Been certified to conform to TUV
First of all there is nothing like TUV certified.
Second, there is no TUV, there are around 15 or 16 TUV’s and they are very fierce competitors backed by big insurance companies.
Explanation & History.
150, 200 years ago Germany put in place the so called Technischer Uberwachungs Vereins (TUV)
Free translation: Technical inspection agency that oversees specific aspects of safety.
Because there are around 15 or 16 states in Germany there were equal amount of TUV's. Each state had his own TUV.
Why these TUV's were created? Because likewise to the USA with the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessels, some small/big steam boilers blew up and killed people.
So they started to put in place technical specs how these things needed to be build, operated and periodically inspected.
This did not only happened in Germany, also France and GB and most other countries came up with similar inspection systems.
This "safety approach" continued till around 1999 when the Euro was implemented and the Pressure Equipment Directive 97/23/ECC was implemented and CE-marking became somewhat a normal thing for European consumers. Before 1999 each country had his own codes and regulations, and yes if a German pressure vessels was to be installed in France or Belgium it had to be "blessed" by the French or Belgian inspection authority that had the authority to do so. This authority was given by their respective government.
So, i would say not so much different of what we know here in the US.
With the implementation of the CE-marking things changed a little bit, not so much for the big tree (Germany, France and GB) but more for the smaller countries with less resources. There is still a process of consensus, but given that the bigger countries have more voting power and influence most likely EN-standards are changed like they want it.
On top of this came that around the same timeframe, 1999, a lot of these European Testing agencies, including TUV were transformed from a "goverment status" to a "private company" status with all the implications. (I will stick with TUV from know-on) All of a sudden all these TUV's became kind of a for-profit company. They had balance sheets that were in need to show good results. The bigger TUV's started to buy the small one. An world-wide they very became fierce competitors.You can see a list of TUV's here:
http://www.ceoc.com/memberslist.aspx under Germany.
So, a particular TUV can be involved in the certification of a wood boiler by means of monitoring the manufacturers quality system or maybe more specific.
All depends which route the manufacturer picks to CE-mark his product.
There is not one way that can lead to CE-marking, there are, good or bad, several ways a product can be CE-marked.
A manufacturer with deep pockets, reputation and intentions will most likely choose the involvement of a specific TUV or other inspection agency the correct way.
A manufacturer with not so deep pockets, less reputation and not so good intentions will look for alternatives to be able to CE-mark its products.
This brings us to the following:
Let's take a non-German wood boiler manufacturer that does
not use a particular TUV to overview it's so called quality system.
Well if this wood boiler ends up in Germany it will most likely not be an easy task to bring it in service by the customer.
It may have a CE-mark on it but there may be some questionable paperwork (manual, declaration of conformity, ... ) that is coming with that specific wood boiler.
Now the ball starts to roll and it will take some significant efforts from the homeowner to get all this squared out.
Result: home owners Germany will be very reluctant to buy non TUV "conforming" products, meaning they will most likely endup with a German, Swiss or Austria brand.
Another way or kind of manipulating the market is this.
EN303-5 has class 1, 2 and 3 level wood boilers. They are reviewing this and will now have also a class 4 and 5 in the upcoming new revision of this EN303-5.
Class 4 and 5 are for much cleaner burning wood boiler, like emissions 100ppm CO and lower, likewise for particulate matter.
The review process is very good, the wood boiler industry takes the lead.
In combination with this they enforce other product labels like "der Blauwe Engel" (the bleu Angle) for wood boilers that really are veryyyyyyyyyyy clean burning.
So, all this leads to wood boilers and .... wood boilers.
Similar to Mercedes, BMW, ... Skoda, Warburg, Trabant, Fiat, Lancia, Peugot, Renault
The next BIG question is where will all these other "NO Blue Angel" wood boilers end-up ... ? Not in Germany is my guess.
Again, I'm not putting certain brands or countries in a negative situation, i'm just explaining how European CE-marking is working.
It's a beautiful system on paper, as long as there are no real people involved and as long it is not used in North America or anywhere else besides Europe.
Don't believe it's all roses and moon shine ... .
We do need implementation and enforcement of our North American codes and regulations, it's the only way to now what's going on and not to "let history repeat itself".