Calling All Balcas Wood Pellet Customers..please Read

Builderwoman!

Hi

We are customers of Balcas. We received 3 tonne delivery at the end of Nov and have found that the pellets in this delivery compared to our last on in July are of very inferior quality. We have 50-60% sawdust when we fill our small hopper from our large silo. Of course our boiler is not coping with the saw dust well at all...we have lots of smoke and sparks coming out of our chimney plus the boiler is switching off as it's getting saw dust and not fuel from the hopper. The feeder pipe is backing up with sawdust and has to be emptied. When I spoke to Balcas they say they will investigate the issue and have to send them a sample of the pellets. Has anybody else experienced similar bad quality pellets from Balcas? Please let me know ASAP. Balcas are saying the problem may be our Woodpecker boiler. But I pointed out to them that we or our boiler had no problems whatsoever with their previous delivery of pellets in July. Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Builderwoman!

Bumping This Up In The Hope Of Getting Some Feedback From Other Balcas Customers Please!

CJhaughey

Maybe try it in Green Issues too? There might be a few there with pellet boilers.

ferg957

Hi Builderwoman,

There is a theory that pellets made form Irishwood does not contain sufficient sap to bind the pellets together for long term storage.................hence sawdust issue your seeing.

One way round your problem would be to place mesh grid in your auger feed so that the sawdust falls out before it gets to your burner but the pellets continue to be fed though

ferg

Builderwoman! wrote:

Hi

We are customers of Balcas. We received 3 tonne delivery at the end of Nov and have found that the pellets in this delivery compared to our last on in July are of very inferior quality. We have 50-60% sawdust when we fill our small hopper from our large silo. Of course our boiler is not coping with the saw dust well at all...we have lots of smoke and sparks coming out of our chimney plus the boiler is switching off as it's getting saw dust and not fuel from the hopper. The feeder pipe is backing up with sawdust and has to be emptied. When I spoke to Balcas they say they will investigate the issue and have to send them a sample of the pellets. Has anybody else experienced similar bad quality pellets from Balcas? Please let me know ASAP. Balcas are saying the problem may be our Woodpecker boiler. But I pointed out to them that we or our boiler had no problems whatsoever with their previous delivery of pellets in July. Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Biglad

Hi Builderwoman, I am new to this site and I am loving the amount of info available. My brother in law is getting his pellets from BALCAS as well and so far so good, although delivered in June/July. Dont know of anybody having received pellets of them recently. We hope to get our own first delivery next week as we will have our Mescoli PB28 up and running by then. I'll check out the pellets when they get here. Has anybody out there got any experience on Mescoli? A mate of mine put in the same machine just before Christmas and he had a flame burn back. I think this was caused by the "emergency" flu that was stuck on.

I researched about 8 or 9 different Boilers as I found that the Trade will only tell you what they want you to know. The Mescoli was the choice for us, although I think there are 2 or 3 very good options out there. Our pellets will be stored in a dedicated storage area in the roofspace over our garage. This was easily done as we are "newbuilds". Mr. Gravity will feed the pellets in to the 400kg hopper, thats the plan anyway. What we (people of ireland) need now is a standard to be introduced for the size and quality of these pellets.

Builderwoman!

Ferg that's a good idea about the mesh. We are hoping when the pellets from Tuam come online that they will be of better quality. Balcas aren't
concerned about customer service anyway as they haven't even phoned me since as promised after my complaint.

Biglad, let us know about the pellets and remeber that there is only supposed to be 1% dust. That's a great idea about storage upstairs in garage...are you feeding with an augur as well as gravity? Have you given over the whole of the roof space? Did you put in extra insulation and additional measures to stop pellets getting damp?

The Trade will only tell you what suits themselves!

Hopefully SEI will take notice of all the bad pellets that are out there and try to bring in some standards. Maybe we should all petition them to do so?

towbar

Builderwoman,

Do you reckon the pellets were bad from delivery or are they breaking down more with time?

