Back in 2021, Geoff Waddington, a member of the MPC Council, wrote an article on the potential dangers of cheap imported diesel heaters that were reaching the UK and being sold through well-known online selling sites. The article, entitled surveyors beware of some diesel heater installations raised what was a serious concern at that time and still is. Subsequently, there have been several cases where trading standards have intercepted consignments at ports and the products have been destroyed.

Here’s an extract from Geoff’s original article. Recent contact with someone has brought to attention a problem regarding a fault causing potentially life-threatening fumes from his boat’s diesel heater. The heater in question is an Eberspacher for which cheap imported spares are available on the internet. The part in question was a replacement fuel pump which he bought online. The part was manufactured in China and on the face of it appears to be very much the genuine article, but there was no CE marking identifiable. The product description stated, “Good replacement – Based on the original factory specifications, a direct replacement for the old or broken one.”

The local Eberspacher agent advised that the owner should remove the pump and replace it with a genuine Eberspacher pump because the one he had fitted would supply too much fuel to the unit causing it to produce a smoky exhaust with a high percentage of unburnt or partially burnt fuel, which indeed proved to be correct and was the case.

Case 1
Nearly 300 faulty desktop heaters that posed a fire risk have been destroyed after they were seized at a coastal port. The appliances were detained at the Port of Felixstowe by imports surveillance officers from Suffolk County Council. During tests, an internal wire melted causing the heaters to short circuit, a spokesperson said. All the heaters were destroyed.

Suffolk Trading Standards, a department of the council, said the 299 heaters were to be delivered to a warehouse in East Tilbury, Essex, and sold on Amazon. The imports officers noticed the heaters “didn’t look right” as they had no manufacturer names or regulatory compliance markings on them, the spokesperson said.

Source: BBC

Case 2
Suffolk Trading Standards seized almost 1,000 “Vevor” branded Chinese diesel heaters as ‘unsafe’. They didn’t come with the required CE marking Declaration of Conformity and the ‘Chinglish’ instructions leave much to be desired. Here’s the extract from Facebook.

Suffolk Trading Standards Imports Surveillance Team detained 973 diesel heaters at the Port of Felixstowe. All products were found to be unsafe, with listings for all sellers removed on eBay.​ Consignments arrived at the Port in October and November and were stopped by the team, with samples sent to a test house for assessment.​

None of the products met the requirements of the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 because they could present the hazards of fire and death due to poor supporting installation information.​ Manuals supplied with the products failed to give measurements for installing and did not give the minimum distance the exhaust pipe can be installed from flammable material, or material that could give off poisonous fumes when heated, such as insulation material.​

No warning was provided about heat and dangers to the user if installed incorrectly.​ Large parts of the manuals were written in poor English and had incorrect words used. The intended meaning was, in some cases, difficult to understand.​

Additionally, the products and instructions did not have the name and address of the importer or manufacturer and did not include the required Declaration of Conformity (DoC). A DoC is a formal declaration by a manufacturer, or the manufacturer’s representative, that the product to which it applies meets all relevant requirements of all product safety directives applicable to that product.

Source: Facebook