Thanks, James. Yes, this helps a lot. Since my last message, I took the steam boiler off and disassembled the auto-fill bits. The electromagnet tests fine. The plunger inside had a bit of stone/scale on it, cleaned all that off gently with scraping, and cleaned the rubber gasket, which was very supple. Replaced all that. The plunger now clicks easily back and forth with power/no power. I think the "sticking" theory was confirmed.
I also noticed that the ground wire going to the top of the steam boiler was very crusty and brittle, the last 2" or so of insulation was actually brown/black (originally green with yellow stripe). I cut off a bit and put on a new terminal to good copper. At that point I put everything back together and plugged it in, held my breath, and....voila, the steam boiler filled, and heated properly to normal temp/pressure. Then, as a final test, I dumped the steam boiler via the hot water wand. Previously this resulted in no pump running. This time, the pump ran for a few seconds, stopped, ran for a few more seconds, stopped again, and then the circuit breaker tripped. It seems like something is either causing too much load or giving a short to ground. The breaker also sense arc faults but I don't think that's the cause. Since I know the heating element is fine (it just heated the boiler), I now turn to other things. Hmmm...any further ideas? What I know is good: overlimit switches, heating elements, pressure stat, and seemingly the electromagnet and plunger for the autofill. I just pulled the boiler wires; no more circuit breaker tripping. I then pulled the autofill wire on top of the boiler to the level sensor/stick, pump does not activate. Where do I look next? Best, bmc Sent from my apple IIe > On Jul 31, 2015, at 08:42, James Roybal <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Ben, > It really sounds like your auto fill circuit is playing up. The connection on > the top of the steam boiler is a single wire to a metal "stick" looking part. > > The first thing I would do is turn the machine on (with the element > disconnected) then try disconnecting the wire on top and see if the boiler > fills. If not, this points to a problem with either the wiring or the Giemme > controller. > > As far as the plumbing on the bottom of the steam boiler, the default path > for the water is through the HX in the steam boiler and into the group > boiler. The only thing preventing the flow of water in this circuit is the > lever on the group. The HX and brew boiler remains pressurized at line > pressure at all times when the pump is off. > > The solenoid on the bottom of the steam boiler is supposed to open allowing > the pressurized water from the brew path to fill the boiler when called for > by the auto-fill circuit of the Giemme controller. > > Hope this helps, > -James > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Brewtus" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/brewtus. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Brewtus" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/brewtus. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
