that, but one thing we have found is that when the igniter fails it blows a little fuse on the mother board so I wonder if that was the problem.

Overheating issues are probably down to an installation error, there must be a way to dump heat into the radiators or a heat leak radiator when the programmer is not asking for heat, as with all biomass boilers they do not shut down instantly and the normal UK method of a bi pass valve does not work.

Obviously some time ago we decided to stop fitting Compacts though we still fit MCZ stoves which have proved to be very reliable. We have complained to MCZ, but they seem reluctant to do anything. We have also made a compaint to the body that approves the product for use in the UK known as Gemserv stating that in our opinion until these problems are sorted out that the approval should be suspended.

Obvioulsy I can not name our company as this is likely to go legal, but I know of other companies accross the UK having similar issues. We are based in England, but the company in Scotland I mentioned went under as a result of the problems and I have heard of a company in North Wales that also installs them having similar problems

Stick with the boiler if you can, but put pressue on the importers - Specflue and also complain to both The Microgeneration Certification Body and the Renewable Energy Association the latter have a mediation service (Sorry you will have to search for the links as I can't put them here as the forum wont let me). Please dont blame the poor installers but we all must put as much pressure as we can to get the manufacturers and importers to sort this out.

Good luck, bear with it as it is basically a really good boiler with a few serious problems. Any decent manufacturer and importer would do as a car manufacturer and develop fixes to the problems and retro fit to all installed boilers without delay, rather that trying to deny there is a problem.

Interestingly specflue sent an electrician a week ago to check our electrical installation.. He found that the boiler installers had wired up a 230v live from the house controls/programmer to a low voltage live on the boiler... This has now been corrected and the boiler is running. Time will tell but he said that this could have been frying the motherboard slowly over time hence making it look like an intermittent fault.

What were your issues that caused the tripping electrics?

I had a replacement boiler in January 2014 so the new one has the redesigned ignition and I assume the new turbulator shut interesting that you say thy still have standard hangers!! I read on 'heat web' that having the temperature set to 55 defrees causes the condensation that affects these - do you have any experience of that or any suggestions?

Also - in the led screen on the boiler on the top right hand side, it now shows a picture of a house whereas before it showed a symbol which looked a bit like a recycling sign with 2 arrows going around in an oval (if that makes sense). Can anyone shed any light on what this means or did mean as I can't find anything on that in the manual.

Thanks

Rob

the boiler is still currently running

Does anyone have any info on the best way to set the MCZ RED365 Compact 18 up so that it runs at optimum efficiency? is it solely down to the pellet recipe?

Our house was specced at 14KWh heating + hot water usage for 3 people - we have cavity and loft insulation etc so the house is fairly efficient apart from the lounge, hall and dining room on the ground floor which have no insulation under the loor (beneath the floor boards it is just earth). the heating is set to come on at 5:30am and goes off at midday - it then comes on again at 3:00pm and runs until 9:00pm. we have the house thermostat set between 18 and 22 degrees depending if we are in or not.. I've tried having the heating running on lower all day and having it coming on and off throughout the day but that doesn't seem to change consumption.

we're currently using 3 bags of pellets a day (EN+ good quality ones - Verdo) but that seems excessive as is costing £8.40 a day - at that rate i'll be using nearly a ton a month.

any ideas what I can try or if there are any companies that will come and set these up to best efficiency?

"grid voltage lower in Italy than in the UK"
Is interesting. Years ago the UK used 240 volts, Italy used 220 volts, and equipment was either designed to tolerate both voltages, or was adjustable, or different versions were made for each voltage.

The EU however decided that we would all harmonise on 230 volts, and this was duly decreed.

Unfortunatly no one altered the actual voltage in most places, so we all use 230 volts, but in the UK it tends to average 240/250 and in Italy tends to average 210/220.

FYI - latest update - my last contact with the installer 'New World Solar Installations' was back in April when they still denied they had wired up the boiler original boiler correctly... even though it was proven adn the same faults on the second boiler, they said they would need to arbitrate this to find who was liable for the cost of the new boiler !! disgraceful behavour !!

New World Solar went into Liquidation about 4 weeks ago so i'm left high and dry.. I'm trying to contact MCS who said that installers have to offer a 2 year installation guarantee as well as the manufacturers warranty... so i am hoping that MCS have something (insurance/an agreement with another installer) in place to cover me for the next 12 months... any thoughts on this?

Also the same 2 directors from the failed New World Solar have now set up New World Energy in Cheltenham but as a new entity they would have no obligations to their previous companies customers.. so they'll just leave a wake of bad installations behind them and jump ship...