Hey all, Hope you’ve had a good weekend! It seems this morning is an active day for the group, so might as well add my current issues with everyone else’s, and ask for the help of the braintrust.
(B2, rotary/plumbed and PID conversions, about 8 years old I think) First, the easy one, mainly posting this for archives. I’ve noticed moisture in my back right cup on the warming tray a couple of times this past week, indicating the over pressure relief has opened on the steam boiler. Red flag. A couple of days ago, the steam boiler wouldn’t heat after dropping to .5 bar; I reversed the wires on the p-stat, but no love. Switched them back and it began to heat. My likely diagnosis is that it had stuck, and me fiddling with it caused it to un-stick, so the wire reversal didn’t yield anything. Working normally again now, but moisture on the cups again this morning, so it’s probably about to fail since it seems to be sticking in both positions. Sigh. About a year old, once again. So, do I buy another stock unit that fails quickly, or gamble another $60 on a Jaeger that will either last 5 years, or 90 days, and not be warrantied by Chris’ Coffee? Hmmm… The second problem is one I asked about a number of weeks back. The first symptom was that the pump would occasionally just start running, and continue for 60 seconds or more. This has mostly subsided, but now the pump will run waaaaaaaay to often, for just a second or two. At its worst, it will run every 30-60 seconds, for a few seconds each time. At minimum, it will run every few minutes. The only logical thing I can think of is that somehow the steam boiler is losing volume to a leak, and causing the pump to refill it. But, there are no leaks that I can find; no water under the machine, not even a steady drip from the group into the drip tray. Since I’m plumbed in, I also don’t think I’m pushing water backwards to the water line, but perhaps? My house pressure is about 50-60psi, so quite high. Since the steam boiler is set to about 1.5bar (about 22psi), it seems unlikely that this would be possible. I guess I did have one other idea, which was that the volume-adjustment rod/sensor (the one that inserts into the steam boiler, with a wire on top, to shut off the pump when water reaches it) might be scaled and so making a poor connection/ground. I doubt this, however, since I had basically no scale last year when everything was torn down, and I rarely de-scale the machine. So a year later I doubt this non-heating and highly polished piece has accumulated much scale, if any. Otherwise, all is working normally (except the p-stat of course). Any ideas? Is there a logic board that could be failing and causing this symptom? Last year, I replaced the giemme controller, the PID, the solenoid, temp probe, both high-limit switches, p-stat, etc. It seems unlikely that something electronic is the cause here, but perhaps. I did not replace the solid state relay, and have been told it rarely fails. But could it be the culprit? I definitely am out of my league on diagnosing this one. All best, Ben -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/brewtus. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
