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Central Heating programmer information

Drayton, Eberle, Satchwell, etc

How do you program your Drayton, Eberle, Satchwell etc central heating programmer? This page won't tell you but it will get you to where you want to go, don't worry. I get dozens of requests every month from people who can't find the instructions for their central heating system, and although most of the people who get in touch realise that I'm not the person they should be asking, they're all pretty desperate.

Why do they ask me?

It's a combination of a few things. Firstly, they don't know the name of the manufacturer who they really want to get in contact with, because it's one of those crazy situations where lots of well-known manufacturers with lots of well-known brands get bought by some great conglomerate, which then promptly hides all the well-known brand names under its own (usually less-well-known) name. So now it becomes more difficult to track down the original name. In this case the culprit is Invensys, which seems to own Drayton, Ranco, Eberle, Eliwell, Microtech, Satchwell, Barcol-Air and possibly more, and has decided they're now all part of a company called Climate Controls Europe. Which in turn is part of Invensys.

With me so far? Good. Now, unfortunately, Invensys has structured its website in such a complex way that if you stick the term 'Drayton' (for example) into Google the Drayton page on the Invensys website doesn't come anywhere near the top. Which is quite an achievement, because Google is good. Very good, in fact. It's quite an extraordinary achievement if your website doesn't come up top of a Google search designed to find you.

Finally, and the reason people keep emailing me, is that I was editor of a website called Engineeringtalk which has mentioned Invensys, Climate Controls Europe, and Drayton, and which seems to come out more highly on Google searches than the company's own website. So in desperation, people email me and say "Where can I find out information on how to program my central heating system please?"

Let's hope you won't have to any more.

Note (May 2005): The company now seems to have been renamed Invensys Controls Europe. You can read more about the parent company on one of the great Jim Pinto Weblogs.

So...
Here is the page for Invensys Controls Europe where you'll find out about your central heating system!

Stop Press: Sorry if you visited this page in early 2005 and the link above didn't work. Invensys decided to change the page names on its website, and true to form, they made one of the most elementary mistakes possible: they didn't redirect the old names, so inbound links like mine became useless. It gets worse: at the time of writing (May 2005), if you type in Invensys Climate Controls into Google, you get taken to the US site, which has a prominent link to the European site. So far so good. Except that link is broken too.

Stop Press 2: Sorry if you visited this page in early 2006 and the link above didn't work - again. Invensys decided to change the page names on its website - again, and true to form, they made one of the most elementary mistakes possible: they didn't redirect the old names (again), so inbound links like mine became useless.

Stop Press 3: Sorry if you visited this page in 2009 and the link above didn't work - again. Invensys decided to change the page names on its website - yet again, and true to form, they made one of the most elementary mistakes possible: they didn't redirect the old names (yet again), so inbound links like mine became useless.