All, Grateful for any help. I've had this Brewtus II for years, and I'm probably the 2nd or 3rd owner of it. To my knowledge, no maintenance of any kind has ever been done on the machine. I fire it up twice a day, and pull a shot - I rarely use the steam boiler. I've had no water leaks or anything else significant to this point.
I turned on the machine to warm it up today, and sometime WELL after it would have come up to temp we heard a very loud sound (I honestly thought our pug dog had passed really loud gas), and the sound of steam coming out of the Brewtus under the cover. I quickly turned it off, gathered some tools, and took off the cover. I then turned it back on, and waited to see what happened. I found I've got hissing from the vacuum breaker valve, but I've had that for years. I've had a full replacement valve (the kind with the white insert), as well as a bag of the little o-rings as another option, but life got busy and I've used neither.... Let's hold on that thought. The safety value was hissing as well this time, so I popped it DOWN, and it seemed to settle. If it is hissing at all, I can't tell it over the vacuum breaker valve. I've let it cool a bit and warm back up a few times, and have not had the big problem reoccur, and the brew gauge shows a very solid maximum of 1.2 bars, so I don't think it's an out of control pressure stat or anything. I grabbed a pair of pliers and worked it UP against the spring pressure and rotated it a number of times just to make sure if there was any crud I broke it up or moved it. So... 1 - any thoughts or concerns on the safety valve? Is this just some weird one-off? Anything I should do or watch/listen for? 2 - Obviously I need to get off my rear and do something about the vacuum breaker valve. - I assume just put on the full assembly one I have rather then messing with repairing the other one's o-ring? - Any precautions I need to do like holding the lower part of the assembly to keep it from rotating when I wrench off the vacuum breaker value, or can I just take a wrench and spin off the vacuum breaker valve? I don't want to break anything. If I need to hold it, is a pair of pliers sufficient? - STUPID question: do I have to move the fridge and crawl back there to turn off the plumbed-in water line before doing the repair? I'm hoping this is fairly quick, and I'll go back to good operation. I appreciate any advice! PS: I imagine at some point this machine will need real maintenance, does anyone know anyone in the Raleigh, NC area that works on these machines? Thanks, Mike -- 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.
