I'll put the details below, but would folks with experience with water line pressure regulators have a look at this and tell me if they think the regulator is worn out and needing replacement?
~~~~~~~~~~ OK, I've had a thread going on my Brewtus II hissing, and having popped the safety valve. I've got the vacuum breaker quieted down after replacing the o-ring inside, that was easy enough. The safety valve hasn't popped again, but I'm keeping an eye on the pstat thinking it may just be going and needing replacement eventually (getting sticky maybe). We have a rough guess that this machine has been in operation here in our kitchen for about 10 years (I'm probably 2nd or 3rd owner). Shortly after installing it I got clued into our house water pressure being on the high side at I think about 70psi (and I could see it high on the brew pressure gauge), so I bought a water line pressure regulator from Chris Coffee. As I remember, with the machine sitting cold, the front panel brew gauge would sit in a nice low spot like maybe "2 bar". So, that to me always said the water line pressure regulator was doing it's job. Recently our town has installed a new water tower and there was some possibility that our neighborhood water pressure was bumped up (I'm leaning toward not now..), so I decided to check the water line pressure regulator to make sure it was still a good level. (Insert here story of seeing odd behavior when trying to adjust it, questioning if I had it connected right, reversing it, messing with the adjustment, convincing myself that the original direction was correct, hooking it back up, resetting the regulator adjustment under flow to 20psi. Whether water flowing (machine on or off), or pressured against a blind basket with machine off, I got 20psi and a comparable reading on the brew pressure gauge. I would notice that after I closed the lever the pressure would slowly come up, but I thought that was due to the machine being hot, so figured that was thermal expansion) We went out to dinner, and when I came back the water line pressure regulator was up to full line pressure, and the brew gauge was showing comparable. The machine was of course cold. I could open the lever, release pressure, see it come back down to 20psi, but then after I closed the lever it would very slowly build back up to line pressure. Again, cold machine. So, here's where I'm at: it regulates properly when flowing, but when not flowing it fails to regulate the standing water line pressure, so that tells me that there's probably a leaking seat in the water line pressure regulator, and it needs to be replaced. In all the messing around today, I'm thinking I probably nudge an old seal enough that it probably finally failed. I think this is called creep, and the googling I've done suggests a leaky seal/seat. What do you all think? Sound right? Do I replace with another one from Chris Coffee, or is there a different recommendation out there? For now I've got the water line turned off via the John Guest turn off I have inline (and I notice that very slightly leaks when turning it, but not close or open, I think that MIGHT be sorta normal?), I'll turn it back on when I need to pull shots. Many thanks all. -- 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.