If you lift a handful off the top are they crumbling in your hand?

Builderwoman!

No they are not breakind down in our hand. I reckon they are a bad delivery. Spoke to a reliable source today who has access to several Balcas customers and he said in his estimation that people who got deliveries in the pre-Christmas period got very bad quality pellets from Balcas. Will have to get on to them again. I sent them a sample and haven't received anything back from them yet.

lastbuilders

I got a delivery from Balcas at the end if November and have not noticed any problem with the pellets. I think they are better quality then the bagged pellets I was using previously.

Lastbuilders

mcauleyj

I got a few 1/2 tonne sacks from local supplier around Oct/Nov, who himself had been supplied from Balcas (ha shas a larger ~16 tonne silo). I noticed there was a lot of sawdust in the mix. Mentioned this to him & he thought that one possible reason was that the delivery guy blew them in too fast? It could have been the pellet quality as well tho I suppose.

I used it anyhow - the burner & boiler worked fine, the only difference being the flame had more 'sparklies' than normal. What it did do though, was clog the actual burn grate quicker - I had the burner go into thermal shutdown & had to replace an optical sensor because of this.

After this, I riddled the pellets before filling (I dont have a bulk store yet and was hand filling anyhow). Now though, even if there is sawdust in the mix, I just make sure to clean the burn grate a little more often, no problems so far.

J

Biglad

Builderwoman! wrote:

Ferg that's a good idea about the mesh. We are hoping when the pellets from Tuam come online that they will be of better quality. Balcas aren't
concerned about customer service anyway as they haven't even phoned me since as promised after my complaint.

Biglad, let us know about the pellets and remeber that there is only supposed to be 1% dust. That's a great idea about storage upstairs in garage...are you feeding with an augur as well as gravity? Have you given over the whole of the roof space? Did you put in extra insulation and additional measures to stop pellets getting damp?

The Trade will only tell you what suits themselves!

Hopefully SEI will take notice of all the bad pellets that are out there and try to bring in some standards. Maybe we should all petition them to do so?

I've reserved half the roof space for the pellets. The storage area is completely sealed and insulated bar a vent in the back wall to let the air/dust out during the delivery. Altough we had loads of rain over the last two months the storage area is bone dry so far. Inside the storage space we angled the floor so most of the pellets will be guided to the 400x400mm opening we made in the ply floor. A funnel type device was then put underneath it which has to 4" flexible pipes attached to it. These two pipes can be "hooked" to the garage ceiling over the hopper when the hopper is full or when I need to empty the hopper in case of bad pellets ...
We did a trial run with a couple of 20kg bags and it seems to work alright. I'll let you know what happens when Balcas makes their first delivery.
And befor I forget, make sure the floor can handle the weight of the pellets. I had an RSG put in and calculated that the floor should be able to carry 5 tonne.

Builderwoman!

Just to bring you up to speed. Balcas eventually came back to us. They seemed to be blaming Gerkros boilers but have had a meeting with Gerkros and phoned us afterwards. Situation has now been amicably resolved by us with Balcas. Balcas also admitted that their quality was bad in Nov when we got the pellets. Anyone in similar situation to ours I would highly recommend you talk to Balcas.

Biglad

Hi Builderwoman,

I got my first 4 ton delivery today. My brother in law came up to give me a hand. The storage system works fine, they are all nicely tucked away in my Roof Space. Unfortunately I think I got about 3.5 tonnes of pellets and the rest... sawdust. I rang Balcas straight after the delivery and they were trying to blame my storage, this I did not accept. Then they told me a story about European standards .... My brother in law noticed that, compared to his delivery last year March, it smelled like a pine forrest in my garage. The pellets are definately of a lesser quality compared to his and they do fall apart very easily. My Burner will be commissioned tomorrow and if there is a problem with the pellets I will make a more formal complaint with Balcas.
Maybe Balcas is keeping the good pellets for their Scottish Contract (Power Plant) and maybe we are getting ground up fence posts. who knows.

To be continued...